Neighbors may go to court over Yonkers planners approval of UPS plan

Residents fom the Grassy Sprain neighborhood of Yonkers who have been opposing plans for changes at the UPS distribution site at 555 Tuckahoe Road may be going to court to try to reverse the city planning board’s Aug. 19 approvals, the Business Journal has learned.

A filing known as an Article 78 proceeding would be a way to challenge and review a government’s administrative action in court. A source indicated that an announcement about a court action might be made during the week of Aug. 24.

Attorney Joel Sachs of the White Plains-based law firm Keane & Beane previously had been retained to represent Winchester Village, a 250-family residential community adjacent to East Grassy Sprain Road and was coordinating the representation with the Sprain Lake Knolls Civic Association, Grassy Sprain Civic Association, Bryn Mawr Ridge Coop and Grassy Sprain Village Coop.

Sachs had submitted several letters to the planning board, including one on Aug. 13 charging that the board had not taken a “hard look” at environmental aspects of what UPS wanted to do. He charged that local representatives had been excluded from the site plan review process.

“The minutes of the Planning Board meetings do not reflect our comments,” Sachs wrote. “If a Court reviews the minutes and record of the Planning Board proceedings it would not know that there is massive opposition to the present UPS proposal. Thus far, our clients have been denied substantive and procedural due process.”

The planning board in a series of 5-2 votes approved a resolution stating that the project had no significant environmental impacts, a waiver to allow two fuel storage tanks to be placed above ground rather than underground and a site plan to allow certain physical changes and additions.

The distribution center consists of a 22.6-acre property divided into three sections, with the first and third sections totaling 15.6 acres and improved with the two-story 303,887-square-feet UPS distribution center building along with related surface parking and infrastructure. The other section consists of a 150-room hotel operated by Hampton Inn & Suites and was not involved in the planning board action.

A building permit was issued by Yonkers on June 28, 2018, to allow construction of a 141-space employee parking lot at the northern portion of the site at the rear of the existing building. Work has been underway on that and the newly approved amended site plan allows for a parking structure to be added, bringing the total to 270 spaces. The new plan allows for up to 225 package delivery trucks to be accommodated on the site. The waiver that was approved allows two 12,000-gallon fuel storage tanks to be placed above ground, one for gasoline and the other for diesel.

The plan also involves adding new doors and windows to the building, adding a new human resources office, putting up signs, adding new turning lanes on Tuckahoe Road, adjusting traffic signals and relocating curb cuts.

The planning board put in a restriction designed to stop UPS from using the facility to refuel vehicles that it keeps at its other sites. Other restrictions enacted by the board included prohibiting the use of barbed wire or razor wire on top of the fences around the site, prohibiting the storage of UPS delivery vehicles outside of the buildings and bans on  parking its package delivery vehicles and employee cars on city streets around the site.

The planning board specified that if UPS wanted to introduce package delivery by drones flown from the site it would have to come in for additional city review.

The board’s meeting began with comments by Yonkers Councilman Anthony Merante, who had been an outspoken critic of the proposal, although saying that he and the community members expressing concerns were not against UPS but just opposed to what he described as a massive expansion.

“We have enough fuel tanks in the area. Why add the environmental possibility of a problem?” he asked. Merante expressed concern over the number of parking spaces being added and called for a limit to be placed on the number of daily delivery trucks and tractor-trailers using the complex. He said he could not figure out from the information submitted to the planning board just how many employees would be on the property at any given time

“I will tell you that this fight is not over. We will continue to make sure that UPS is a good neighbor,” Merante said. “We will be on this case. This case will not be done until the community says it’s done.”

Attorney Mark Weingarten of the law firm DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr LLP based in White Plains represented UPS and, before the board voted, emphasized that the distribution center is an approved facility. It had been home to POP Displays USA, Saks Fifth Avenue and Western Electric. It was bought in 1999 by Alfred Weissman Real Estate.

“It’s operating, been operating under various operators for decades. It’s a permitted use and there’s no cap on how many trucks can be there. There’s adequate parking now under your zoning code. The only things that we’re seeking to do in these requests to the planning board is to make the property more efficient,” Weingarten said.

“We have asked to increase parking and as you know when we made the original request the location was north of the hotel. Upon comments by one of the planning board members and by the community we have relocated at great expense those parking spaces far away from the neighbors and added below-grade parking,” Weingarten said. He explained that the parking spaces were needed during times of shift changes when some employees were arriving before those whose shifts have ended had left the site.

Weingarten noted that UPS had made many changes to its plan during the more than six months it had been undergoing review. “We’ve put in, working with you, many things that mitigated perceived impacts that we don’t think are going to occur,” he said.