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  #1  
Old Posted May 14, 2007, 2:59 PM
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YONKERS, N.Y. - River Park Center

http://www.sfcyonkers.com/projects/gateway/index.htm

THE PROJECT

River Park Center
Yonkers, NY

Program:
Retail: 600,000 sq. feet
Office: 175,000 sq. feet
Hotel: 100,000 sq. feet
Residential: 800 units

Parking:
On-site: 2,450 spaces
Off-site: 2,300 spaces







River Park Center is a mixed-use retail-residential-office complex proposed for a full city block in the Getty Square section of downtown Yonkers. The site is bordered by New Main Street, Nepperhan Avenue, School Street and Palisade Avenue. The plan incorporates a minor league baseball park that will be created on the top level of the top deck of the project's parking garage within the development.

Total Square footage: approximately 1 million

Breakdown of components:
Retail: 580,000 sq. ft.;
Office: 175,000 sq. ft.;
Hotel: 100,000 sq. ft.
Residential units: 800

Ballpark 6,500 seats
Parking: Total - 4,750; 2,450 in on-site garage; 2,300 in garage on adjacent site

Development Cost: $850 million
Developer: Streuver, Fidelco, Cappelli LLC

______________________________________________

Riverwalk
http://www.sfcyonkers.com/projects/riverwalk/index.htm





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Old Posted May 14, 2007, 3:06 PM
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More on River Park and surrounding developments...
http://www.sfcyonkers.com/SFCYonkersApp2926DE.pdf
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Old Posted May 15, 2007, 8:07 AM
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That's a MINOR LEAGUE PARK???!!! Holy shyt that's nice. Great project for Yonkers!! As a native of Yonkers, I think this will be a great project for this city. Yonkers is forgotten with all the projects going on in New Rochelle and White Plains.
     
     
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Old Posted Jun 8, 2007, 11:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Locofresh55 View Post
That's a MINOR LEAGUE PARK???!!! Holy shyt that's nice.
Yeah, its almost major league from the outside.











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Old Posted Jun 27, 2007, 6:23 PM
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they need it. i was just there yesterday. the new waterfront section looks nice. almost a battery park city lite seperated from the rest of downtown by the tracks. but the other side of the tracks is stil rundown. the getty sq section with curving commercial streets has the ability to be amazing if quality businesses come back to it. this might be the shot in the arm thats needed. more so because the crux of downtown will lie between the train station and this development forcing people to walk down these blocks and reinvigorating street life
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Old Posted Jun 27, 2007, 11:16 PM
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they need it. i was just there yesterday. the new waterfront section looks nice. almost a battery park city lite seperated from the rest of downtown by the tracks. but the other side of the tracks is stil rundown. the getty sq section with curving commercial streets has the ability to be amazing if quality businesses come back to it. this might be the shot in the arm thats needed. more so because the crux of downtown will lie between the train station and this development forcing people to walk down these blocks and reinvigorating street life
As the largest city in Westchester, Yonkers is overdue for some of that development hitting White Plains and New Rochelle.
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Old Posted Jul 2, 2007, 2:21 AM
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I'm planning on taking a trip to new york and I"m gonna visit my cousin in Yonkers. It'll be nice to have some progress by next summer. Gotta visit Ground Zero too. Getty square is in dire straits....I'm sick of it being called GHETTO Square.
     
     
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Old Posted Jul 8, 2007, 4:36 AM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/ny...l2&oref=slogin

Building Up, Downtown



A $500 million construction project in White Plains featuring two 47-story condominium towers flanking a Ritz-Carlton hotel is being completed by the developer Louis R. Cappelli.



Restrictions on the height of the Ritz-Carlton project in White Plains were raised three times.


By CHARLES V. BAGLI
July 8, 2007

ERIK A. KAISER plunges through the vine-tangled woods that surround the long abandoned Glenwood power plant on the Hudson River in Yonkers as rapidly as he talks.

He has big plans to convert the plant, which closed in 1964, into a glamorous contemporary art museum topped by luxury lofts, condominiums and apartments, combining what he calls “extreme architecture and sustainability,” the likes of which have never been seen in this working-class city.

The first floor, like much of Yonkers’s once industrial waterfront, offers IMAX-like views of the Hudson River and the Palisades in New Jersey. Visible to the south on a clear morning were the George Washington Bridge, Manhattan and the Goldman Sachs tower, New Jersey’s tallest building.

Mr. Kaiser said he would preserve the handsome red-brick exterior of the power plant, while erecting a six-story glass box on top of the north wing and planting a jagged multicolored 25-story tower inside the south wing.

He vows that the $250 million project will be “a piece of art” that will attract people from around the world. It’s heady talk in a city left for dead after the Alexander Smith carpet mills and the Otis Elevator factories closed more than a quarter century ago. Even during the real estate booms in the 1980s and 1990s, the city found it hard to scare up interest from developers or companies interested in relocation.


But Mr. Kaiser, who is based in Hoboken, where another industrial waterfront was transformed over the past 25 years into a gold coast thicket of high-rise towers, lofts, town houses and marinas, is only one of many developers now prowling the Yonkers waterfront and its sagging downtown. Whatever the fate of his proposal, projects worth $5 billion are in the pipeline in Yonkers, including as many as 17 high-rise residential towers planned for the city’s 4.5-mile-long waterfront.

“At the end of the day, you’ll look up and down the Hudson and all you’ll see are high rises,” said Louis R. Cappelli, another developer with big plans for Yonkers.


Young people and executives who have fled high-priced Manhattan for Yonkers can find apartments for half the price, with an urban ambience, waterfront views and a 20-minute train ride to Midtown. In what some residents regard as a sign of civilization akin to the day Starbucks opened in Jersey City, a chic restaurant, X20 Xaviars on the Hudson, opened last month on the Yonkers city pier, opposite the newly renovated train station.

To be sure, Yonkers is still four years or so behind New Rochelle, White Plains, Stamford, Conn., and other newly resurgent older suburbs and cities on the comeback trail. Luxury apartments are stacking up in ever taller towers in a thriving downtown White Plains, which looked like a ghost town after 5 p.m. as recently as 2001. And Stamford, where the mayor has promoted high-density residential development near the train station, is poised to become Connecticut’s largest city and a powerful financial center.

In New Jersey, the redevelopment of the factories, warehouses and rail yards that lined the Hudson County waterfront between Jersey City and Weehawken began in the 1970s. High-rise office towers started going up along the waterfront in the 1980s, slowed during a recession in the early ’90s, and then took off again a couple of years later as Manhattan surged. Now, development is seeping from the waterfront into downtown Jersey City, where residential towers are springing up. Rahway, to the south, is also getting its share of attention from developers, with projects like a 16-story hotel and luxury condominium building opposite the train station.

But it is the remarkable turnaround in Yonkers, New York’s fourth-largest city, that raises the question: Is there hope for still-down-on-their-luck cities like Paterson and Camden in New Jersey, Hempstead on Long Island and Bridgeport, Conn.?

Immigration is fueling the growth of many outlying cities and towns in the New York metropolitan region. Baby boomers are beginning to retire, and there is an increasing demand for young educated workers. Middle-age empty nesters and young adults have shown a new willingness to live in urban areas.

“We’re at a point where there are a series of demographic and economic trends that revalue the special qualities of older cities,” said Jennifer S. Vey, a senior researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington and the author of “Restoring Prosperity,” a report that said economic and social changes could offer renewal opportunities in many older industrial cities. “There’s no doubt these trends are putting the wind at the back of a lot of cities, giving them opportunities to capitalize on their assets.”

James Hughes, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, agreed. “Certainly the prospects are a lot better today than 20 years ago,” he said.

Still, daunting problems remain. Paterson has failed to find replacements for the manufacturing industries that dominated decades ago, while crime and poverty remain persistent problems, Mr. Hughes said. Camden, Trenton and Bridgeport face similar problems. On Long Island, officials governing the latticework of towns and villages zealously guard the low-scale suburban zoning, prohibiting taller residential buildings near their train stations and highways that might enliven their downtown areas.

“We would love to have what is happening in Westchester happen in our downtowns in Nassau County,” said Thomas R. Suozzi, the county executive. “Maybe the buildings don’t have to be that tall, but we need that kind of density in select locations, near train stations for instance, in order to sustain the next generations.”

Stamford, White Plains, New Rochelle and Yonkers all benefit from their proximity to Manhattan, where the rent for prime space in Midtown has topped $100 per square foot and the average price of an apartment is more than $1.2 million.

“The cities are happening because Manhattan’s happening,” said Mr. Cappelli, who is building more than $2 billion worth of increasingly tall towers in New Rochelle, White Plains, Stamford and, soon, Yonkers. “People are being priced out of Manhattan.”

Some real estate executives say the condominium market in Westchester is softening and a downturn in the economy could bring the boom to an end. But there is no question that there is a demand for high-end housing in downtown areas.

Politicians, planners and developers draw a distinction between White Plains and Stamford, satellite cities that have become employment centers in their own right, and New Rochelle and Yonkers, many of whose residents work elsewhere. Indeed, on a workday morning, more people today are getting off the Metro-North trains in Stamford and White Plains to go to work than are getting on the trains bound for Manhattan.

In White Plains and Stamford, there was a burst of new construction in the late 1980s, but by the early ’90s many office buildings became plagued by high vacancy rates as companies reduced workers, closed offices or moved. The downtowns were commercial districts, largely devoid of life in the evenings. In the late ’90s, workers at UBS, the Swiss financial giant in Stamford that now has 4,000 employees, often complained that aside from a Morton’s steakhouse, there was little else in the surrounding downtown area.

In recent years, Stamford’s mayor, Dannell P. Malloy, has encouraged the development of housing downtown. The city also adopted regulations in 2003 requiring developers to set rents for at least 10 percent of their units at more modest levels, for firefighters, teachers and other members of the work force.

Mr. Cappelli and a business partner, Thomas L. Rich, are about to break ground on a $165 million 34-story residential tower called Trump Parc in downtown Stamford. Mr. Cappelli is also proposing a $500 million Ritz-Carlton hotel and condominium complex. In the city’s south end, between Interstate 95 and the Long Island Sound, plans are under way for a $3.5 billion residential and retail development in a neighborhood of working-class housing, vacant factories and motorcycle shops.

“Stamford came back to life when people started living downtown again,” said Anthony E. Malkin, president of W&M Properties. “Stamford added movie theaters, bars and restaurants and encouraged transit-oriented development. There was street life.”

The story is similar in White Plains. Mr. Cappelli said many rival developers thought he was “insane” in 2001 when he bought a vacant department store building in the heart of downtown and began planning City Center, a retail complex with two luxury apartment towers.

“They said, ‘Who would want to live in a high rise in Westchester?’ ” Mr. Cappelli recalled. “This was an absolute ghost town. Nobody wanted to be here. Now it’s become a 24-hour city.”

He said the 212 apartments were snapped up by a mix of empty nesters who lived in White Plains and executives who worked in Manhattan.

Now, Mr. Cappelli is rushing to complete a $500 million Ritz-Carlton project nearby. The hotel is flanked by two 47-story condominium towers with the blue-black glass and sharp angles of modern Manhattan skyscrapers. The city council was so eager to see downtown development that they raised the height limit for the towers three times. Mr. Cappelli said he is now getting $1,000 a square foot for apartments that would cost $2,500 in Manhattan.

But with downtown real estate booming, the city council no longer seems so eager to put the city’s fate in Mr. Cappelli’s hands. The council recently balked at granting him exclusive development rights until January to a five-acre, city-owned parcel near the train station where he has proposed the $850 million State Square project, a mix of office buildings, a garage and a firehouse. They wanted to see what other developers might offer.

There is great hope that Newark may also be on its way back. The city has been grappling with the devastating loss of industrial jobs since the end of World War II. Department stores fled long ago, and the city has been dogged by political scandal and crime.

But Newark still has all the features that made it a mighty city, including a seaport, trains to Manhattan and access to major highways. And many developers who have bought buildings downtown over the past 10 years hope the new mayor, Corey A. Booker, will succeed in reining in crime and promoting new projects.

STILL, Newark has spent a lot of money chasing what the Brookings Institution calls “fads” — like a minor-league baseball stadium and the soon to open $375 million Prudential Center, the arena where the New Jersey Devils hockey team will play — rather than capitalizing on the city’s unique assets.

Yonkers is also pursuing a minor league stadium in hopes of attracting visitors downtown.

“Even with hard evidence that such projects rarely pay the expected dividends,” the report said, “city leaders continue to pursue them.”

Although politicians and developers have talked about the redevelopment of the industrial waterfront in Yonkers for more than 40 years, it is only now starting to happen. There are plans to add 8,000 housing units over the next 10 years. Later this year, construction is expected to begin on two 25-story glass towers on the waterfront and on the $650 million Ridge Hill Village development between I-87 and the Sprain Brook Parkway.

Downtown, the first phase of River Park Center — a combination of shops, movie theaters, parking and a ballpark — is also moving closer to construction.


But the city was hobbled for decades by crime, poor schools, political scandals, the continuing loss of industrial jobs and a bitter, long-running desegregation battle.

Over the past 10 years, the city developed its own plans for development, used a package of tax breaks and state aid to entice developers and employers, and invested $133.5 million in projects including a new library, a refurbished pier, a municipal garage and a $13 million esplanade along the waterfront. The waterfront was rezoned for dense residential and retail development.

“It took us years to shed this image as a racist city where everything is very politicized,” said Mayor Philip A. Amicone of Yonkers. “We had to show that government was stable and solid. We’re taking active steps to improve the downtown area and passive steps to avoid gentrification. We’ve intentionally not rezoned some neighborhoods so there’s no incentive for developers.”

Yonkers is still very much a working-class city, with aging three- and four-story apartment buildings, small houses and shops lining the steep streets that lead down to the Hudson. An estimated 70 percent of the children in the public schools live at or below the poverty line. East of the Saw Mill Parkway, the city takes on a more middle-class, suburban character.

Downtown, Kawasaki is manufacturing subway cars in an old Otis Elevator factory, and the Domino sugar plant, one of the county’s last riverfront factories, is still operating. But there are more high-tech jobs at Aureon Laboratories, a biomedical research and testing firm that opened in an old factory. Point of Purchase, which designs and manufactures marketing displays, consolidated its operations and moved from Queens to Yonkers with 1,200 engineering and production jobs. Yonkers Raceway added about 1,500 jobs last year when it built a $290 million casino with 5,500 high-tech slot machines.

Arthur Collins II, a principal at Collins Enterprises, the only developer that has actually built on the Yonkers waterfront, said it was the city’s decision to develop a master plan and spend money on the new library, garage and esplanade that prompted his company to build Hudson Park, a 266-apartment complex rising to nine stories on the waterfront, next to the train station. It took years to start construction, but the project sold out, and Mr. Collins is now building the second phase, 294 apartments in a 12-story building just to the north.

But now that Yonkers is poised to take off, there is debate over what the waterfront development should look like. Some residents and Scenic Hudson, an environmental group long active in the Hudson Valley, have criticized the 25-story towers proposed in various projects.

They say it is not just a matter of protecting the environment or the views of the working-class neighborhoods behind the proposed high-rises. Despite the esplanade, they contend, a wall of towers would convey a sense of a private enclave.

“We think it’s great that the mayor is providing strong leadership for the redevelopment of the waterfront,” said Ned Sullivan, the president of Scenic Hudson, which wants to limit the height of buildings to no more than nine stories and has recommended more affordable housing, and more restaurants, shops and activities to attract people to the waterfront.

“We just want to make sure that as the Yonkers renaissance occurs, the entire community benefits,” Mr. Sullivan said. “We believe that the waterfront, in particular, should be a public resource. If only the wealthy people live there, then people from other economic sectors will feel it’s only for the rich.”

But Mr. Amicone, who is running for re-election, rejected the criticism. The new buildings will include affordable housing, he said. More important, he said, developers could not afford to build new projects if they were restricted to low-scale construction.

“You have to consider the cost of cleaning contaminated soil and building on piles,” Mr. Amicone said. “There has to be enough density to make a profit.”

Peter X. Kelly, the chef and restaurateur who opened X20 Xaviars on the Hudson, is just happy to see that Yonkers is on its way back. He grew up in a large family in the William A. Schlobohm housing project in Yonkers. The opening of the restaurant created something in Yonkers that many residents had not seen before: a downtown traffic jam.

“The potential is huge, when you think about places like Brooklyn, SoHo and TriBeCa before they were developed,” Mr. Kelly said. “This is not a destination now, but I believe we’re building a landmark restaurant that’ll have an enduring impact on the community.”



Development along the Yonkers waterfront includes the Hudson Park apartments, which reach up to 9 stories; a second phase of the project will rise 12 stories.




The UBS complex in Stamford, Conn., is home to 4,000 workers.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jul 9, 2007, 1:43 AM
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Maybe this stadium proposal in Yonkers may eventually house NYC's third major league team?

It is great to see Westchester County booming. I also beleive newark is poised for a comeback as well. The Prudential Center will really help revitalize the DT area.

Now if Nassau County would get its shit together and start building TOD around its rail stations...
     
     
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Old Posted Jul 13, 2007, 8:22 AM
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Maybe this stadium proposal in Yonkers may eventually house NYC's third major league team?
New York had 3 major league teams before, but the Yankees and Mets would never approve. Especially the Yankees...
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Old Posted Jul 13, 2007, 8:29 AM
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An older article with more renderings...
http://www.westchestercbj.com/archiv...1023060003.php

SFC, Scenic Hudson differ on Yonkers mega project

By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS
October 23, 2006


With a formal submission planned Tuesday for the first phase of its extreme makeover of Yonkers’ commercial areas, a trio of developers is also looking beyond City Hall to nip potential opposition to its plans in the proverbial bud.

SFC Yonkers L.L.C. would transform the Chicken Island section of downtown Yonkers -- now largely a municipal parking lot -- into a 1.1-million square-foot project. River Park Center would combine 950 apartments in two 500-foot-tall towers with 465,000 square feet of retail space, 90,000 square feet of restaurants, 475,000 square feet of offices and a 75,000-square-foot hotel.

River Park Center would also include that 6,500-seat minor-league ballpark long discussed for the downtown.
SFC is in contract with Regal Cinemas to lease the project’s 16-screen, 80,000-square-foot movie venue.

The restaurants will line the Saw Mill River, which will be uncovered after nearly a century using $34 million in state funds.

“This will be a publicly accessible area, something that people are going to talk about through the entire region, probably the United States,” said Joseph V. Apicella, senior vice president with Valhalla-based Cappelli Enterprises Inc.

Cappelli is one of the three developers that have formed SFC. The other two are Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse of Baltimore, and Fidelco Realty Group of Millburn, N.J.

Apicella addressed SFC’s projects during an Oct. 12 talk before the Commercial & Investment Division of the Westchester County Board of Realtors, held at the group’s White Plains offices.

In addition to River Park Center, SFC’s first phase would include:

+ Palisades Point - Vacant city-owned parcels H and I on the city’s Hudson River shore would be transformed into twin apartment buildings of 25 stories, with 436 units and 8,000 square feet of retail space.

+ Government Center - New office space next to the Cacace Justice Center to replace 87 Nepperhan Ave., the building behind City Hall. It will be razed, as will the adjacent Government Center garage and the current Fire Department HQ on New School Street, to be replaced with a new Yonkers Fire Department headquarters at Nepperhan Avenue and New Main Street.

SFC has begun dialogue with a Poughkeepsie-based environmental group critical of the developer’s inclination toward tall buildings on the Yonkers waterfront.

Scenic Hudson Inc. objects to SFC’s 25-story height for Palisades Point, and wants the developer to follow the downtown waterfront master plan hashed out in 1993, which allows buildings no taller than nine stories.

“We’re more interested in a development that is on a human scale, that celebrates the river, that creates a degree of consistency with the existing waterfront and that reflects the values the public strongly articulated when the master plan was adopted,” said Ned Sullivan, president of Scenic Hudson.

The twin buildings proposed by SFC would contain a combined 436 apartments and comprise much of the plan for Palisades Point, as SFC has renamed the waterfront site. The project includes 8,000 square feet of retail space.

SFC has trimmed from 30 the number of stories planned for the Palisade Point buildings. Though it’s not the scale-back sought by Scenic Hudson, Sullivan said he was hopeful that continued talks would yield a project it and SFC could embrace.

“I would say it’s a constructive dialogue at this time,” Sullivan said.

Apicella says SFC’s dialogue with Scenic Hudson reflects its commitment to cultivating extensive community input in Yonkers. SFC hopes to avoid the community opposition -- and two lawsuits -- generated by Forest City Ratner Cos. of Brooklyn after it stuck to its plans for a $600 million, 1.3-million-square-foot Ridge Hill Village mixed-use project, then persuaded a council majority to go along.

Another example Apicella cited of SFC’s inclusiveness was the developer adding to its Palisades Point plans a new road suggested by neighbors. The road is intended to better link the development to the downtown.

Apicella told the real estate group SFC was looking to build both community support and negate a Ridge Hill-style split by the City Council.

“The way you overcome that is to make the project bigger than any of their agendas. This project is going to create so much momentum,” Apicella said. “It’s going to be bigger than them, to the extent that their constituents are going to say, ‘Why are you delaying, forestalling? We don’t want to hear any of that. This needs to go forward. We need the recurring revenue. We have economic despair every year.’”

SFC, he added, has asked the council that its approval votes for River Park Center and other redevelopment projects be unanimous.

Unanimous or not, SFC will need community and council support for an important aspect of paying for its redevelopment. The developer wants the city to create a “tax increment financing” or TIF district allowing SFC to guarantee 60 percent to 70 percent of its tax revenues from the projects to the city for an as-yet-determined period so it can issue a $100 million bond footing the cost of storm and sanitary sewer improvements the developer’s projects will need.

“We need $100 million-plus dollars in infrastructure to build this project,” Apicella said.

Yonkers City Council President Chuck Schorr Lesnick said he does not object per se to TIF financing for SFC’s projects but wants the council to ensure the district raises funds only for the infrastructure improvements needed: “It shouldn’t be $177 million if it can be $170 million. We want to be responsible to the taxpayers.”

As for building heights, Lesnick said the tallest buildings SFC builds shouldn’t be at the waterfront but farther inland at River Park Center.


Artist's renderings of the $1.5 billion River Park Center, a mixed-use project planned as part of $3 billion in new development for Yonkers by a trio of developers under the partnership SFC Yonkers L.L.C.








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  #12  
Old Posted Jul 13, 2007, 8:35 AM
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http://www.westchestercountybusiness...709070006.php4

Yonkers waterfront study: 3,000 pages and one early critic

By BRYAN F. YURCAN
July 9, 2007

SFC Yonkers L.L.C. is submitting a revised draft environmental statement, and a lengthy one at that, to the Yonkers City Council.

“It’s about 3,000 pages,” said Joseph Apicella, executive vice president of Cappelli Enterprises Inc., owned by Valhalla developer Louis R. Cappelli.

SFC consists of Cappelli Enterprises as well as Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse of Baltimore and Fidelco Realty Group of Millburn, N.J.

SFC Yonkers, whose partners include Cappelli, is submitting the environmental statement (DEIS) on the proposed River Park Center, a mixed-use complex that includes 465,000 square feet of store and restaurant space.

River Park Center is a key project in SFC’s first phase of its planned $3 billion-plus extreme makeover of the downtown and Hudson River shoreline, which would also include residential towers and possibly a 6,500-seat minor-league ballpark.

River Park Center will be a more than 2 million-square-foot mixed-use complex with retail, residential and office space.


Scenic Hudson last week, in the group’s latest tangle with would-be developers of the Hudson riverfront, issued a report with its own “alternative vision” for the Yonkers waterfront.

The plan calls for small and midscale mixed-use buildings on the waterfront, and not what the group calls the “sky clogging” towers proposed by SFC.

Scenic Hudson has pushed for the residential buildings to be limited to eight stories tall, arguing that taller buildings would obscure views of the Hudson River. The current proposal is for 25-story towers.

“Our responsible alternative will reconnect people with their river while providing diverse economic benefits to the city,” said President Ned Sullivan in a statement.

As part of its alternative plan, Scenic Hudson said it would partner with the city in seeking funds for creation of parks all along the river.

“We have offered to work with the mayor and others to realize the vision of waterfront parks within a quarter-mile of every downtown neighborhood,” said Sullivan.

Apicella, however, said Scenic Hudson’s proposal is not economically feasible for the developers.

“It made no sense,” he said. “In the context of the real world, it’s not realistic economically. And they haven’t built on the riverfront, they don’t know or understand the challenges. It’s about having done it before.”

Apicella did say that SFC would continue to engage in talks with Scenic Hudson and consider the group’s input.

In fact, Apicella said SFC and Scenic Hudson have already found common ground on one aspect of the project: the “daylighting” of the Saw Mill River.

SFC plans to unearth the river and create a “riverwalk,” which would be lined with retail shops and restaurants. The Saw Mill River in many places is completely underground and invisible, the victim of blacktop.


“The daylighting of the Saw Mill River will not happen without us,” Apicella said.

SFC is also planning on submitting a tax increment financing (TIF) feasibility study.

The City Council still must decide if SFC will be allowed to be the first developer in the state to use TIF, a tool to use future gains in taxes to finance the current improvements that will create those gains.

Apicella said SFC has “made it clear that (TIF) is a necessary component of financing this project.”
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Old Posted Jul 20, 2007, 11:44 AM
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http://www.globest.com/news/952_952/.../162403-1.html

Waterfront Redevelopment Could Begin Next Spring



By John Jordan
July 19, 2007

YONKERS-As the city begins the review of the partnership’s recently submitted 3,000-page environmental review of the city’s waterfront, an official with the venture says that if all approvals are received in the time frame expected, construction could begin on the first phase of the waterfront redevelopment project by spring 2008.

On July 11 Struever Fidelco Cappelli LLC submitted a 3,000-page Draft Environmental Impact Statement covering several million square feet of possible development for a section of the Downtown waterfront district. Struever Fidelco Cappelli LLC consists of: the Fidelco Realty Group of Millburn, NJ, Cappelli Enterprises of Valhalla, NY and Struever Bros. Eccles & Rose of Baltimore.

The DEIS is part of the partnership’s proposed $1.5-billion first phase of a projected more than $3-billion cleanup and redevelopment of the Yonkers waterfront district.

Joseph Apicella, EVP of Cappelli Enterprises, terms the DEIS document, “One of the most comprehensive environmental reviews in the history of New York.”


The DEIS also includes a section on Tax Incremental Financing that would utilize projected future tax gains from the property to help finance property improvements. The developers are looking for the city to issue a $200-million bond that would include $112 million earmarked for road and sewer and traffic infrastructure work. A portion of the tax revenue generated by the project would go toward paying off the bonds. Apicella adds that the partnership would also put up security to back the bond financing.

He projects that the environmental review process will likely take at least four months to complete. The project will also require site plan and zoning approvals from the city as well as approval of the Tax Incremental Financing proposal. Apicella tells GlobeSt.com that he hopes that final approvals could be obtained in early 2008 so that construction could begin that spring.

The four main components of the phase one development include: River Park Center, Cacace Center, Palisades Point and the reopening of the Saw Mill River.

River Park Center, which is located in the area known as the Gateway District, includes development of two city blocks in the heart of downtown just east of City Hall. River Park Center will feature a mix of retail, office, residential and entertainment components including: 465,000 sf of retail space; 325,000 sf of office space in multiple buildings; 80,000 sf of restaurant space with restaurants opening onto a new riverwalk along the reopened Saw Mill River; a 15-screen, 80,000-sf movie theater; a 6,500-seat ballpark located on the roof of the River Park Center for a new team in the Atlantic League of Professional Baseball Clubs; 950 residential apartments in two buildings and parking facilities with approximately 4,340 spaces.

Other facets of phase one call for a new 150,000-sf office building; a new 75,000-sf 150-room hotel; a new 1,470-space parking structure; a new 50,000-sf, six-bay fire headquarters; two 25-story residential buildings with a total of 436 condominium residences featuring 9,000 sf of ground-level retail/restaurant or office space and two parking facilities with 725 spaces and the re-opening of the Saw Mill River that now runs underneath parts of downtown or is inaccessible to the public near Getty Square and in Larkin Plaza.
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Old Posted Jul 21, 2007, 10:53 AM
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Another proposal for the Yonkers riverfront (worldarchitecturenews.com)

British architect Will Alsop offered local residents a first glimpse of the
Glenwood Power Plant regeneration project. Alsop's much anticipated first
project in the U.S. is set to revitalize a currently undervalued area of
waterfront in Yonkers, turning the abandoned Glenwood Power Station into a
vibrant mixed-use development. At the meeting Alsop presented renderings
and design concepts based on discussions during a community workshop held
in December 2006. Residents were invited to view and discuss designs that
include plans for a residential tower, art museum, public walkway along the
Hudson River and destination restaurant. By engaging with end users and
creating designs that embody their goals, Alsop believes the Glenwood Power
Station project will not only make a statement about what is important to
local residents but also represent the innovation and inspiration they bring to
the process.





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Old Posted Jul 23, 2007, 4:58 PM
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That's an awesome project. Although, it looks like something you would see further south with all of the outdoor atractions.

I've never been up there, looks like a neat area.
     
     
  #16  
Old Posted Jul 26, 2007, 11:48 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BigBird9 View Post
That's an awesome project. Although, it looks like something you would see further south with all of the outdoor atractions.

I've never been up there, looks like a neat area.
I'm not sold on it yet. It looks like a big mess to me, but maybe with some revisions...
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Old Posted Mar 12, 2008, 11:37 AM
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/re...te&oref=slogin

It Had the Setting; Now It Has the Housing



TAXI, ANYONE? A metal canopy marks the embarkation point for the New York Water Taxi, which takes commuters from new rentals and condominiums in Yonkers to the Wall Street area.


By ELSA BRENNER
March 9, 2008


LIKE a caterpillar undergoing a metamorphosis, the down-and-out industrial waterfront of Yonkers is shedding its old skin.

These days, sleek midrise residences are going up where factories once spewed fumes. Grand old buildings have been put to new use, including a three-story trolley barn, built in 1900 in the Renaissance Revival style, which now contains loft units and a fitness studio that offers belly-dancing classes.

The Metro-North station has been restored to its 1911 Beaux Arts self; its reputation as a locus for prostitution and drug dealing is now a memory.

Leading out to the water, a Victorian-era pier — less than a decade ago a site where homeless people gathered — is a New York Water Taxi embarkation point for Wall Street. It is also home to a glass-enclosed 260-seat restaurant overlooking the Palisades and other Hudson River marvels.


There is more on the drawing board for this area, which encompasses the waterfront radiating northward from Getty Square, the core of this 18-square-mile city. But already it is attracting new kinds of residents, some of them young professionals whom the area’s investors call “urban pioneers.” As a catalyst for change in this city of nearly 200,000 (the fourth-largest in the state), the neighborhood has fed expectations among officials like Mayor Philip A. Amicone, who knows all too well its history of repeated revitalization attempts.

“I’ve lived in this city since I was 2 years old,” said the mayor, 59, “and they’ve been talking about redeveloping the downtown for as long as I can remember. Now, for the first time, that possibility seems real, especially since more than $1 billion has been invested in recent years along the waterfront.”

The investment is luring people like Hope Maddox, 24, who cited not only the rent (especially affordable compared with New York City’s), but also the 30-minute commute to Grand Central Terminal and an urban setting reminiscent of Brooklyn and Hoboken. Internet-savvy like many of her new neighbors, Ms. Maddox discovered Getty Square through Craigslist.org and other Web sites.

A new job as an assistant fashion designer on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan was what brought Ms. Maddox to the New York area from Tuscaloosa, Ala. “It’s my dream apartment,” she said of her studio with its synthetic grass patio, which she moved into last month at 66Main, which has “green” geothermal heating and cooling. Her rent is $1,400 a month. “I couldn’t have found something I could afford in the city itself,” she said. “I would have had to share.” Yet, the glitz and glamour of a new downtown notwithstanding, some worry that in the rebuilding process, too much of the old city’s architecture and history will be swept away.

Nortrud Wolf Spero, the owner of a local real estate company, is of two minds about the revival. Prices are rising as a result of the development, especially in single-family home areas near Getty Square, where she sells property. But as a trustee of the Yonkers Historical Society and a member of the City Council’s Green Policy Task Force, she said, she worries “that in the business of renewal, the past could get lost.”

Another worry is the displacement of less affluent residents. “Upscale is nice,” she said, “but an area should retain its diversity.”

WHAT YOU’LL FIND

Throughout the area, the refurbished and the decaying exist side by side.

There is the strip of restaurants near the acclaimed new X2O Xaviars on the Hudson; along Main Street, there are others, in addition to a nail salon and a boutique, that have opened in response to the construction.

Yet along Buena Vista Avenue, less than a block from Main Street, buildings like the ornate Romanesque-and-Gothic Teutonia Hall, once a fraternal gathering site for immigrants, stand empty. Crime remains a problem, acknowledged Lt. Diane Hessler, a spokeswoman for the Police Department, although it has eased somewhat. According to statistics posted on the department’s Web site, 314 crimes against individuals (like assault, for example) were committed during 2006 in the Fourth Precinct, of which the waterfront district is a part. In 1997, that number was 426.

But such problems are not deterring developers like Nicholas Sprayregen, who has invested $30 million in 18 contiguous parcels for a future mixed-use development. He plans to move his offices to Yonkers from Manhattan.

As for any red tape hindering development, Mr. Sprayregen doesn’t let it cramp his style. “I’m ready to be as patient as I need to be,” he said.

Others are exhibiting less patience. Struever Fidelco Cappelli, which has an environmental impact statement for a $3.1 billion mixed-use proposal before the City Council, has threatened to withdraw the proposal because of delays.




Extensive renovation and new construction line the Yonkers waterfront, along with the pier for the New York Water Taxi, where commuters embark for the trip to the Wall Street area.




One Larkin Center, also known as The Riverfront Library, also has a state-of-the-art auditorium.




From this angle, the stores on Main Street in Yonkers are set off by the Palisades, far left.




Old pier pilings meet the reflecting sun in this south-facing view of the Hudson, with the George Washington Bridge far distant.
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  #18  
Old Posted Mar 12, 2008, 9:40 PM
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WOW I had no clue that Yonkers was encountering so much positive development. God, the NY metro area is headed for greatness, following right in its anchor city's footsteps.
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Old Posted Mar 12, 2008, 10:23 PM
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Them home runs better not break any windows.
     
     
  #20  
Old Posted Mar 13, 2008, 6:32 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StatenIslander237 View Post
WOW I had no clue that Yonkers was encountering so much positive development. God, the NY metro area is headed for greatness, following right in its anchor city's footsteps.
It's certainly great news for Yonkers, and its about time, considering the wave of development White Plains and New Rochelle have been riding.

But that power plant development doesn't work visually.
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