S. Klein on the Square and E.J. Korvette are gone from Central Park Avenue, replaced by more modern riffs on commerce like Target and Best Buy. The leafy residential neighborhoods to the east and west of the 11-mile road remain largely unchanged across the decades. But the road known popularly as Central Avenue keeps reinventing itself as the commercial heart of the county.
Between the Cross County Parkway and the Greenburgh town line, the state says an average 45,000 vehicles use the road in both directions every day. Between Greenburgh and White Plains, the number is 28,000 vehicles.
The county, meantime, tracks bus passengers on its Bee-Line routes and Central Avenue ”“ its busiest corridor ”“ sees 3.6 million riders per year.
Some stalwarts have weathered the economic bumps and become landmarks along Central Avenue, including Nathan”™s, which opened in 1965 in Yonkers, as well as Scarsdale”™s Curry Chevrolet ”“ “About 50 years,” according to Curry”™s Chief Financial Officer Howard Mirchin.
Tom Carvel started his eponymous ice cream empire on Central Avenue in Hartsdale in 1936 and the current manager of the flagship store, Mr. Abbie, reported business there remains good. “The store will be open at least through this summer,” Abbie said. “There are some future plans for development, but nothing definite, and we are fully operational.”
At Central Avenue”™s south end, the road is split: Yonkers Raceway and Cross County Shopping Center dominate the east flank amid supporting players like Mavis Tire and Burger King on the west side, with Interstate 87 separating them.
Central Avenue”™s southern beginning in Yonkers offers little hint of the commercial crescendo that rises to the north. A pedestrian overpass ”“ a $400,000 state Department of Transportation project in 1975 ”“ links quiet neighborhoods at Central Avenue and Forest Avenue on the west side of the Thruway with Central Avenue and Parkway North on the east side. To continue south at Forest Avenue is to find oneself on a service road that either feeds the Major Deegan Expressway or spills into the Bronx at 233rd Street. The northern terminus is the Westchester County Center in White Plains.
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Postwar boom
Patrick Natarelli, Westchester County”™s chief planner, first saw Central Avenue as a boy in 1954. “There was nothing there except the Tanglewood Shopping Center across from where Nathan”™s is today,” he said. “Fort Hill Road” ”“ now a four-lane link to Jackson Avenue ”“ “was like a road in the Catskill Mountains ”“ all winding with blind turns.”
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But the postwar trek north from the five boroughs had begun. The car was king and business picked up considerably. “In the late ”™50s, the Midway Shopping Center opened in Greenburgh. It had E.J. Korvette and Murray”™s Army-Navy,” Natarelli said.
“Our development policy in the southern part of the county has always been to direct development to the center of the county and along the major north-south corridors,” Natarelli said. Besides Central Avenue, those corridors are along Route 9 to the east of Central Avenue and along the Long Island Sound to the west on Boston Post Road. Route 22, also north-south running, has most of its development in Eastchester and lacks the commercial scale of the other three corridors. The north-to-south topography of the county is the reason these thoroughfares are so flat, while crossing the county from east to west involves embracing the county”™s numerous “cardiac hills.”
No project in recent years has promoted the use of Central Avenue as much as the five-year dig that burrowed beneath Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers, allowing four lanes of Central Avenue traffic to schuss under the clot-prone intersection that is home to Roosevelt High School. To the east and west of the underpass, spurs allow access to Tuckahoe Road via access ramps.
Central Avenue constitutes the southern portion of state Route 100. The Central Avenue-Tuckahoe Road project ”“ “a grade-separated interchange” in state DOT parlance ”“ broke ground June 20, 1968 and was completed in 1973: “It was a $16 million contract ”“ that was a lot of money in 1968,” said Sandra Jobson, the DOT acting public affairs officer. “The follow-up project in 1974 was for landscaping and that cost $153,000.”
The length of construction made for red ink on bottom lines.
“That was a tough intersection,” Natarelli said. “The idea was to move traffic, but it probably cost the businesses while it went on.”
“They used to call it the Burma Road down there,” said Peter Severino, referencing a World War II hellhole while recalling the construction.
Severino began waiting tables at Carlo”™s Restaurant on the corner of Tuckahoe Road and Central Avenue in 1958 and bought the family restaurant in 1977. “It was a relief when it was all over,” he said. “But I couldn”™t figure out why the state did it in the first place. There was no mess before; I didn”™t think so. But they dug up the whole road. A lot of people went out. Andy”™s Delicadandy across the street ”“ I knew Andy; great sandwich ”“ he went out. Century 21 (at 646 Tuckahoe Road) used to be the Roosevelt Deli. The Roosevelt Deli went, too.”
Margaret Vitulli, office manager for the Yonkers Historical Society, said of the construction, “My husband had a Corvette ”“ this was 1969 ”“ so we really noticed it. What a mess.”
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Besides Carlo”™s, the only business to survive the Central Avenue-Tuckahoe Road construction into the 21st century was the County Animal Clinic, now part of a nationwide umbrella of pet hospitals in the VCA Antech network. No one on hand during a recent afternoon visit remembered the construction that so altered the vets”™ streetscape, but one former resident recalled the hospital well from his youth. Tom Morgan, now 49, took Brown the family cat there for an emergency tail operation amid the dust and the bulldozers.
Morgan, now a senior paralegal with Fulbright and Jaworski L.P. in Los Angeles, crossed Central Avenue every day to get to Roosevelt High School.
“There was Cartoon Haircutting, providing the shag haircuts of the day,” Morgan said of the stretch next to the animal hospital along “Central,” as he called it, yet another abbreviation of Central Park Avenue in common use. “At one point there was a teen center that was some sort of retro-hippie enclave that basically scared me,” he said.
Morgan recalled the big construction project, noting it was largely completed when he began at Roosevelt in 1973. Retro-hippies notwithstanding, he remains loyal to his old neighborhood: “I took my boys Joe and Russ to Carlo”™s last year when we came for a visit,” he said. “We had pizza in New York City a few days later and Carlo”™s pizza was rated much higher by us all.”
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Transit changes
Multiple entities have control over Central Park Avenue: municipalities, the county and the state. “All have different roles,” Natarelli said.
Natarelli noted that municipalities, including Greenburgh where the official name shifts to South Central Avenue (North Central Avenue is in White Plains), have control of land use, while the state and county take care of the roadway: the county for two miles south of the Cross County Parkway overpass in Yonkers and the state for the nine miles north of that point to the Westchester County Center. County planners, meanwhile, keep the big picture in mind as they promote commercial development. “It”™s not an easy task coordinating all three,” Natarelli said.
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The county Planning Department is currently assessing parking lots along the length of the road to see which, if any, are underutilized and therefore might lend themselves to different use. Natarelli would like to see more residences along the road, such as the apartment towers north of Fort Hill Road and at Sadore Lane north of Tuckahoe Road. But he called residential development on Central Avenue “tricky” because of the overlapping jurisdictions. Nonetheless, he said, “We like the idea. We”™d like to see more mixed use.”
Commissioner Lawrence Salley of the county Department of Transportation knows the road”™s importance, as well as its congestion.
With some 3.6 million Bee-Line Bus System passengers traveling Central Avenue each year, he said, it”™s “the busiest route in our system.” Those buses reach as far south as the No. 4 subway line in the Bronx, with the express BXM4C ending in lower Manhattan.
Along the White Plains-Bronx artery are 71 bus stops about 0.2-mile apart and 44 traffic lights averaging 0.3-mile apart. To traverse the route, a bus is in motion 59 minutes; picks up and discharges passengers at bus stops for 21 minutes; merges with traffic for four minutes; stops at lights for 16 minutes; and endures an average five minutes in incidental delays like accidents and construction: a total one hour and 45 minutes.
It”™s a figure the Transportation Department has in its crosshairs with plans for a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system.
“We would like to reduce that figure 20 to 48 minutes with full-blown BRT,” Salley said, noting such a plan involves signal prioritization, construction of bus-dedicated lanes, up-to-the-minute signs at bus stops, three-door buses for easy on-off and an off-bus payment system. Queue-jumping is another option, allowing buses in special lanes to get a head-start at traffic lights.
“There are components we certainly will implement regardless of full BRT or not,” Salley said. “Signal improvements are a given.”
Salley called Central Avenue “a very, very important corridor. It”™s one of the most important in terms of economic impact and services provided.” But, “If you were planning it today, you would take a different tack. Instead of the parking on the street and the stores at the back, you would put the businesses at the front and parking at the back, which is more conducive to mass transit.” Now, pedestrians who disembark along the street must often brave the gantlet of drivers navigating parking lots to get to stores.
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The road dates to the mid-19th century, when it was little more than a cow path along a valley bottom. Central Avenue really got going prior to World War I, according to the DOT”™s Jobson: “In 1912, there was a project designated for the length of the road for $56,000.” She said the project was likely part of the national Good Roads Movement (1880-1916) to pave roads that were mud in winter and dust in summer, a push spearheaded by bicyclists. “I bet that was one of the original paving projects on the road,” she said. She also noted no big capital projects are currently planned beyond the state”™s constant attention to the roadbed and storm drains, and traffic light maintenance.
In 1995, The New York Times reported retail rents averaged $36 per square foot from Yonkers to the Greenburgh line and $32 from Greenburgh to White Plains. If it ever was that simple, it is certainly more nuanced today.
Rick Rakow, president of Rakow Commercial Realty Group in White Plains, said of today”™s retail real estate market, “Truly, it is site specific. Generally, the rents are higher within a center than for a free-standing space because there is more foot traffic.” He cited rents of $70 for a spot in Hartsdale and $45 not far south from that in Scarsdale. Other rents along the road were $35, $26, even $20, hinting at the enormous variables in the retail equation. “There are spaces that are lower level, literally underground with no window exposure. But exposure can be generated by pylons and signage so consumers can be directed there; it really is so site specific.”
Universal to Central Avenue, Rakow said, “It”™s right in the middle of the county. Everybody knows how to get there, which is very much a positive.”
Natarelli said, “Have we done a good job? It certainly is congested on a Saturday afternoon. But it does work. It generates tax revenue. It”™s a concentration of business with lower-density residential on either side. There is a thought process to how it all works.”
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