The Rye Brook board of trustees on Tuesday approved a zoning change and agreed that a full environmental impact study would not be needed for a proposed residential development on vacant land in the Reckson Executive Park.
With the village board”™s unanimous vote, the proposal by Buckingham Partners/Sun Homes to build market-rate and affordable housing units on the approximately 80-acre property moves to the conceptual plan review stage.
The developers”™ proposal calls for 110 single-family homes to be built on a roughly 31-acre site on the office park property owned by Reckson, a division of SL Green Realty Corp. Ten homes would qualify as affordable housing. Market-rate homes would range from 2,400-square-foot, three-bedroom homes; medium-sized homes comparable to a Sun Homes development in Darien, Conn.; and the 3,300-square-foot homes with basements.
- Reckson Executive Park in Rye Brook.
Sun Homes partner Bill McGuinness said the affordable units will have the same exterior specifications as the market-rate homes. Each will include a private patio in the back.
“We would like to have the nicest affordable homes in the country,” he said. “We”™re pleased we”™re able to do this.
“We designed the homes as single-family houses so we could marry them as softly as possible to make for a nice streetscape,” he added. “We want this to have a single-family feel to it.”
Because Rye Brook trustees Jason Klein and Susan Epstein were absent from the meeting, the board could not vote on the conceptual plan and a second local law modifying the village zoning map. Trustees are expected to vote on those at their Aug. 18 meeting. If those are approved, Buckingham Partners/Sun Homes will present a site plan and subdivision application to the village.
Buckingham Partners/Sun Homes first submitted its proposal in February.
The parcel was to be site of a proposed 140,000-square-foot ice skating complex proposed by Reckson, part of a growing trend among Westchester office park landlords of seeking new uses for their underutilized properties in the economic downturn. Facing community opposition, Reckson withdrew its proposal in October 2013.
Previous approval for office space development on the property is set to expire at the end of the year, and the new residential proposal would replace those plans. Much of the recent public hearing centered on residents”™ concerns about traffic and increased enrollment in the Blind Brook school district.
One Doral Greens Drive resident compared Anderson Hill Road, the street running perpendicular to the Reckson property, to the “middle of Manhattan” during rush hour. Another resident had concerns about accessibility for emergency responders with the anticipated increase in traffic.
Marilyn Timpone-Mohamed, a planner at Frederick P. Clark Associates, the Rye consulting firm that did a traffic study for the developer, said at the meeting her firm found the opposite. “Our conclusion is that the amount of traffic would not be significantly increased,” Mohamed said.
Former Rye Brook Mayor Joan L. Feinstein at the public hearing cited the town of Harrison”™s decision to rezone the Platinum Mile section of Westchester Avenue for residential units. She also cited a recent report that described a decrease in companies willing to occupy corporate park space away from public transportation.
“Reckson is entitled to develop its property,” she said.
William S. Null, an attorney for White Plains-based Cuddy & Feder LLP representing Sun Homes on the project, said that after discussions with and recommendations from the Rye Brook planning board, several modifications were made to the proposal.
“We relocated the clubhouse amenity building from one side of the road to another and changed the layout and arrangement of a number of homes under considerable guidance from the planning board,” Null said. “If the board were to approve the change in text and mapping and the conceptual plan, we would be back before you in two months or less with the application ready to go before the planning board.”
The Reckson Executive Park adjoins Doral Arrowwood and the campus of SUNY Purchase.
Based in Pawling, Sun Homes in 2012 opened Kensett Darien, a $100 million luxury community of 74 townhomes in Darien. The company is also developing the $150 million, 195-condominum Palmer Hill property in Stamford.
This article has been updated to reflect that the housing units are planned for a roughly 31-acre site in the Reckson Executive Park. An earlier version incorrectly stated the acreage.
