Chilly forecast for White Plains rail station plans

With the proposed redevelopment of valuable city land around the Metro-North Railroad station in downtown White Plains, something changed last week while some things remained the same.

In a sudden change of process, Mayor Joseph M. Delfino shelved the sales pitches of four development teams seeking to be named exclusive developer for the tentative project. The mayor acted after two of the city”™s well-financed suitors met with chilly, stone-faced silence from the White Plains Common Council and the other two suitors said they would not show up later this month for a similar reception.

Left unchanged was the power struggle at City Hall between the mayor and executive staff and Common Council members who decry the mayor”™s “unilateral” approach to city business. That unyielding political standoff has commercial developers waiting for the dust to settle on the future of the downtown gateway.

The four developers, including two companies prominent in the White Plains real estate market, responded to the city”™s request for qualifications to buy and redevelop the approximately five-acre property adjoining the rail station. Conspicuously missing from the group of interested applicants was developer Louis R. Cappelli and his Cappelli Enterprises Inc. in Valhalla.

Cappelli last spring sparked community debate and strong opposition when, backed by Delfino, he announced his company”™s $1 billion Station Square project, a mixed-use development that included a new Metro-North station and 1.5 million square feet of office space in three towers, and sought exclusive development planning rights from the city. His company had spent more than a half-million dollars in planning and design when, facing a council majority unwilling to grant him exclusivity and rush through approval without hearing competing proposals and purchase offers, Cappelli withdrew his request and Station Square proposal.

In August, city officials sent a request for qualifications (RFQ) to developers to put back on track a project and development vision to which Cappelli had given steam. The chosen developer and buyer would be required to post a $3 million letter of credit to fund the city”™s planning and technical studies. The proposed redevelopment would be subject to community review.
Left out of the Republican mayor”™s loop, four Democratic council members called the RFQ “the rejected exclusivity agreement in new clothing.” They pledged to use “all measures at our disposal to bring this ill-considered proposal to a quick end.”

 

That end came three months later. The council last week heard and viewed, with perfunctory courtesy and largely without comment, presentations from Reckson, the division of SL Green Realty Corp. headquartered in downtown White Plains, and a development team of Archstone-Smith and Tishman Speyer, affiliated international real estate firms with an office in Manhattan. A partnership sponsored by Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in May paid a reported $22.2 billion to acquire Archstone-Smith, a real estate investment trust headquartered in Englewood, Colo., and take it private in the merger.

The city”™s remaining development suitors ”“ RexCorp Realty L.L.C., owner of the Platinum Mile office-park portfolio in suburban White Plains and other Westchester properties, and a partnership of Starwood Capital Group, of Greenwich, Conn., and Albanese Organization Inc., a private real estate firm in Garden City ”“ were to make their pitches to the council on Dec. 20. But a spokesman for the mayor said the companies bowed out early last week, prompting Delfino to halt the process and start over on the project.

The mayor”™s chief aide, Paul S. Wood, said Delfino might seek separate proposals to develop the city parcels at the train station, which include a municipal parking lot, train station lot and parking garage and a fire station and public works facility. Wood said the mayor also plans to present a study to the Common Council next month that examines other cities”™ approaches to mixed-use redevelopment of train stations.

Council Democrats said the mayor needs to bridge the gap between the city”™s executive and legislative branches and include council members in the planning process if any redevelopment is to move forward and the city and its residents are to benefit from what Councilman Thomas M. Roach called “probably one of the most valuable parcels of property there is in the metropolitan area.”

Regarding the future of that downtown gateway area, “This is going to be a decision of the council, not a decision of Paul Wood,” Roach said.

“This is kind of like one of the last chapters of White Plains in that struggle between urban and suburban,” said Councilman Dennis J. Power. Residents “are very much afraid that some of these last moves” in development “will turn it into a mini-Manhattan.” Power said he believes that with “comprehensive thinking,” the city can achieve “a balance” between suburban living and a thriving downtown.

For developers, “White Plains is a prize,” he said. “White Plains has gone through a lot of transition and we”™re in a position to be bargaining” with those profit-minded suitors.

For now, those interested developers seem willing to await the city”™s next move rather than forsake the prize.