Forest City wins New Rochelle nod for Echo Bay
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: December 16, 2006

Forest City Development Inc. will get a shot at transforming New Rochelle’s Echo Bay section into a $500 million jewel of the “Queen City on the Sound,” as the City Council Friday morning chose the Cleveland-based developer over three other hopefuls.

Forest City will spend the next two months negotiating a preferred developer agreement with the city. Then, Forest City will start work on a detailed plan to redevelop at least 20 acres of city-owned mostly industrial land, plus an as-yet-undetermined number of acres now privately owned – though a press release listed the site at “26” acres.

“We will be long-term partners. We will become part of the fabric of this community. We’re going to do a bang-up job. . .it’s going to be something that’s pleasing to the city and pleasing to the developers,” said David Levey, executive vice president with Forest City Residential Group. “We’re a long-term player. We’ll be a part of the fabric of the community.”

Other than projecting its cost at a half-billion dollars, the developer offered few details on the project, saying they will emerge during the planning process it will undertake with the city. It said the project would include several hundred apartments – 10 percent of which would be affordable -- plus new shops, restaurants and public recreational uses.

Just last June, Forest City presented the council with a conceptual proposal for 541 apartments and 80,000 to 90,000 square feet of retail space.

“The plan in June was our first brush of the canvas. What was on the canvas was our best guess. We were taking our best shot at it given what we knew,” Levey said. “What was there is not really important. What’s important is the input from the community, doing the due diligence to understand the physical constraints of the site at hand, and working with the community and the professional planning staff of the city to come up with a realistic plan.”

George P. Kruse, vice president, development with Forest City Residential and the Echo Bay project’s top day-to-day executive, said the retail would be a mix of neighborhood stores and restaurants, not big-box discounters.

New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson said he hopes construction will start by the end of this decade. Bramson said the city would not support tall buildings on Echo Bay as it has within the downtown. Officials are reviewing an increase in the maximum allowable height of downtown buildings from 448.5 to 575 feet.

Echo Bay would be Forest City’s second big project within Westchester’s Sound Shore region. In October the developer won a special permit from the town of Mamaroneck to build 139-unit apartment building on Madison Avenue.

“Today, together, we take a giant step forward toward achieving our shared vision for a new Echo Bay and a new waterfront,” New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson said.
Forest City won out over Alex Twining’s Twining Properties of New York City; a joint venture of WCI Communities Inc. and G&S Investors L.L.C. of Old Bethpage; and Collins Enterprises L.L.C. of Stamford, Conn.

Developer mulls preserving armory; offers options
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: December 162, 2006

Minutes before New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson and Forest City Enterprises Inc. executives briefed reporters about the developer’s selection for the Echo Bay redevelopment project, the mayor led a unanimous City Council in selecting the Cleveland-based, $8.5 billion-a-year developer.

A key factor in that 7-0 vote was Forest City’s backtracking on its earlier reluctance to preserve the 2.9-acre New Rochelle Armory, a 16,000-square-foot building currently used by the fire and public works departments. Several civic leaders have long sought to preserve the nearly century-old structure for public use.

During a HYPERLINK "http://www.westchestercbj.com/archive/071006/0710060011.php" presentation to the council last June, Forest City said it would not preserve the armory: “Our retail guys told us it’s kind of a missing tooth,” Kruse said.

But Kruse also said: “We’re more than willing to look at reworking the plan if that was a big concern.”

Forest City did just that in a Dec. 4 letter to city development commissioner Craig King. The developer outlined some potential uses for the armory that included a farmer’s market, a venue for displaying works by local artists, a performing arts center, a museum, an office site for the city Parks and Recreation department, and a meeting space for veterans’ groups.

“We present these as preliminary concepts only, as we remain committed to working with the City of New Rochelle and its residents in balancing multiple objectives and determining the optimal use for each portion of the Echo Bay site,” Kruse wrote in the letter to King.

Preliminary as they were, those concepts swayed the City Council’s sole Republican Michael Boyle, long an advocate for armory preservation.

“I needed a specific document in writing that a developer, given the direction of council, would preserve the armory and include public space, which would also include a place for the veterans,” Boyle said. “The letter from the developer illustrated the commitment from them and gave me a comfort level. Now it’s up to the rest of the City Council, which I hope will endorse it.”

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