White Plains Needs Broader Downtown Development Plan
At the last meeting of the White Plains Planning Board, discussion turned to need for an overall plan for downtown White Plains as development continues to increase in the area.
The specific project of discussion was the Esplanade Hotel building refurbishment and the building owner’s (White Plains Venture Partnership) petition to amend the Zoning Ordinance Schedule of Dimensional Regulations (Section 5.3) to add a new note eliminating the CB-1 district requirement of 500 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit when a project is proposed in an existing building.
The request would allow the owner to take an existing 90-unit building and renovate it to a total of 212 smaller rental apartments.
The Planning Board basically agreed that for this one location, the zoning change did make sense, but they discussed the concern raised by a doubling of the density at the location.
Planning Board Chairman Michael Quinn said that the White Plains Common Council was eager to incentivize refurbishment of existing buildings, but he also pointed out that the city’s downtown was undergoing fast development.
Board member Robert Stackpole agreed, saying that Planning needed to discuss requests from the point of view of the future. “We need to determine the impact on the infrastructure and the school system of the city,” he said. “The city has to have a better handle on the broader impact of developing sites.”
Stackpole went on to say that the private single-family home market was diminishing in White Plains and that residential growth was shifting to the downtown. “There are a lot of projects not built yet,” Stackpole said. “What is the overall impact on traffic, for example? We have not even studied it yet.”
All Board members agreed that existing traffic in the late afternoon in White Plains was already a problem and would get worse as development increased.
Quinn noted that there was also a shortage of adequate open space for the new downtown residents. “If you want a livable downtown, you need parklets,” he said – places where people can go to get a cup of coffee and sit outside, or walk their dog. “I don’t see anywhere when I look at the area (near S. Broadway and Maple) where people can go when they leave their apartments.
Noting that White Plains is taking a knee-jerk reaction by responding to each new development as it comes before the Boards for approvals, Stackpole again emphasized that Planning had to look at the impact of all the new buildings together.
Board member John Ioris cautioned that with blight in the area, the addition of new residents was important to the area’s survival and that anything like a moratorium on new permits should not be considered. “More people on the streets is a good thing,” Ioris said.
The Board also considered what would happen when more of the box stores such as Walmart, Sears or Macy’s closed due to the growth of online shopping. They agreed that White Plains needs a view to the future dealing with the many changing market impacts.
