A developer is reviving decade-old plans to construct four industrial buildings on an 18-acre site in Yorktown.
Garrison-based ZAT Construction Corp. plans to build more than 100,000 square feet of retail, warehouse and office space on the undeveloped property on Route 6 next to Whispering Pine Landscape Supply in Yorktown Heights.
Situated on the north side of Route 6 and bordering the municipality boundary with Somers, the property would be divided into three subdivisions under the plan.
The plans call for a 12,500-square-foot building and 49 parking spaces to be constructed on the westernmost 2.6-acre lot. A second, 5-acre lot would have a two-floor, 28,000-square-foot building with 84 parking spaces.
Two buildings, 39,000-square-feet and 21,000-square-feet respectively, would be developed on the largest 10.5-acre lot that sits along the town’s border.
Each building would house a combination of warehouse, storage, office and retail space.
David J. Sessions, a representative of ZAT Construction and vice president of Armonk-based Kellard Sessions Consulting PC, noted that the retail uses on the site would not be “a hard retail use.”
“The typical use would be a kitchen cabinet manufacturer, if you will, where they would manufacture the cabinets in the warehouse, they would store materials in the warehouse,” he said, “but you”™d also have some sort of a showroom in the front, and the showroom would be kind of the retail.”
Sessions added that a rezoning for the property would not be necessary, since the proposed use would fit within the site”™s zoning for light industrial park use.
Construction would happen in a series of phases depending on the market, Sessions said, which would allow ZAT Construction to sell each lot individually.
“We”™ve designed the development so that each can stand on its own; one phase is not dependent upon another to be constructed,” he said.
The property was purchased by ZAT Construction, a company owned by CEO Victor Tonndorf, for $350,000 in 2001, according to Westchester County land records. Sessions said the project was first brought to the town in the early-2000s and again in 2011.
“Then it kind of went on hiatus,” he said. “We”™re now back to try and take it across the finish line.”
Sessions said that though the project had received the go-ahead from the conservation board when it was brought to the town previously, ZAT Construction never secured final approvals from the Yorktown Planning Board.
“We were basically buttoning up some loose ends with the planning board at the time,” Sessions said.
Neither the site plan nor the proposed subdivisions have changed since the development proposal was brought to the town 14 years ago, Sessions said.
“We”™re really here to reintroduce it,” he said. “We”™re here to finish up.”
The project will also entail mitigation measures involving certain wetlands on the site. Sessions said a representative from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the town”™s former wetland consultant each confirmed the wetland boundary.
The board had stated at its March meeting that it would not take final action on the proposed project prior to receiving wetlands approval from the state.
