Westchester County Business Journal 121117

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5 | YONKERS VS NYC DECEMBER 11, 2017 | VOL. 53, No. 50

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o understand where the metropolitan region could be headed, look to Newburgh in the Hudson Valley. The Orange County city of just under 30,000 was identified as a “flag-

BY BILL HELTZEL bheltzel@westfariinc.com

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While the RPA is not a governing body, its board is made up of influential business leaders, real estate developers and academics. The recommendations in the plan could hold sway with municipalities in the region. The plan is just the fourth released by the group in its nearly 100-year history. It » » REGION, page 6

» » MOUNT VERNON, page 6

Regional plan envisions the future, circa 2040 ship place” in a new regional plan recently released by the Regional Plan Association, an urban research and advocacy group. It sets a roadmap for planning and governance over the next 20 years in the threestate New York metropolitan region. The RPA uses a hypothetical 2040 Newburgh as an example of what that plan could look like in action.

Affordable housing would displace Mount Vernon blight here are few signs of economic vitality along South Fourth Avenue in Mount Vernon, but the city is betting on a $138 million affordable housing project to revive the blighted corridor. The Mount Vernon Industrial Development Agency approved a tax abatement plan on Nov. 30 for the first phase of The Pointe urban renewal project. “When I reflect on the despair and the blight that has brought that part of the area down,” Richard Thomas, Mount Vernon’s mayor and IDA chairman said, “it’s only right that we redevelop.” “It’s an area where there is nothing, nothing!” he said later. He described the scene around Fourth Avenue and East Third Street, barely more than a half-mile from City Hall, as a place where children play among syringes and amid drug dealers. MVP Realty Associates has been studying the area since at least 2009 and buying up properties since 2010. The developer wants to create a streetscape that invokes a sense of a “new main street” and modern buildings that provide affordable housing. The development site is comprised mostly of small brick buildings from the 1930s. By the 1980s, most of the residential properties were replaced by machine shops and auto shops. Several locations were contaminated, according to an environmental impact statement, by petroleum products and other hazardous materials.

Workers lay new infrastructure on Beekman Avenue in Sleepy Hollow next to the former General Motors auto plant property, where about 1,200 residences are planned, part of a multifamily construction boom in Westchester. Photo by John Golden.

rdeffenbaugh@westfairinc.com

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