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MACFARLANE: YONKERS NEWS ARTICLE................

“We have the opportunity to make this the best river city in the U.S.,” Robert MacFarlane, CEO of Homes for America Holdings Inc., said last week from his corporate headquarters at Station Plaza in downtown Yonkers. “Why can we not be the best river city in the U.S.?”


The developer’s 12-year-old company is spending about $30 million and 2 ½ years to clean up a contaminated 17-acre former cable-manufacturing site on the Hudson River. When completed in July, that stretch of city waterfront off Point Street will be open to the public for the first time in 75 years, he said. MacFarlane hopes to follow that with an early 2009 construction start on the first phase of Point Street Landing, Homes for America’s estimated $950 million project that will contribute 1,000 residential units, about 100,000 square feet of office and retail space and public parks and promenades. The project is part of the city administration’s proposed master plan to redevelop the Alexander Street industrial corridor as a high-density waterfront neighborhood that consultants estimated would add more than $30 million annually in city tax revenues.


But MacFarlane’s practical vision for development to make Yonkers that “best river city” is not wholly shared by other Yonkers residents and business owners. Those clashing views – and oft-voiced fears that upland residents’ cherished views of the river and Palisades would be blocked by the 12- to 30-story waterfront towers that MacFarlane and other developers envision and what one resident wag called “the Great Wall of Yonkers” – were evident again at a Feb. 14 public hearing on the Alexander Street plan.


Although most of the evening’s 35 speakers agreed the blighted, underused and largely inaccessible waterfront area needed development in some form, many also urged the city’s Community Development Agency, headed by Mayor Philip Amicone, to revisit and revise the plan before submitting it to the City Council for approval. They shared concerns especially about building heights, population density – the plan would bring nearly 3,800 residents to the area – and the city’s infrastructure’s capacity to accommodate that influx. Some also worried the master plan as proposed was largely the work of private developers more concerned with profit than the public good.


Supporters of the plan argued it would bring needed consumer traffic to downtown businesses and provide a new tax base to fund the city’s struggling public schools.


“Customers are the lifeblood of business,” said Yonkers businessman Dwight McLeod. “We simply have to get more people into our downtown area if business there is to prosper and grow.” He cited the recent example of Starbucks, which he said had considered opening a store in downtown Yonkers but decided business volume and space was not adequate there.


“We don’t need a wall of buildings to make this place look like Fort Lee (N.J.),” said Yonkers resident Michael Sabatino, urging “compromise and creativity” on the part of city officials.


“We who lived in Yonkers are owed those beautiful panoramic views,” said Terry Nagai. “Don’t take that away from us and give it to those who can afford it. Those towers must be junked.”


While there is no question that Yonkers needs development along Alexander Street, “The question is one of size,” said Dave Wuchinick, a consulting engineer.


He said details of the master plan had come from private interests. “They’re out there to make a buck,” he said. “I think the city should revisit this issue. The question is, whose interest is it really going to serve? Is it really going to be a partnership of public interest and private interest? Or is it going to be private interest, and the public gets what falls off the table?”


“It’s private property down there,” Peter G. Klein, project manager for Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C. (SFC), the city’s master developer for downtown and a prospective developer on Alexander Street, reminded the crowd. “As a private property owner, we hope this plan balances the need for a reasonable return” on investment with public access to the waterfront. “Many sites on the waterfront have stayed barren because the demands on the property owners are just too great.”


“I want to drink the Kool-Aid, Mr. Mayor,” said Charles Hensley, a self-described between-jobs actor, having shared his concerns about density and obstructed river views. “It’s just not sweet enough yet.”


Mayor Amicone later said City Hall officials will meet with the master plan consultant, AKRF, after a 60-day public comment period ends today. “I do see some changes being made,” he said.


“I don’t know that we necessarily need 18 buildings” as proposed. “Maybe we’re better off with 10 buildings. Maybe we’re better off with more buildings, lower heights at some locations.”


Amicone, though, said residential density is essential to attracting retailers such as Borders and Barnes & Noble to Yonkers, to justify developers’ spending to build infrastructure there such as sewer and water lines and parks and to create a new city tax base.


“We need density,” he said. “I don’t know if we necessarily need 3,700 (housing units), but we can’t get away with 1,000.”


Klein, the SFC project manager, said the plan needs to be restructured to distribute developers’ costs for items such as parks and utilities along the entire development area and to provide public financing for the proposed causeway linking JFK Marina Park to Alexander Street.


Klein also pointed to the case of Excelsior Packaging Group Inc., a successful business on Alexander Street for 25 years that would be among several businesses relocated to make way for redevelopment. The master plan calls for about 100 residential units on Excelsior’s 4.8-acre site, the value of which would be less than the property’s existing value for manufacturing, Klein said.


“If the city is serious about making the entire Alexander Street area residential, it needs to ensure current industrial tenants are compensated for a move,” he said.


William S. Null, attorney for Excelsior Packaging, at the public hearing also pointed out the diminished value of the company’s property under the master plan, which also proposes a public park on the site. “Public access doesn’t mean that private property owners just walk away from what they’ve got,” he said. He said the plan needs to be modified.


“The changes needed are tweaks, but will make it buildable,” Klein said. “We think Alexander Street is a 7- to 10-year timeline and represents the future of Yonkers.”


At his Homes for America office, MacFarlane said his company for 2 1/2 years has worked with Scenic Hudson, the regional environmental advocacy group, to develop a “shared vision” for the Point Street Landing project As part of that, the project architect currently is looking to reduce construction from six buildings to five buildings, he said, and Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit group hired by the developer, is preparing a plan for more public spaces there.


“You can adjust and you can adjust,” MacFarlane said of the city’s master plan. “But in Yonkers you are going to have a few people that I refer to as the ‘serial selfish.’ On a serial basis they fight and attempt to obstruct everything.”


MacFarlane said his company must build 1,000 housing units to make the project profitable. As for the opposition to building heights, he said: “Can the buildings go to five (in number) and be eight stories? No, it would be impossible.”


“There’s always a balance. There’s always a give and take,” he said. “We have been giving for 2 1/2 years and we will go another round.”

http://www.westchestercountybusiness.com/archive/022508/cover/cover02250803.php4