24-story apartment building approved near New Rochelle train station

The New Rochelle Planning Board has approved construction of a 24-story building at 2 Sherwood Place, near the Metro-North Railroad station, which will have 301 residential units.

On unanimous votes, the board found that the project met environmental requirements and gave approval to the project”™s site plan. The application was submitted by the entity 255 Huguenot Owner LLC.

The project started to move off the drawing board last year when the city and the owner of 255 Huguenot St., the DSF Group of Waltham, Massachusetts, reached agreement allowing DSF Group to create a street cutting through the plot of land at 255 Huguenot where La Rochelle, a 25-story 412-unit luxury apartment building stands. Approval for a new street, Sherwood Place, resulted in creation of a discrete piece of land where a second tower could be built. DSF Group had bought La Rochelle in 2016 for $148.5 million.

The property is in New Rochelle”™s downtown overlay zone and the piece of land where the building is to be constructed encompasses 24,000 square feet, significantly more than the minimum required 10,000 square feet. The minimum street frontage is 100 feet and the project has 192 feet and is bounded by Huguenot, Bridge Street, Station Plaza South and Sherwood Place.

Attorney Peter Wise of the White Plains-based law firm DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr LLP told the planning board that the developer had received comments from city staff and committees including the architectural review committee.

“We haven”™t been able to address absolutely everything, but I want to assure the board … that all of the comments that have been raised are acceptable to us and will be addressed to the complete satisfaction of the city,” he said, while adding that the developer also accepts conditions the city may attach to the approvals.

Architect Abed Benzina of the firm SK+I of Bethesda, Maryland, told the board that the addition of Sherwood Place is “a great move because it certainly helps enhance the urban network and provides connectivity, a pedestrian-friendly connection, to the train station. Sherwood was really a catalyst for this project by creating and separating two urban blocks.”

The proposed building has its lobby and entrances at street level along with a storefront that Benzina said would be active 24 hours a day. The main entrance will be on Sherwood with the garage entrance on Station Plaza. The first few floors of the building will house a garage for more than 300 vehicles. As a result of comments from the city, the treatment of the exterior of the garage floors was revised to use perforated corrugated metal panels to create a textured look.

Benzina said that while previous plans showed that the building”™s exterior would slightly overhang Sherwood Place, that has now been eliminated. He said that accent panels on the exterior of the garage floors did project out a bit into the airspace over sidewalks.

“On Bridge Street we will have panels with graphic arts,” Benzina said. “They will be very interesting. There will be accent lighting, lots of lighting, to create a more inviting feel to that street.” He also said that the exterior of the top of the building will be lighted and added, “That”™s the beacon of light for the new skyline.