Chap Crossing Developer Proposes Affordable Units for Cupola Building

Chappaqua Crossing developer Summit/Greenfield has proposed moving up to 32 affordable housing units into the top two floors of the property’s iconic cupola building, now a largely vacant office building.

Under a revised plan discussed at Tuesday night’s New Castle Town Board work session, the project’s 91 market-rate units would remain in the residential portion of the 114-acre property, referred to as the East Village, and become fee simple townhouses. The town originally approved 111 residences in April 2011–61 townhomes, 30 flats and 20 affordable units for that section of the parcel.

Felix Charney, Summit Development’s president and CEO, said switching the location of the affordable housing would help to integrate residential units throughout a greater portion of the site, find a use for a portion of the former Reader’s Digest’s most recognizable building and provide more affordable units than originally planned.

“This responds to a whole host of things that we were asked to do,” Charney said. “We were asked to come up with an adaptive reuse of the building; one was to create something a little more creative than mothballing this really amazing space.”

Project planner Andrew Tung said 28 to 32 affordable units can be created, taking up roughly 40,0000 square feet on the building’s third and fourth floors. Summit/Greenfield has been unable to rent the office space on those levels and does not view it as particularly attractive for potential office tenants, he said.

Under the 32-unit plan, there would be 26 one-bedroom or studio apartments, four two-bedroom apartments and two three-bedroom units, Tung said. The previous plan featured 18 two-bedroom units and two three-bedroom apartments in two multistory structures.

Despite the increase in the number of residential units throughout the property, the bedroom count would remain at 244, Tung said. That would not impact much of the already completed work under the state Environmental Quality Review Act, he said.

The proposal is supported by Westchester County if the town government is on board, said Norma Drummond, the county’s deputy commissioner of planning. County officials are racing the clock to comply with the affordable housing settlement with the federal government, which calls for 750 units to be built in Westchester by the end of next year. Currently, 468 new units have been financed, she said.

“The county certainly supports adaptive reuse of all buildings in the county,” Drummond said. “There’s a great historic treasury of buildings in the county, particularly this building, and for our affordable (housing) families to say they live in this iconic building is just going to be a treat.”

Summit/Greenfield hopes to have the affordable units approved and ready for occupancy by the end of 2016, said its attorney John Marwell.

Supervisor Robert Greenstein encouraged Summit/Greenfield to pursue the proposal, although two council members, Lisa Katz and Adam Brodsky, expressed concerns about certain aspects of the plan.

Greenstein said he liked the revised proposal since all the market-rate units would now be fee simple. As a result, it should generate significantly greater revenue for the town and school district.

He also said this would be a vastly superior site for affordable housing than the controversial Conifer Realty project on Hunts Place.

“We would be building here the best affordable housing in Westchester, if not the state, and one of the things that I’ve said and I know other people have said as far as the Conifer site, is that this directly reflects the values of our community,” Greenstein said.

However, Katz said she was skeptical about Summit/Greenfield’s motives. Its representatives were portraying the updated proposal as a boon for the town but weren’t providing details about what the developer would derive, she said.

At one point during the discussion, Katz, who was the dissenting  board member during last December’s rezone vote to allow retail use at Chappaqua Crossing, said Summit/Greenfield was probably in line for a financial windfall because the market-rate portion of the property would become more valuable.

“It’s not just that you are just giving us out of the goodness of your heart to make this wonderful for us,” Katz told Charney. “Don’t pull the wool over our eyes. We want to understand what the benefit is to you and what that means to us.”

Charney said like any development it needs to be beneficial for all parties.

“I would hope to think we stumbled upon an incredibly cool idea about what to do with this…building and one that satisfies the needs of the town, the county and creates a really good connection between what’s going on,” he said.

Brodsky said because Summit/Greenfield would now be using 40,000 square feet, he was concerned about how much  office space it would be “mothballing.” The entire complex currently contains more than 660,000 square feet of office space, but Summit/Greenfield is capped at renting 500,000 square feet. It will demolish one building and may also take down all or part of another structure.

In response to concerns from the board that the affordable units would be segregated from the market-rate residences, Drummond said the county has no objection. It is much easier for developers to finance their projects if the affordable units are separate, she said.

Summit/Greenfield would need to submit a zoning petition and have a public hearing scheduled, said Town Attorney Nicholas Ward-Willis.

Marwell said his client would actively pursue the new affordable housing plan if the town board approves the Preliminary Development Concept Plan and the application of the retail zoning. A vote is scheduled on those elements for Tuesday night.