The entire Echo Bay controversy; from the simple, mundane and purely ministerial upkeep of the New Rochelle Department of Public Works facility, to the future of the Naval Armory, the fate of the Beechwood Avenue site and issues of environmental remediation obligations across the city, is permeated with dubious assumptions. The “URGENT” stamp that our city council has affixed to this matrix is misplaced. It is unfounded and illegitimate. It is manufactured.
That better use of our open spaces, public and private, can be made cannot be doubted. No one could argue that the permanent placement of a public works garage and yard on the Sound Shore is the “highest and best” use of the land. Ask your real estate broker.
Undoubtedly also, there are better ways to run the DPW operation, from a manpower perspective and also in terms of technology utilization. If this is not apparent to you, then perhaps you can explain the “hows” and “whys” of a 2012 City of New Rochelle budget that increases a questionable garbage tax three-fold in a period of shifting refuse and recycling behavior by the public (define “shifting;” well, how about Westchester County records showing total solid waste collections for New Rochelle 2009 DECLINED compared to the prior three years?).
Now here is a matter of government services and management (real stuff for public administration and policy wonks) that is deserving of public hearings and council advocacy and debate; but don’t hold your breath waiting for it to happen. Perhaps our elected officials are worried that such proceedings would conclude with calls by the public for government spending to be reduced!
If the administration were sensible and serious about issues of land use and overall development in New Rochelle, it might have budgeted a mere $300 thousand (only one-half of the public money just hurriedly diverted to designing and architecting the new Beechwood Avenue public works operation that has been foisted upon us by the hair-trigger spenders on city council) for a spanking new, independently conceived Master Plan for the City of New Rochelle to replace the present basic document (first conceived circa 1936, or so). That would make a great deal of sense. It would answer most of our questions about proper traffic planning, urban renewal and yes, the suitability of present public works operations, and given us a complete roadmap of present needs and future directions.
Like the separation of the library into a distinct taxing entity years back, the expedited transfer of DPW to Beechwood Avenue today is not required by any standard of logic, business sense or engineering. It is being moved because it serves the private political interests of those responsible, and also because it pleases their favorite developer.
I did not tour the DPW site last week, but from my own visits over the years, I can say that Robert McCaffery’s recent first-hand report to City Council was right on the mark. The place suffers from management neglect, not overuse or unsuitability for its designated purpose.
This week’s Sound Report only advances the council policy of obfuscation and tendentious accounting. “A dilapidated garage door shows how the facility is aging” says a caption accompanying the seemingly staged photo. But everything and everyone is “aging.” This does not justify general replacement of everything or everybody. Likewise, there is no proof of the facility’s comprehensive inadequacy as the council relocation enthusiasts would have you believe; there is only evidence of inadequate inspection and a general lack of rudimentary caulking, painting and lubrication. The only “emergency” here is a general outbreak of poor management of cherished public resources; not more engineering studies, architectural renderings or new quarters.
If the sorry state of the DPW yard were an isolated instance, the urgent redress of such an extraordinary circumstance might be justified. But have you looked at the overall state of our streets, curbs, overpasses, underpasses, marinas, sidewalks, parks and playgrounds recently? Have you tried the front doors to City Hall?
If the DPW yard’s “deterioration by neglect” warrants an urgent geographical relocation, then what is the proper remedy for the general degradation of the city’s overall physical plant? A declaration of martial law? How about a general public evacuation?
The incumbent administration has a credibility problem. The City of New Rochelle’s track record of public works and facilities is a public embarrassment.
Ask your real estate broker.
City yard
Keep the city yard where it is and maintain It properly. Years of neglect has done it. This municipality should get going with other Issues.
Have you seen the DPW yard lately?
Steve you wrote:
“No one could argue that the permanent placement of a public works garage and yard on the Sound Shore is the “highest and best” use of the land.”
You say that you did not go on the recent tour but reference your “own visits over the years”.
I want to be clear on this point as it is important to your initial claim about the use of the land. What do you mean by a “visit”? The City Yard is not open to the public and the only tour offered in recent memory was the one two weeks ago. So when exactly did you visit the City Yard, how many visits, what was the the nature of your visit.
I ask because I have always taken it as axiomatic that as the DPW yard sits on waterfront property obviously that property should be developed with nice condos and retail providing views and access to the waterfront.
Then I took a good long look on the aforementioned DPW tour after having read Mike Scully’s recent piece on the reality of that location.
I no longer believe it is axiomatic that the DPW Yard is not the best use.
I am very familiar with the waterfront in that area as my wife’s family has lived in Sutton Manor for over 50 years. Sutton Manor is part of that same waterfront – there is a boathouse, swimming platform/dock, boat slips and boat moorings owned by the Sutton Manor Neighborhood Association. I have kayaked many times in the two inlets on either side of the DPW Yard.
Mike’s point about mudflats, recently echoed by Council Member Albert Tarantino at a meeting of the South End Civic Association, is correct. Twice a day for a period of many hours, the water level is low due to tidal changes. In the hours before and after low tides, the area immediately in front of the DPW Yard is a large mudflat. While I have become accustomed to it, the fact is that the residents of Sutton Manor generally do not use the boathouse in the hours around a low tide due to the smell and the lack of navigable water in that area.
Now there is something very new going on down there that I do not think most people have fully understood. It struck me yesterday, leaving church, driving on Lispenard towards East Main Street.
We are just now seeing the full extent of the work being done on the sewage treatment plant. The emerging structure is huge. It is significantly taller than it has been for many years. The new building, which sits directly on the waterfront, further out than the DPW Yard, is blocking ALL view of the water looking out and to the left. Those suckers who bought condos in Huegenot Hills on the other side of Main Street, the ones with the Con Ed wires hanging inches from their windows, the ones with no roof drainage, now have their water view almost completely obstructed by the sewage treatment plant.
Between the sewage treatment plant and the DPW yard is a channel which is the final destination for most of the city’s storm water run off that dumps into the Sound (if you were to go back up into the tunnel that runs under Main Street beneath the Honda Used Car location, you would pop at up by near the Huegenot Children’s library and, continuing on, follow the stream that runs along North Avenue in front of the high school. Surely you have seen how that stream leaps it banks during heavy rains.
Off to the right you have the PCB-laden property on the old Con Ed property.
You want to ask your real estate broker a question?
How about asking your broker about buying a house on toxic property, surrounded by the effluence of the City’s storm water run off, mudflats, a sewage treatment facility that now towers over the DPW property and a toxic waste site.
I would argue that the best laid plans of mice and noam have been thwarted by the County which is building what looks like a ten story monument to bodily fluids directly in front of the DPW parcel.
Having taken the tour, inspected the armory, the tuck tape property and knowing the waterways around the DPW yard, I have changed my view completely and now have come to the view that having the city yard remain in place IS the best use of the property.
I simply do not believe (a) that putting the current yard in serviceable condition will cost as much as noam claims (b) that building a new yard on Beechwood will cost as little as noam claims.
Council Member Trangucci told the South End Civic that in his meetings with Chuck Strome and Michael Freimuth that the payback period for the City of New Rochelle is virtually never. Freimuth does not expect that the City of New Rochelle will earn its first dollar on an Echo Bay Development for decades.
During that entire time Chuck says we will be paying $1 million a year on principal and interest payments on the bond debt to build the new yard (this based on noam’s absurdly low $13mm estimate to build the new yard and claims that NO toxic waste clean up is required despite clear evidence to the contrary.
Even using THEIR numbers, if we spend $13 million on a new yard and we do not earn any revenue on the old yard location for 25 years then the payback period is somewhere between 25 and 50 years.
Now it sounds great to say that we get “waterfront access” by creating walkways and bike paths at the water’s edge. A good chunk of that shoreline is about 50 feet away and in the shadow of the sewage treatment plant. Let’s be clear that Echo Bay is not La Jolla. Further, New York is not California or Florida so that waterfront access will get the bulk of its use from in June, July and August. Do you typically see a lot of people wandering through Hudson Park, Davenport or Five Islands in January? For the other 9 months of the year, the waterfront with the romantic sewage treatment views will be lightly used.
Having spent many, many hours in that area, taken the tour of the DPW yard and wandered around the entire area many times, I have come to believe that the only people who believe that the DPW Yard can be transformed into some magical land of marinas and bike paths are people who have not had boots on the ground. There is just no getting around the now towering sewage treatment plant.
Council Member Tarantino has also made the point recently that the Beechwood Avenue property has value to many businesses because it is zoned for industrial use and there is not a lot of available property in Westchester County so zoned.
So, what if we sold the Beechwood Avenue property. We paid $5.2 million but let’s say we get half that.
How far could $2.6 million go into rehabilitating the existing City Yard?
In other words, is there a path that would allow for the improvement of the existing yard at no cost to taxpayers?
Under this scenario, the DPW Yard is never developed, it remains a yard.
So what?
When the alternative is incurring tens of millions of debt with no return to residents for decades all to benefit a developer who has fast become notorious as “Developer #1” in various DOJ indictments, the axiom that the DPW Yard has more value as condos is debunked.
Value to who? Not to New Rochelle residents, that’s for sure.
Well said Bob.
Bob, here’s a couple of additional thoughts, the $13 million is now $13.6 million as the city just borrowed $600,000 at a cost of $150,000 per year for 5 years to design the new Beechwood facility. How that’s being paid for, I haven’t a clue? The 2012 budget was just passed and I don’t think the payments for the $600,000 loan are a part of the budget as it was authorized in January. Maybe the city let a cop or 2 go?
How much renovation work could be done for $2.6 million at the DPW yard? I sure a lot could be done but nothing will get done as I’m sure Noam will use the $2.6 million to plug next years (or whatever year its sold in) budget gap.
City hall relies on 1 shot revenue to balance its budgets so this could & will be a future 1 shot revenue gimmick for Noam to use.
Well said Bob.
Bob, here’s a couple of additional thoughts, the $13 million is now $13.6 million as the city just borrowed $600,000 at a cost of $150,000 per year for 5 years to design the new Beechwood facility. How that’s being paid for, I haven’t a clue? The 2012 budget was just passed and I don’t think the payments for the $600,000 loan are a part of the budget as it was authorized in January. Maybe the city let a cop or 2 go?
How much renovation work could be done for $2.6 million at the DPW yard? I sure a lot could be done but nothing will get done as I’m sure Noam will use the $2.6 million to plug next years (or whatever year its sold in) budget gap.
City hall relies on 1 shot revenue to balance its budgets so this could & will be a future 1 shot revenue gimmick for Noam to use.