A New Jersey developer wants to bring a Target store to Yonkers as the retail anchor for a proposed $115 million mixed-use development beside the developer”™s existing Austin Avenue big-box retail center. But delays in moving the project forward after a year and a half of talks have led construction industry and building trades union officials to level charges of politically motivated “foot-dragging” against Westchester County and Yonkers officials.
Morris Industrial Builders L.P., an entity of The Morris Cos. in Rutherford, N.J., wants to build 255,000 square feet of additional retail space on vacant land adjoining its Austin Avenue complex that includes Costco, Home Depot and a Stew Leonard”™s grocery store. The developer also plans to build 400 market-rate apartments in a six-building complex at its leased site off the Thruway on the Yonkers-Greenburgh border.
The company”™s project attorney in White Plains, Alfred B. DelBello, is seeking a city zoning amendment to change the acreage requirement from 80 acres to 70 acres for a planned multiuse development zone and to change Morris”™s separately zoned lots at the 75-acre site to allow multiuse development. The Yonkers Planning Board, lead agency for the project, will meet March 13 to plan the scope of the developer”™s required environmental impact study.
“Target is committed” to the Yonkers location, said Edward A. Sheeran, principal of Palmer Economic Development Inc. in Yonkers and a consultant to The Morris Cos. “Target has been trying to get in Yonkers for the past 15 years,” said the former executive director of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency.
Sheeran said the development over a five-year period would generate “well over $50 million” in income and sales taxes and payments by the developer in lieu of property taxes. “At a time when every municipality is hurting, that”™s nice revenue.”
Target executives have met with the company”™s prospective retail neighbor, Stew Leonard”™s, on how their stores will complement each other.
Sheeran said Dick”™s Sporting Goods and Marshalls are other prospective tenants joining Target.
Target, though, prefers to build landscaped surface parking for its store rather than erect a more costly and visually unattractive garage, he said. To do that, it needs to buy or lease a 3-acre parcel owned by the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), which also owns the developed Austin Avenue land.
“We had various discussions about it” with county officials, including Deputy County Executive Kevin J. Plunkett, who also serves as vice-chairman of the county IDA board. Target executives also have met with county officials, Sheeran said. “There certainly was an interest in there being an accommodation made. We”™re at a point now where nothing has happened.”
The county IDA board at meetings last year and again this month has gone behind closed doors to discuss the Austin Avenue project. Sheeran said his client did not join those sessions. “We have no knowledge of what would happen in executive session,” he said.
“I”™m not sure” why the county is delaying action, said Sheeran. “I think there”™s an interest by the county to do it. It”™s a matter of timing, perhaps.”
Eileen Mildenberger, executive director of the Westchester County IDA, said the IDA “awaits the local zoning and planning process to be completed before acting on any transfer requests.”
Construction industry officials, though, think the county”™s timing on the Austin Avenue project has to do with the November election and incumbents”™ reelection bids. The county”™s delay in backing that and other potential private-sector construction projects was the focus of a recent union jobs rally outside the County Office Building in White Plains, where an estimated 200 marching union workers toted placards that read, “Ready to Work Today!” and “Unemployed! Jobs Now!”
George Drapeau, spokesman for the Construction Industry Council of Westchester and Hudson Valley Inc., said Yonkers City Council Minority Leader John Larkin had asked his Republican counterparts in the county administration for the delay after hearing criticism about the project from constituents in his city district, which includes the Austin Ave site.
Larkin did not respond to a request to reply to that claim and comment on his position on the Morris Builders project. The Republican councilman, though, in a Journal News interview reportedly dismissed the foot-dragging charges and said he had reservations about easing acreage requirements for Morris Builders, as the city did for Forest City Ratner Cos. with its Ridge Hill development near the Austin Avenue site.
Union officials at the White Plains rally said about 40 percent of workers in their building trades locals are out of work. “It”™s an effort to spur the economy by creating jobs,” Paul Ryan, assistant business manager for Local 3 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said of the union rallies that began last summer. “We”™re here to ask the county legislators to talk and encourage the private sector to create jobs.”
“We”™re going to stay here until all the guys go back to work,” said Ryan.
In addition to construction work, Sheeran said the Austin Avenue project would create 250 jobs at Target and 100 jobs at its other prospective retail stores.
“Morris has been working on this for the past 18 months,” Sheeran said. “It would be great to see this development go forward.”
