My appreciation of the Echo Bay site should in no way be construed as an endorsement of any particular construction of any kind. The point being made was that alternative uses of the space might be considered and should be considered at the right time and under the right circumstances. The present time is not the right time (not yet, at least) because no economic case has been made for it.
If a capable developer offering to turn the area into a commercial or residential “masterpiece” came along, it would still be worth a listen. Unfortunately nothing presented to the city thus far meets this test. All we have is the slowly-diminishing (over a period of years and a multitude of exclusive rights to bargain with the city) by the functionally and ethically suspect Forest City organization.
Still, it would be crazy not to consider any and all QUALIFIED applications to develop. I have always maintained that the project must comport with an overall development plan (it would be nice to require the creating of a new, independently authored Comprehensive Master Plan as a necessary precursor, but good luck waiting for one; a succession of “machine” mayoralties and council majorities don’t want one – they would rather do things the old way; you know, negotiations with campaign contributors, informal “off-campus” meetings, late night and over-the-long-weekend deals with the Albany legislative delegation) and must stand or fail on its own without major subsidy (nothing lasting more than five years or so).
Forest City/Ratner’s offer (and that is all it is at this point, an offer) fails on both counts. And I have written here and said on my WVOX radio show “With Mayo” on numerous occasions that it would be better not to develop a plan that only immediately added burdens to public safety and public education resources and did not pay almost immediate dividends to the city, than to build just for the sake of “prettying up” the Sound Shore (or “prettying up” the resumes of the incumbent membership of the New Rochelle City Council). Sometimes indeed, it is better to do nothing than to do “a bad anything.”
My conclusion remains; the “removal” of the DPW yard from its current location being urged upon us by our reliably somnolent City Council is a simple hoax. There is no other way to describe it. Like the emergency “removal” of the library item from the city budget under the Idoni regime years ago; like Idoni’s urgent crusade years earlier in favor of revising the city charter to provide him with “strong mayor” powers; like the record tripling of the garbage tax in the city’s 2012 budget for the removal of “property taxpayer subsidy of sanitation operations” (according to the city manager’s budget message); hoaxes. All of them!
But to reiterate; there may come a time following the adoption of a new, independently-crafted Comprehensive Master Plan when the right design, with suitable development partners offers the right mix of aesthetics, commercial appeal and real property tax revenue for the relief of our overburdened system of municipal infrastructure. At such a time, it is my hope that New Rochelle residents, deserving interest groups such as veterans, neighborhood associations, senior citizen clubs and adult/youth sports leagues and friendly and informed neighbors from other points on Westchester’s Sound Shore may collaborate on an attractive and workable vision for Echo Bay in the community. With all the subterfuge and fabulist fantasies being peddled by our permanent class of political leaders, it is easy to make light of the Echo Bay site and discount its prospects for improvement (it is to be hoped, along with a renewed and rejuvenated Naval Armory complex also). The fiscal, environmental and even olfactory challenges of enhancing the appearance and utilization of the DPW site may be considerable, but that is no excuse for a bright, aggressive and progressive community like New Rochelle’s not to make the attempt.
As to our inspection of the DPW facility prior to the late “Official World Tour” cooked up by relocation advocates; the site can be visited most any day (like yesterday) just before closing time when the rolling stock has returned from its rounds and crews are about to retire for the day (usually around 4:00 pm). If you decide to go: park at the curb and enter at 224 East Main Street. First time out, someone appearing to be a supervisor after being told the nature of the visit said “Cool, just don’t move anything.” A perfunctory overview of the salt and asphalt piles, motor pool and ramshackle garage doors was enjoyed by all.
A citizen needn’t have to disturb our part-time mayor struggling mightily to appear like a full-time mayor by seeking his permission every time he wants to take a look at a major municipal department.
Bramson’s Incredibly Expanding Echo Bay Obfuscation
As far as I am concerned, leaving New Rochelle’s DPW yard in its present vicinity is an acceptable outcome. I just do not think it makes sense to “a priori” rule out any possible use of the site allowed by present or future zoning regulations (never mind planning principles; the city has none, and there is no prospect that it will have any until it creates a brand new Comprehensive Master Plan to replace the last one from circa 1936) private development included.
Unfortunately, so expertly has the chief New Rochelle executive teased together the following partial listing of legitimate issues: the future of our Naval Armory, downtown development as a general matter, consolidation/rehabilitation/administrative decentralization of the present Department of Public Works, utilization of the Beechwood Avenue property that Idoni paid too much for; that untangling the resulting “Ball of Confusion” that he has served up to the city council is a virtual impossibility (and certainly unlikely to happen given the perverse composition of the present body), and far beyond the scope of this simple commentary.
Now I am no more likely than any other person of ordinary sensibilities to find acceptable the olfactory gifts of low tide Long Island Sound and
the expanding county waste treatment facility, as you have so richly described. However, I believe conservatives like us (I feel justified in attaching this label to you and “Mamaroneck Mike” and of course myself) are prepared to leave such matters of taste and personal preference to the judgment of those willing to spend their private funds in quest of their own private metropolitan-NYC shoreline Utopias. That is how the free market works and conservatives generally are comfortable allowing such processes to play themselves out.
In fact, it is when part-time/full-time politicians, professional obfuscators, fans of Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” Agenda 21 devotees like the chief NR executive, etc. try to tamper with established market mechanisms like the one above-described that the process falls apart, the community is inconvenienced by the resultant land use and public administrative debacle and the public is forced to pick up the pieces in corrective legislation, government bailouts and of course higher property taxes.
So I say; let us try to sort out the almost incomprehensible matrix of issue-overlap that this dysfunctional mayoral administration has served us, and try to resolve the genuine issues of public administration, land use, historic building preservation, urban renewal and property-tax rich commercial and retail development (inclusive of residential construction also, if the capitalists are willing to forgo New Rochelle’s traditionally rich soup of tax subsidies) and get on with the really rich opportunities for improving our city’s quality of life that our great location and population have provided us.
And if a gullible few of the general population care to risk their own “estates” on McMansions or (if they are a little savvier) the upper-level reaches of multi-story apartment complexes constructed near the low-tide and waste-treatment related hazards previously noted, I say; let them! Just don’t: spend my money on it, or promise them multi-decade tax “gifts,” or send their kids to our public schools without their paying their true share of the expense.
Isn’t that what living in the big city in our blessedly, fundamentally capitalist system of democratic self-government is all about?
Is this an answer?
Steve,
Is this…
“As to our inspection of the DPW facility prior to the late “Official World Tour” cooked up by relocation advocates; the site can be visited most any day (like yesterday) just before closing time when the rolling stock has returned from its rounds and crews are about to retire for the day (usually around 4:00 pm). If you decide to go: park at the curb and enter at 224 East Main Street. First time out, someone appearing to be a supervisor after being told the nature of the visit said “Cool, just don’t move anything.” A perfunctory overview of the salt and asphalt piles, motor pool and ramshackle garage doors was enjoyed by all.”
Your way of saying:
“I visited the DPW site within the last few days.”
If it is, then can you just say so?
I again ask for clarification on this point because I want to respond to the point you are making that it is somehow obvious that the DPW Yard remaining in place is not the best use of the property.
I don’t want to keep waiting for an answer (although I would still like one) so I am going to proceed on the basis that you have NOT visited the DPW Yard recently and respond accordingly with my own article.
So!
Bob; I visited the site this week. Right off the street, and not a soul to be found in the entire yard.
My reply
OK. I just wanted to be clear on that point before responding.
If you have been there recently then you can see that the new Sewage Treatment plant is growing to massive proportions (and they are not done yet by a long shot).
I want you to consider that it is no longer true that the DPW yard is not the best use of the property because of the expansion of the sewage plant.
Blame it on State and Federal mandates, Westchester County, Godzilla or whoever else you want but the fact is that however it happened there is now going to be a 10 story, 2 football field wide sewage treatment plant just a few dozen feet away from the DPW yard. It is unfortunate that this plant is located there but it is located there and that is a stubborn fact that will not go away.
My full answer to you is here:
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/content/new-10-story-high-sewage-treatment-plant-game-changer-echo-bay-development-plans
I don’t see how anyone could go down there at low tide (the DPW Tour was held at high tide), see the mudflats, look up at that expanding sewage treatment plant and think “Yep, I want to live here”.
The DPW yard is not the coast of La Jolla and we don’t live in California. The fact is that the “waterfront views” are a fantasy. Mostly you will be looking at the sewage plant and the backyards of some homes in Sutton Manor.
While I did never thought this until this week, I no longer accept as obviously true that the DPW is not the best use of that property. My concern is that what we will end up with is already there for anyone to see. You will end up with a mirror image of Huegenot Hills – several floors of apartments above some small retail shops and offices.
Is any one prepared to spend $13-16 million to build a new yard at Beechwood Avenue, on top of the $5.2 for the Toyota Prep yard, plus lease whatever properly needs to be leased down there, plus the $600,000 for the design while we give away for free the DPW Yard, many millions in tax abatements, and all of the surprise costs (abatement, remediation, dredging, etc.) and all the indirect but very real costs such as emergency response, kids in the public schools, and infrastructure costs (the hundreds of millions for the sewage treatment plant, the United Water increases, etc.).
If you added up the real cost, the pay back period on this deal for the City would be infinity. Even the City admits it will be decades before the City would get dime one from Echo Bay while incurring millions and millions in expenses.
Or you can leave the DPW Yard where it is. Sell the Toyota Prep property and use the money from that to rehab the existing DPW facility. That would cost, net-net, zero.
When you say “best” don’t you have to consider the impact on the people who live here now? Now that the dominant feature of the landscape is a sewage treatment plant, not a water view, what’s best for them is to just fix up the DPW yard and move on.