Westchester’s changing real estate landscape

The rapid evolution of demographics and the demand for housing mean developers and city planners must confront redevelopment now rather than down the road, panelists cautioned at a recent symposium hosted by Pace Law School.

The school”™s Land Use Law Center hosted its 10th annual Land Use and Sustainable Development Conference on Dec. 2, featuring more than a dozen panels and talks that offered insight into the changing nature of the Westchester real estate market and how municipalities can plan for future developments and redevelopment.

John R. Nolon, Land Use Law Center founder, said that while most of the conference”™s 200 attendees were likely not surprised by what was said at the panel discussions, the speakers added greater clarity to the need for developers and planners to prioritize redevelopment strategies.

“There”™s going to be a tremendous market for people to move close to transit, into cities and into older suburbs that can find some mixed uses and where people can walk to services and retail,” Nolon said. “The New York metro region is going to increase by three and a half million people over the next 20, 25 years, and those demographic trends are at work here (in Westchester).”

As transit-oriented developments gain steam, single-family housing developments will continue to lose their appeal and prices on homes will continue to drop as both older and younger generations are looking to be in more urban settings, Nolon said.

“The market for additional single-family homes, particularly on large lots, is gone, and home prices will continue to decline,” he said, citing speaker Arthur Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Research Center at the University of Utah. “This is different from the housing bubble bursting. They (home prices) are going to continue to decline because there”™s nobody that wants to buy them any longer.”

To adapt to the inevitable shift in demand for housing, Nolon and several of the speakers advocated for a greater emphasis to be placed on mixed-use developments ”“ for example, along the Platinum Mile corridor in White Plains ”“ and for residents and municipal officials to be more open-minded on development-related issues.

John C. Cappello, partner at Jacobowitz and Gubits L.L.P. in Walden, said that comprehensive planning needs to be used as a means of giving developers specific guidelines rather than as a means of blocking particular projects.

“Most municipalities only think about a comprehensive plan when they”™re faced with a development they don”™t like,” Cappello said.

There is also no need for residents and municipal officials to shy away from new developments that might alter the density of a particular community, said Graham Trelstad, senior vice president and director of planning at AKRF Inc. in White Plains.

“By looking at design, you can overcome some of those fears about density,” he said, pointing to one White Plains community in which the housing density ranges from one unit per acre to 100 units per acre.