The developer of a $70 million project named Hudson Steppe plans to turn three buildings, including the historic Smith-Robinson House at 34 State St. in Ossining, into a mixed-use development.
Seated at the edge of the village”™s downtown, the proposed project would tear down two vacant commercial buildings on the roughly 6-acre lot, and in their place, construct three new apartment buildings that would accommodate 189 rental units. The buildings include studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom units and 308,000 buildable square feet. Additionally, the Smith-Robinson House, which was placed on Ossining”™s Register of Historic Properties in 2013, will be renovated into 7,500 square feet of commercial space.
Built in the 1840s, the Smith-Robinson House had a series of owners before serving as a wallpaper factory and later as the offices of Printex Corp. in the 1940s. Over time, two wings were added onto the original structure to provide additional factory and warehouse space.
Ossining Land LLC, Hudson Steppe”™s Manhattan-based developer, acquired the property in 2008, which was “not the best timing in terms of macroeconomic” factors, said Stefan Malter, a principal at Ossining Land. In addition to Malter, Barnet Liberman is the other principal. The two have developed properties at 305 Second Ave. and 421 Hudson St. in Manhattan.
Malter said the wings would be demolished and the project would restore the interior of the Smith-Robinson house that has been vandalized in recent years.
The renovation aims to maintain the integrity of the original building, Village Manager Abraham J. Zambrano said, while also giving it a much-needed update.
“The decorative stuff is somewhat intact,” Malter said of the Smith-Robinson House, though the interior will need a significant renovation.
The Hudson Steppe development comes as part of a larger effort to revitalize downtown Ossining. Malter said that “change is a little bit the tenor of the village,” and the development will help Ossining “really take advantage of some of the natural advantages that exist there,” like access to the train line, a growing downtown and its scenic views. Malter also said that this development and its plan to bring in nearly “200 units of quality residential housing is a real boon for the village.”
“I think that area right now, it needs that boost that hasn”™t been there for years,” Zambrano said.
With the absence of any street parking along State Street or James and Hunter streets that border the side and rear of the buildings, the project will include an underground garage.
In December 2014, the village”™s board of trustees approved a waterfront special permit for the Hudson Steppe project, set to expire in June 2016 unless a building permit had been issued. The waterfront special permit enabled the planning board to then approve a density bonus to the project in exchange for certain community benefits, including affordable housing, sustainable building designs, historic preservation and off-site infrastructure improvements.
“We spent 2015 getting that approval from the planning board, as well as a host of other approvals from the zoning board of appeals, the historic preservation commission and the board of architectural review,” Bruce Lozito, a lawyer representing Ossining Land, said at a board meeting on May 16. During that year-long process, the project also underwent a “significant redesign” of its architecture. Developers then spent the early part of 2016 addressing conditions of those approvals, “and I think we are 99.9 percent through with those,” Lozito said.
Ossining Land submitted a building permit application in January of this year. At the May board meeting, Ossining Land requested, and was granted, a six-month extension to its waterfront special permit to ensure the project was issued a building permit prior to its expiration. There had been some delay on the village”™s part in granting the project a building permit, with issues arising in its retention of a third-party reviewer. The site will also need to undergo a “fairly extensive” asbestos abatement project before the building permit can be issued.
The building permit and related demolition permit will enable Ossining Land to take “the first big step” in the project “to clean up the old and deteriorated structures that are on the site and restore that historic building to its former grandeur.”
“The development is definitely a process,” Malter said. “But I”™m very excited about the end result.”
