Why is Texas Developer JPI being subsidized by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation?

According to the website of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the goal of the NYS brownfield cleanup program is to encourage private sector cleanups of brownfields and to promote their redevelopment as a means to revitalize economically blighted communities.

The location on Lawrence Street where JPI intends to build it's multifamily development - The Jefferson at Saw Mill - could hardly be described as an economically blighted area.

Under the brownfield cleanup program, state tax money is available for remediation and cleanup.

So the question must be asked why are New York State officials allowing our scarce tax dollars to subsidize an out of state developer's project here in the rivertowns when such project will negatively impact our community in so many ways while the alleged benefits are speculative at best ? Residents are strongly  encouraged to contact our local state elected officials as State Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assemblyman Tom Abinanti for answers. Contact information is listed below.  In addition personnel at the DEC should be contacted at Region 3 which covers Westchester County. That information will follow in subsequent posts.

As Ardsley Mayor Peter Porcino wrote in a recent letter to the Rivertowns Enterprise,  citizen involvement is essential if we are to stop this misguided project from being approved.

We have seen the disaster on Lawrence Street when state employees at the Department of Transportation are not carefully monitored and do the bidding of developers and not the taxpaying public.

Mr. Abinanti can be reached at 914.631.1605
Abinanti@assembly.state.ny.us

Ms. Stewart-Cousins can be reached at 914.423.4031
Scousins@senate.state.ny.us

Pushback on The Jefferson

This appeared in Westfair Communication's online version of their Westchester Business Journal:

Showdown expected over Jefferson project in Greenburgh

By Colleen Wilson

December 30, 2015 No Comment

The developers of a proposed 272-unit apartment building on Lawrence Street in Greenburgh can be assured of one thing come Jan. 13 – opposition from Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.

Feiner said that this could be “the worst project I’ve seen in the town.”

The second Wednesday of 2016 is the date scheduled for a public hearing on a draft scoping document outlining preliminary plans to build the Jefferson at Saw Mill, east of the Saw Mill River Parkway on what is now a brownfield cleanup site and formerly the location of the Akzo Nobel chemical plant.

The new four-story, 239,000 square-foot residential complex – which would be across the parkway from the rising 202-unit Rivertowns Square residence – could have adverse effects on the community including the potential for increased traffic and overcrowding in the school district, Feiner said.

In an email, the town supervisor encouraged the community to attend the meeting asking residents to raise issues and provide comment with “specific concerns about this project.”

The Irving, Texas-based development group JPI Multifamily Partners LLC has spent months doing its own community outreach on the project, the result of a suggestion from the town board after a pre-application meeting with JPI in February.

Neil J. Alexander, an attorney and partner with the White Plains firm Cuddy & Feder LLP that is representing JPI, said that getting additional input from the public at the January meeting will allow the parties to have a more targeted and focused discussion as JPI and the town move through the application process.

After receiving feedback from open house meetings, calling and mailing information out to thousands of residents last spring, the JPI planners scaled back their original plans before submitting a formal application with the town in May.

JPI had initially planned on building 296 units, but reduced that by 24 units and eliminated three-bedroom apartments entirely. The current four-story proposal includes 24 studios, 164 one-bedroom and 84 two-bedroom apartments; of those, 10 percent will be at affordable rates. In addition, JPI has proposed a four-story, 316-space parking structure with an additional 122 parking spots at the site.

JPI anticipates spending millions of dollars to clean up the 11-acre contaminated property – though the firm has not yet given an estimate on the total cost of the project – and has proposed upgrading the nearby South County Trailway with parking, bicycle parking and a water fountain.

Issues that are expected to be of the most interest at the meeting include traffic and the impact on school districts.

Feiner said the size of the Jefferson project could contribute to the existing traffic issues in the area, more specifically in the village of Ardsley, while adding to anticipated traffic woes with the forthcoming Rivertowns Square complex.

Rivertowns is being built directly across the Saw Mill River Parkway in the village of Dobbs Ferry and is expected to open late in 2016.

“I personally think this (Jefferson) project is way too big,” Feiner said. “When Rivertowns Square opens there’s going to be more traffic.”

As part of its application, JPI has proposed traffic mitigation suggestions including the extension of parts of Lawrence Street and Route 9A as well as modifying traffic signals in both of those areas. JPI said that their traffic-lessening measures are in addition to other roadway construction projects that have not yet occurred, including the Ashford Avenue Bridge Replacement and the 510-foot extension of the southbound right lane on Route 9A.

On June 9, the Ardsley Union Free School District Board of Education passed a resolution asking the villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry and Hastings and the unincorporated town of Greenburgh to place a moratorium on the development of residential units for five years.

The action, which cited 11 ongoing projects in the area, said the “approved and proposed residential developments will significantly increase student enrollment in the Ardsley Union Free School District” and that the district is “subject to a tax levy cap which does not take into account an increase in enrollment.”

JPI, according to its website, said it expects to generate no more than 32 students and said that since 2009-10 enrollment in Ardsley has dropped by nearly 5 percent.

In its application, JPI also said the school tax revenue generated will be “at a rate more than 15 percent over the cost for the number of school children generated from the project.” In addition, JPI said it anticipates the new residence could increase tax revenue to $2 million annually when it reaches full occupancy, up from the $217,000 it has paid yearly in property taxes.

The town of Greenburgh has hired the planning and development consultant firm Ferrandino & Associates Inc. of Elmsford, to assist with the review of the proposal.

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Who is JPI?

JPI, the developer of the proposed The Jefferson at Saw Mill development at the corner of Lawrence
Street and Saw Mill River Road (Route 9A) is based in Irving, Texas.

They are one of the largest developers of multi-family housing in the country. While an Internet search reveals they have not received any awards for either outstanding architecture or building "green"' in any significant manner beyond what everyone else is doing, their building practices caused the United States Justice Department to sue  JPI for significant violations of the Federal Fair Housing Act as it pertains to providing the required design features lawfully required to make their developments accessible to the disabled.  As a result in 2012, JPI paid the largest civil fine ever in a Fair Housing Act case ($250,000) plus a 10.5 million dollar payment to create an accessibility fund to settle the case.

It should also not be surprising that JPI's former CEO was one of the largest contributors to former Texas Governor Rick Perry who claims that global warming is a hoax. Oops indeed.

No one should confuse JPI with the Sierra Club.

It also remains to be seen what experience JPI has in cleaning a brownfield  which is the nature of the location where JPI seeks to build its rental apartments. Whether prospective tenants will want to live over a former brownfield remediated by JPI is of course, another issue as well as whether our state tax dollars should subsidize this type of intensive residential development.

The Jefferson and its Impact on Life Safety Services

Outside of The Rivertowns Enterprise newspaper and its sister publication, the Scarsdale Inquirer, there are few outlets covering Greenburgh. Although there are sites like Patch and the Daily Greenburgh, the "news" posted there consists mostly of press releases or links to the light coverage of Greenburgh in The Journal News. 

Into this breach has stepped the website and Facebook pages of the Edgemont Community Council (see Links section).

Here is an interesting section from their story on the proposed sale of the abandoned Franks Nursery on Dobbs Ferry Road that relates to The Jefferson and its impact on the Town's EMT services which will be strained by the addition of an assisted living facility at the Franks site as well as the planned Assisted Living facility at the Sprain Brook Nursery which is just outside the border of the Village of Ardsley but in the Edgemont Section of Greenburgh:

"While Mr. Feiner is correct when he says that restoring the property to the tax rolls will generate tax revenue once the facility opens, it remains to be seen what the net revenue will turn out to be. Assisted living facilities in Greenburgh are not required to have any emergency medical personnel on site. Accordingly, these for profit facilities depend for life support on taxpayer supported services. At the most recent town board work session, Police Chief Chris McNerney warned town officials that continued approval of assisted living facilities will require adding more EMT's, all at taxpayer expense. And Chief McNerney, who lives in Ardsley ought to know. The Atria assisted living facility in Ardsley is generating a large number of EMS calls. And even though the Atria does pay a substantial amount of taxes, because it is a commercial facility, it can file for tax certioraris, and in September 2015, the Town Board approved tax refunds to the Atria totaling nearly $800,000. Finally, the tax revenues from for profit assisted living facilities that don't accept Medicaid could be short-lived. In order to encourage these facilities to accept Medicaid, and thereby avoid having to evict residents who run out of money (to live in these facilities is very expensive costing at least $7,500 per month), states like New York are considering whether, in exchange for accepting Medicard, these facilities should be exempted from having to pay property taxes. Municipalities like Greenburgh may oppose that, but as the baby boomer population continues to age, eliminating the property tax for assisted living facilities may become inevitable."

Given all the new developments in Ardsley and Greenburgh, coupled with the planned assisted living facilities,  the addition of The Jefferson will, if built, further strain our already overtaxed  life safety services.