Harbor Square opens in Ossining after 18 years in the works

Developer Martin Ginsburg and Ginsburg Development Cos. on June 23 unveiled a $65 million mixed-use luxury rental apartment complex on the Ossining waterfront, a development nearly two decades in the making.

Harbor Square, the Valhalla company”™s 188-unit building, features one- and two-bedroom apartments along with a top-floor club lounge, fitness center, spa, rooftop pool and sundeck.

Eight residents already have moved in, said Ginsburg, and an additional 42 units are leased. The developer said he aims to have the complex fully occupied within 12 months.

Also under construction on the property”™s 4½-acre lot is a 7,000-square-foot restaurant that will offer American cuisine and serve up to 100 guests. Ginsburg at the ribbon-cutting ceremony said a tenant is set to open the dining space this fall, but declined to disclose the restaurant operator.

“This has been a very long journey to get us to this point,” the developer said.

The opening comes about 18 years after Westchester developer Louis Cappelli and Cappelli Enterprises Inc. placed a winning bid for the waterfront property near the Ossining Metro-North Railroad station, with plans to build a luxury condominium development. Ginsburg joined the venture in 2006 but the project came to a standstill in the credit market crisis of 2007 and 2008 and Great Recession.

“The market tanked so we went back to square one,” Ginsburg said, adding that about $5 million went into an environmental cleanup of the former industrial property.

Cappelli later withdrew from the project, which Ginsburg revived in 2012 as a rental development.

Harbor Square is “not a low-rent” complex, Ginsburg said at the ceremony, with monthly rates ranging from $2,395 for a 683-square-foot one-bedroom unit to $6,000 for a penthouse apartment. “You could say maybe we overreached the market a little by doing that, but the market will appreciate it because it is unique,” he said.

Ginsburg hopes to attract both millennials and empty nesters with the transit-oriented development directly across from the train station.

Elected officials at the ribbon-cutting ceremony joined Ginsburg in dedicating a $1 million public park, built by Harbor Square”™s developer on surrounding waterfront property, in honor of Henry Gourdine, a fisherman who spent most of his 94 years working the Hudson. Half of the funding for the park, which includes a playground, waterfront promenade and dock that serves the Haverstraw-to-Ossining commuter ferry, came from a state grant to the village.

Officials attending the ceremony included Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino, County Legislator Catherine Borgia, state Assemblywoman Sandy Galef and Ossining Mayor Victoria Gearity.

“It”™s an exciting turn for our community to be using our riverfront in a new way,” Gearity said.