Developer Proposes Major Plan Revision at Armonk’s MBIA Site
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The team that proposed redeveloping the MBIA property in Armonk has significantly revised its plans by eliminating the proposed hotel and announcing last week it had retained luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers to construct the townhomes.
Applicant Airport Campus appeared before the North Castle Town Board last Wednesday to pitch its newest plan to town officials, about nine months after the board expressed uneasiness about the potential impact on services during a public hearing on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS).
Under the reworked proposal, the project on the 38-acre property at 113 King St. would feature new construction of 125 townhomes and repurposing the southern office building at the site to include 50 apartments for sale, said Anthony Veneziano, the applicant’s attorney. The northern office building containing roughly 200,000 square feet of space would be demolished.
A zoning change would need to be approved by the Town Board from the current Design Office Building (DOB-20) to the Residential Multifamily Senior Citizen Housing (R-MF-SCH) zone.
Veneziano said after last year’s public hearing and analyzing what might be best for the site, his clients engaged Toll Brothers to build the townhomes. Airport Campus would be responsible for converting the smaller office building into the multifamily structure.
“So they’re here, ready to go and build this and that’s sort of exciting,” Veneziano said. “We’re taking out options, we’re limiting things, we’re scaling the project back and down, the impacts back and down.”
The previous plan called for the northern office building to be converted into a 125-room hotel, the smaller southern office building to be reoccupied for office uses, construction of a five-story, 78-foot-tall multifamily structure with 149 units and an area that would include 22 townhomes.
Another significant change is that all the units would be 55-and-up age-restricted housing. No one under 18 years old would be permitted to live there.
Traffic is projected to be about one-third of the volume under the new plan, Veneziano said.
During last September’s hearing, concerns were raised about taxes, the impact a projected 27 schoolchildren would have had on the Byram Hills School District and on emergency services, particularly the five-story structure for the fire department. Last year, Councilwoman Barbara DiGiacinto asked the developer to consider independent senior living.
Veneziano said the revised proposal is projected to have no schoolchildren, although he could not guarantee there would be zero students generated by the project. If there were students, it would be far fewer than last year’s estimate.
However, two board members still expressed discomfort with the plans. Councilmen Jose Berra and Matt Milim said they were concerned about the plan to have condominium taxation. Berra was also concerned that the housing is too dense for the site.
“I worry that it’s unfair to our existing residents and I also worry that a lot of time with condo taxation with new construction, the value’s captured to the developer is a higher price and it’s not passed on to the incoming residents,” Milim said. “That’s my struggle with it.”
The townhomes, which would be an average of 2,200 square feet would sell for roughly $1.5 million, Veneziano said. All would have two bedrooms. There was no firm estimate from the developer on the price of the units in the multifamily structure.
Although stopping short of an endorsement of the plan, Supervisor Michael Schiliro said he was encouraged by the latest proposal, saying the project brings in a type of housing that is in short supply in town.
“I’m in favor of age-restricted housing and I’ve supported previous projects with the condo taxation, and in my mind, it is a different (housing) class in town,” he said. “So people that are buying a single-family home, somebody who’s buying my home isn’t buying this unit.”
DiGiacinto said she would like to learn if the units would trigger a more severe parking crunch in downtown Armonk, causing the town to have to build or acquire more land for parking.
Steven Wise, part of the development team that bought the property in 2015 for $23 million, said he expects this type of product will have a market, especially with a builder with the reputation of Toll Brothers.
“I think that this demand will be there. I’ve been tracking this market for a few decades now,” Wise said. “I’m pretty bullish on it.”
The next move would be for Airport Campus to return with a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Town Board to review for completeness.
Martin has more than 30 years experience covering local news in Westchester and Putnam counties, including a frequent focus on zoning and planning issues. He has been editor-in-chief of The Examiner since its inception in 2007. Read more from Martin’s editor-author bio here. Read Martin’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/martin-wilbur2007/