A Yonkers renaissance

The City’s mayor says emphasis on housing, jobs, education and green space is paying off

college-bound there are plenty of film industry jobs and they will be connected to that world through their school experience.

That school and the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Community School now under construction will help ease a capacity crunch that Spano has made a major priority.

But schools superintendent Edwin Quezada says that while the mayor has worked diligently to improve the situation the state must provide more funding.

“Albany needs to be more responsive,” Quezada says, explaining that many of the city’s school buildings are more than 90 years old and need “significant investment.”

Quezada argues that the state needs to change its funding to more accurately reflect life in Yonkers, which is treated more like a suburb because of its proximity to New York and home in Westchester County, then like a city with many underprivileged children.

“This formula gets in the way,” he says. The state’s Foundation Aid, which is money for education, gives Buffalo $688 million, Rochester $515 million and both Yonkers and Syracuse below $400 million, Quezada says, even though Yonkers and Rochester are roughly equal in population while Buffalo is only marginally larger (and Syracuse is notably smaller.) This problem extends to other aid, for buildings and transportation— “I hold everyone in the state government accountable,” he says. “We need the formula reviewed. Yonkers is an urban community and needs to be treated the same as these other cities.”

Mike Spano has lived in Yonkers his whole life and he also has represented it in the state legislature or from the mayor’s office for much of the last thirty years. So Spano knows well the city’s major issues and what the priorities need to be. These days, Yonkers—the state’s third largest city—has crucial housing and business development plans, ambitious goals for, and tremendous pride in, its education system and a desire to add a touch of green to this dense city.

While much needs to be done, Spano, now in his third term as mayor, feels the city is heading in the right direction. “There are great things happening in Yonkers,” he says. “It’s a wonderfully diverse city bustling with activity. We’re going through a renaissance—and our diversity is a strength.”

The city will be bustling even more when its plans for Chicken Island come to fruition… finally. Chicken Island is a huge lot next to City Hall in the heart of downtown that the city has been looking to redevelop for forty years. “Nothing has panned out but now we finally have plans,” says Jim Cavanaugh, president and CEO of the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency.

The property was bought by AMS Acquisitions, which has just succeeded in getting through a lengthy rezoning process and City Council approval. Next up is the planning board before construction finally begins. The end result would be a “huge development,” Cavanaugh says, that includes 3,500 units of housing—the city has added 12,000 under Spano since he became mayor in 2012 so this would be a significant addition.

“We’ve done pretty well along the waterfront but this would extend development upland and into downtown and that’s really important,” Cavanaugh says.

A large chunk of the new units would be affordable housing. Cavanaugh explains that Yonkers has an ordinance requiring 10 percent of all new units be affordable but the City Council is likely going to bump that number to 13 percent. “While you want a mix of housing in the city, we do need affordable housing here because the household income in Yonkers is lower than in White Plains and a lot of other local towns and villages,” Cavanaugh says. He says they’ve reduced the percentage of families stressed by housing costs (at least 30 percent of their income) from 46 percent in 2015 to 42 percent but they’re still above the county average.

Spano is proud of the 12,000 units added already but also of the fact that Yonkers already has been exceeding its own rule—in his three terms, about 22 percent of the new units have been affordable. “I challenge anyone to find another city in the state that’s at 22 percent,” he says.

There’s potential for even greater growth, Cavanaugh says if as the city expects, Empire City by MGM Resorts gets one of the three downstate casino licenses the state is getting ready to issue. He says that as a racino the site already generates about $21 million in revenues for the city “but if it becomes a full casino, revenues could as much as double and jobs will ramp up.”

The other major player in Yonkers, Lionsgate, is also growing. The company’s initial studio there worked out so well, Cavanaugh says, that they bought a property a block away and have begun building a second studio and they are now in contract for a property on the Yonkers and Bronx border to build on a third site.

Spano says the housing the city built, often after cleaning up brownfields on the site of old factories, was appealing to Lionsgate and encouraged them to come here. “We’re enjoying the fruits of our labor,” he says, though he adds that the new jobs that will continue coming from the casino and the studios will mean even more housing will be needed… making Chicken Island even more important.

Both MGM Empire, which Cavanaugh notes is a union shop, and Lionsgate, have provided local jobs with good wages but soon Lionsgate’s connection to the community will extend even deeper. Cavanaugh points to plans for a new school on the new Lionsgate site.

Great Point Studios, owner and operator of the Lionsgate Studio Yonkers, will manage renovations of the buildings already there. The school, which should open in 2024, will accommodate 500 students from Grades 6-12, with a focus on media and the performing arts—the curriculum will be developed with S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Students will have a pathway to acceptance at Syracuse, although Cavanaugh points out that for students who are not

Despite these disadvantages, Spano points to the fact that the city, with 70 percent of its students living below the poverty line, still graduates students at a 90 percent rate, which is higher than some wealthier Westchester towns.

As a child of Yonkers, Spano knows not only the importance of educational opportunities but also of having a livable city, which is why he has focused so much attention on creating access to the city’s waterfront and more green space. “We’ve taken every opportunity to expand our parks—if someone doesn’t pay taxes or abandons a property and it’s next to a school or park, then instead of re-selling the land, we preserve it,” he says.

Last year, the city snapped up a bus depot and added a sliver of county property along the waterfront, spending $13 million to create a 3.8-acre park there for the city’s families. The newest park (and 81st in the city) was developed in a public-private partnership called Martin Ginsburg Park. It is a terraced park on the side of a hill which will also provide locals with access to the 26-mile Old Croton Aqueduct State Trail. “It’s a beautiful property and we could have sold it for several million dollars to a developer, but we knew it needed to be protected as parkland,” Spano says.

Spano believes people “like the vibe here” in Yonkers and that maintaining the focus on housing, jobs, education and parkland will keep it that way.

Yonkers Is The New Hollywood On Hudson

The unprecedented renaissance underway in the City of Yonkers is now premiering a spectacular new sequel! Yonkers is Hollywood on Hudson, home to the new 1 million square foot Lionsgate Studios complex, the largest modern fi lm and TV production facility on the East Coast. Located along the beautiful Hudson River, this state-of-the-art media center is helping to complete the transformation of the Yonkers waterfront with local businesses benefi tting from the expected 1000+ people working at the studio complex. And with the rapid growth in streaming media, other major fi lm and TV studios are now eyeing Yonkers which offers one of the most easily accessible locations in the New York Metro area.