A financially rebuilt General Motors Co.”™s revived plans for the site of its former automotive assembly plant on the Sleepy Hollow riverfront has sparked a renewed legal challenge from a municipal neighbor opposed to the project”™s size and traffic and parking woes it would bring to Tarrytown”™s already congested Broadway.
“That”™s not going to slow us down,” Sleepy Hollow Mayor Kenneth G. Wray said of neighboring Tarrytown”™s move to have a state court overturn Sleepy Hollow”™s recent approval of GM”™s plans and force the village and the automaker to take a hard look at a substantially smaller development.
The Sleepy Hollow village board in May approved a special permit and concept plan for Lighthouse Landing, a previously estimated $800-million project on the approximately 95-acre property off Beekman Avenue that was vacated by General Motors in 1996.
The automaker has yet to choose a developer for the project, which slumbered through the recession and GM”™s bankruptcy reorganization in 2009 and in state courts for about four years.
GM”™s former Lighthouse Landing partner, New Jersey-based Roseland Properties L.L.C., pulled out of the project in late 2007, calling it an opportunity that had passed. The project since 2007 has been snarled in lawsuits by both General Motors and the village of Tarrytown that challenged Sleepy Hollow”™s environmental review findings for the project.
GM agreed to drop its legal action against the village with the board”™s recent approval of the project. The plan includes 1,177 rental apartments and owned condominium and townhouse units, approximately 135,000 square feet of retail, cinema and restaurant space, 35,000 square feet of office space, a 140-room hotel and approximately 16 acres of public open space on the Hudson River.
A state Supreme Court judge in a decision last year upheld the village”™s reduction of the housing development from GM”™s proposed 1,250 units.
The new agreement gives GM nine months in which to select and convey the property to a developer.
Tarrytown ”˜essentially ignored”™
Sleepy Hollow trustees will require the developer to pay $11.5 million to fund infrastructure and mitigation measures related to the project and up to $320,000 for removal of on-street parking spaces in Sleepy Hollow. The developer also will be required to pay a fair share for “traffic calming measures” in the nearby Miller Park neighborhood of Tarrytown.
To encourage mass-transit use by Lighthouse Landing residents and reduce traffic from the project, village officials also required the developer at full build-out to provide three 20-seat to 25-seat shuttle buses from the development to the nearby Tarrytown Metro-North Railroad station.
Those measures, though, have not relieved Tarrytown officials”™ concerns about the project”™s adverse traffic spillage into their village, especially on Broadway or state Route 9.
In court papers filed recently filed by the White Plains law firm representing Tarrytown, Silverberg Zalantis L.L.P., said the new plan adopted by Sleepy Hollow, “rather than providing for greater mitigation of the impacts, actually eliminated the few, inadequate conditions” previously placed on GM and Roseland. The impact on Tarrytown has been “essentially ignored,” attorneys said in their legal action against Sleepy Hollow and GM.
Tarrytown officials four years ago shot down a proposal by Sleepy Hollow officials that on-street parking be eliminated at some Broadway intersections in Tarrytown to accommodate traffic from the new development, claiming it would worsen the existing parking shortage in the village”™s downtown and hurt retail sales there and would change the character of Route 9 to “an auto-dominated thoroughfare” from a two-lane village Main Street.
Tarrytown officials and the village”™s planning consultant in the past urged their municipal neighbor to reduce the density of the overall Lighthouse Landing development by about 50 percent. Their proposed alternative included a reduction to 781 housing units, 90,000 square feet of retail space, 25,000 square feet of office space and a 70-room hotel that would be half the size of that approved for GM.
Tarrytown”™s planning consultant in 2007 told Sleepy Hollow officials a scaled-down project still would be economically viable and the only realistic way to reduce traffic impact on Route 9. And a reduced retail development primarily would serve Lighthouse Landing residents rather than draw away business from established downtown merchants, the planner said.
“Whatever happens, it”™s going to add traffic to a difficult-at-best situation now,” said Tarrytown Mayor Drew Fixell. The village”™s traffic consultant found that a half-sized development would be “at least tolerable” in Tarrytown.
Fixell said his village”™s municipal neighbor and renewed court foe at this point might have no room for legal maneuvers to amend the development plan. “Sleepy Hollow has no ability to alter this unilaterally” without GM, he said.
”˜We will prevail”™
Fixell said Tarrytown officials were not notified by their Sleepy Hollow counterparts when GM revived its Sleepy Hollow project last year but are open to out-of-court talks. “We”™re not closed to any discussion of any of the issues that were raised” in the revived court petition, he said.
In Sleepy Hollow, officials are ready for a court battle, its mayor indicated. “We will vigorously defend ourselves and I am confident that we will prevail,” Wray said.
Regarding Tarrytown officials, “It”™s clear that what they”™re trying to do is protect their existing commercial base,” Wray said. “They couch it in terms of traffic,” but the proposed project reductions are designed to protect Tarrytown”™s retailers and its hotel trade.
“Tarrytown by my count has six hotels and over 1,100 rooms, which seems to be fine for them,” said Wray. “They think 140 rooms in Sleepy Hollow is unnecessary and over the top and we should cut it down to 70. ”¦ It seems fairly obvious that they”™re trying to protect their own.
“I believe that the development of this site is going to be good for both villages,” said Wray. Its new residents will bring added business to both villages”™ downtown shopping areas as well as to new on-site retailers, he said.
In Tarrytown, noted the Sleepy Hollow mayor, “They are continuing to develop the waterfront and we think it”™s good. We think it would complement our own project.
“I wish they would see it the same way,” said Wray.”
it saddens me as native north tarrytowner that the two villages cannot agree on development in the now Sleepy Hollow to help revitalize the area especially with the residential new riverfront development tarrytown experienced.