Yonkers Ridge Hill settle
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: January 3, 2007

Yonkers City Council members are expected Tuesday to approve a settlement of the lawsuit filed by Greenburgh and two of its villages over the city’s approval of Ridge Hill Village.

The settlement creates a task force charged with building consensus toward approvals and possible funding for an a second access road to the project from the southbound Sprain Brook Parkway through county-owned Sprain Brook Park, to the $600 million mixed-use project.

“This is a real victory for the community,” City Council President Chuck Schorr Lesnick (D) said last week. “Even though they were split as to whether or not we should have voted for this project over the summer, they all had the same goal that I did, which was to mitigate the traffic on Tuckahoe Road. This is one step closer to making that vision a reality.”

The council is set to vote on the settlement a day after the City Council’s real estate committee considers the issue.

For nearly a year Lesnick has sought support for the access road. It would require approval by the state and county governments, since it involves swapping 1.6 acres of designated park land for 4 acres of the 81-acre Ridge Hill campus owned by project developer Forest City Ratner Cos. of Brooklyn.

Forest City Ratner plans to build 1.3 million square feet of retail space; 1,000 housing units, 13.5 percent of which would be reserved for affordable housing; a 175-room hotel and conference center; and entertainment venues.

Building the road would also require approval by Consolidated Edison Company of New York Inc. since existing overhead power lines would have to be raised to accommodate the proposed access.

Westchester County opposes the swap; Con Edison opposes paying the projected $9.5 million cost of raising the lines.

“The county may change its position when they see that Greenbugrh, Yonkers, Ardsley and Hastings are firmly committed to this,” Lesnick said.

The task force will consist of two members appointed by each party in the state Supreme Court case filed in April 2006 – defendant Yonkers City Council and co-plaintiffs Greenburgh and its villages of Ardsley and Hastings-on-Hudson.

Greenburgh, Ardsley and Hastings have argued Yonkers neglected to come up with adequate mitigation for the extra traffic Ridge Hill will generate.

Lesnick would be one of Yonkers’ two members on the task force, along with Council member Dee Barbato (R-6th District). Barbato voted against Ridge Hill both in December 2005 and again last July; Lesnick took office last year and voted to approve the project in July.

“We both wanted to mitigate the traffic. We just had a different sense of whether we could trust Ratner to do the right thing,” Lesnick said.

Forest City Ratner would set aside $500,000 toward the task force, plus another $5 million toward traffic improvements in Greenburgh, Ardsley and Hastings. The developer would extend by six months its five-year deadline for starting construction of the access road in order for the city to tap into $10 million Forest City Ratner has promised toward its cost.

To date the city has spent $20,000 so a consultant could review proposals for allowing recreational boating within the city-owned but inaccessible Grassy Sprain Reservoir between the northbound and southbound Sprain. Two finalists have emerged from 12 firms expressing interest in the project.

“We’re going top put the selection of the two finalists on the back burner till we form this task force,” Lesnick said.

The recreational use is designed to negate an objection raised by Westchester – that the park swap would force it to convey public land for a private use.

Parties have till Jan. 12 to approve the settlement.

A lawyer for Greenburgh, Michael D. Zarin of the White Plains law firm Zarin & Steinmetz, declined comment pending approval of the settlement by the parties.