Yonkers architect Steven Asaro lives and works in a loft in the handsome Mercantile Building off Getty Square, one of the first commercial properties renovated by a private developer at the start of the city”™s heralded downtown renaissance.
Eight years after the building”™s reopening as a live-work space to attract and accommodate a new wave of Yonkers residents and young professionals, Asaro says he is the only architect based in the city”™s downtown area. The critical mass of residents and businesses anticipated by city officials, developers and retailers has not yet been realized. The downtown economic renaissance has slowed and its spearhead project, the Struever Fidelco Cappelli (SFC) mixed-use development at Chicken Island near Getty Square, has stalled since the recession. SFC partners are seeking a big-box tenant for their revised River Park Center project before they seek construction financing that dried up in the credit crisis a few years ago.
Hot-market projects cool down
Four years ago, “Yonkers was the hottest market in the metropolitan area,” said Yonkers Planning and Development Commissioner Louis C. Kirven III.
The city”™s Alexander Street industrial corridor on the waterfront was poised for redevelopment as a high-density, mass-transit-oriented neighborhood of high-rise homes and townhouses, retail stores, commercial offices and public parks. South of City Pier on the Hudson River, SFC was seeking and later obtained city approval of its Palisades Point high-rise luxury residential development, in addition to its River Park Center and Government Center projects in the heart of downtown.
Of those touted hot-market projects, though, only Forest City Ratner Company”™s Ridge Hill retail and entertainment complex, far from downtown at the city”™s northern limits, has been built. Though 15 downtown businesses held ribbon-cutting ceremonies and about a dozen more stores have opened with less fanfare in the last 18 months, “Businesses are struggling, some are having difficulty,” said Steve Sansone, executive director of the 250-member Yonkers Downtown/Waterfront Business Improvement District. “I think it”™s really reflective of the whole tristate area. However, I think there”™s a good future for downtown Yonkers. ”¦We need critical mass.”
“It”™s a bit of a struggle down here from previous years,” said Roger Ayuso, owner of Roger”™s Furniture on North Broadway at Getty Square.
He and other downtown BID members are awaiting SFC”™s nearby River Park Center to boost foot traffic and sales at their stores.
“It”™s moving quite a bit slower than expected,” Ayuso said of that project. “I just hope the time will come pretty soon where it”™s in full gear so we can all prosper from it.
“We are all struggling in the downtown ”“ and we will come back stronger than before,” he said.
A plan to simplify zoning
With the recession, “We have to take stock of where we”™re at,” Kirven said. “The city of Yonkers had a tremendous amount of momentum and we want to get it back” when the economy rebounds and financing reopens for large-scale projects such as SFC”™s. “The vision is still the same: investment in development in the core and then it begins to trickle out or spread out from the core.”
To revive that momentum, Mayor Philip Amicone”™s administration recently presented an ambitious downtown rezoning proposal to the Yonkers City Council. It followed an 18-month process of public forums around the city and meetings with a downtown rezoning steering committee, co-chaired by Kirven and Yonkers Housing and Buildings Commissioner John Meyer, that includes other housing and economic development officials, private developers, Ayuso and other downtown business owners and heads of churches and nonprofits in the targeted area.
The plan would do away with what Kirven called “a hodgepodge” of 10 land-use zones in an approximately 190-acre downtown area and replace them with five zones, three of which are residential zones of varying population density. The largest central downtown area would be zoned for mixed-use development. The i.park Hudson property at the former Otis Elevator complex ”“ home to the city”™s nascent biotechnology industry and Y-Enterprise, a city-run business incubator and accelerator expected to open by November ”“ would be separately zoned as an industrial research and technology district.
Kirven said the plan is designed to simplify zoning and make it more flexible “to make it easier for businesses to move in and open here.” It would also focus more on building forms in the context of existing architecture and desired streetscapes to preserve the downtown city”™s unique character rather than on building uses. Some city blocks would be zoned to allow high-rise developments of up to 250 feet.
”˜Some real positive development”™
When considering projects, “We want to be careful of the sense of place that we have,” Yonkers Planning Director Lee J. Ellman recently told the city council”™s real estate committee. City officials want to return downtown “to its storied pedestrian uses and make it a striking 24/7 downtown,” he said.
“It”™s all about less required parking and higher density” for developments, said Asaro. Less restrictive parking “is really important” to spurring downtown development. “This is a mature downtown. We shouldn”™t have a suburban attitude about parking,” he said.
Sansone said the city”™s strict parking requirements have kept businesses from opening in Yonkers. “I think this (rezoning) makes it more user-friendly for folks who want to come in,” he said,. “Hopefully it will simplify a lot of the processes while putting in some protective measures for the buildings here.”
Nick Sprayregen, a New York City self-storage executive and a commercial and residential landlord in Yonkers, since 2006 has spent about $30 million to acquire an assemblage of about 15 properties on Main Street and Warburton Avenue in anticipation of the development opportunities that would spring from the SFC project and the city”™s budding downtown renaissance. Sprayregen”™s properties border Larkin Plaza, where the city, using public investment to draw more private investment downtown, Â this year began a $17-million project to divert water from the buried Saw Mill River and create a visitor-attracting public park and riverwalk.
“We”™ve been anxiously waiting for the rezoning to come around,” Sprayregen said. “We think that”™s a very positive step.”
The rezoning would allow the greater residential density needed to make any project financially viable for a developer, he said. As currently proposed, Sprayregen could build a 250-foot retail and residential tower on his property that will overlook the new Larkin riverwalk.
“We feel moderately optimistic that despite the poor economy, we can give it a good try and bring some real positive development” to downtown Yonkers, he said.
Plan has its criticsÂ
Asaro, the architect and tenant in one of Sprayregen’s buildings, said the single-developer strategy pursued by Mayor Philip Amicone’s administration with SFC as the downtown master developer “is dangerous.”  In contrast, former Mayor John Spencer’s “incremental” approach to revitalizing properties “dispersed an effort throughout the downtown. That kind of work has not completely stopped but seems to have slowed.”     Â
“There’s no doubt the economy has hurt everybody,” Asaro said. “I can’t put all the responsibility on City Hall strategy.” But with SFC’s continued inactivity at its sites, “I think people are hesitant to go forward until there’s some clarity about this development.”
Asaro said a comprehensive zoning plan for the downtown Main Street and waterfront areas should have been worked out before the city struck an agreement with SFC. That criticism likely will be raised again by Yonkers residents at the city council’s Nov. 1 public hearing on the rezoning plan.
“I don’t see a cohesive urban plan for the downtown,” Asaro said of the rezoning proposal. “I don’t see something that pulls this unique place together, an overarching idea for it.”
“I don’t think Yonkers is the only municipality that shares that problem.”
This article presents false hope to the residents and business owners of the City of Yonkers. Nothing will be accomplished until the corrupt politicians (which Yonkers wrote the handbook on) and corrupt developers are federally investigated and indicted for their blatant thievery of this great city for so many years are brought to justice. You can’t fool the people of Yonkers with candy coated journalism, and most probably quoting people out of context. Enough of your nepotism and yellow journalism. I dare you to print this comment.
Not a tenth of what I said. Not objective reporting. And not responsible reporting. I’m actually sorry to have had this interview.
Yonkers deserves better.
It’s encouraging to see the long overdue revision of the zoning regs in the Yonkers downtown. Yonkers will never achieve its vision of a return to the prosperity of its glorious past without first abandoning the vestiges of small thinking that have resulted in the stagnation we are now dealing with.
I find the article an interesting mix. On the one hand, Yonkers has appeared to have the thinking that they can fix everything in one grand step, but as they can see from the SFC development situation, incremental is usually the best way to go, because the big development can go bust more easily that go boom. As for the rezoning efforts, the goal to have a 24/7 downtown is a misplaced goal. It won’t happen here in Yonkers given the location, the socio-economic condition and the population level. I suggest a different goal be considered. It is one thing to recall Yonkers’ “glorious past” and another to deal with the realities of the 21st century.