WESTCHESTER & FAIRFIELD COUNTY
BUSINESS JOURNALS
JUNE 26, 2017 | VOL. 53, No. 26
9 | DEALERSHIP DEAL
21 | SPECIAL REPORT: CONSTRUCTION
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Millennials and prices drives down demand for new single-family homes BY KEVIN ZIMMERMAN kzimmerman@westfairinc.com
T Solar and Star Power
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Former President Bill Clinton addresses Swiss Re employees at a ribbon cutting for the company's solar installation in Armonk. Photo by Bob Rozycki
he boom in multifamily residential construction in the region has claimed most of the headlines lately, but that’s not to say that interest in owning single-family homes is evaporating. According to observers, it’s simply in a state of flux. “The good news is that single-family (building) permits are off their lows across Westchester and Fairfield counties,” said Michael Neal, senior economist at the National Association of Home Builders. He added, however,
“Although they are above their lows, single-family permits in Westchester have now plateaued at around 300 permits per year since 2014, while single-family permits in Fairfield have been in decline over the same period.” NAHB data shows that Fairfield County has seen a steady erosion in single-family permits over the past three years, dropping from 987 in 2014 to 800 in 2015 and 712 last year. The county has not seen single-family permits in the four figures since 2007, while Westchester hasn’t topped the 1,000 mark since 2002. » NEW HOMES, page 8
Tuckahoe hotel ready to rise, but group still opposing it BY RYAN DEFFENBAUGH rdeffenbaugh@westfairinc.com
T
he developer of a $31 million hotel and restaurant project on a former quarry and landfill site in Tuckahoe said cleanup of the contaminated property is almost complete and construction will start soon.
The development has not been without controversy, however, as a community group has charged that the review process was not thorough. Eastchester-based Bilwin Development Associates LLC received approval last year to build a five-story, 153-room Marriott Springhill Suites hotel at 109-125 Marbledale Road in the village. The 91,000-square-foot
hotel will be built on an environmentally contaminated site once used as a marble quarry and later as a landfill dump. The project also includes a 6,000-square-foot standalone restaurant. The site is in a remediation process as part of the state’s Brownfield Cleanup Program. Bill Weinberg, principal of Bilwin Development, said that contaminated materials on the site have been removed. He characterized the hotel project as a low-impact use that will “bring in revenue and taxes to Tuckahoe and Westchester” and also “clean up an old brownfield.” The project was first proposed in 2014. Weinberg said
there was a “dearth of hotel construction” at that time in southern Westchester. Despite an uptick in hotel construction in Yonkers since then, but Weinberg said there is still a need for more hotel rooms in the area. “There is still a great demand,” he said. “They are all at an extremely high occupancy level.” The hotel plan has been fought by a group of residents who say that the village did not give the plan a proper environmental review before approving it. In addition, the group alleges that the remediation and construction could expose the community to dangerous materials. In 2015, the Tuckahoe
Planning Board gave Bilwin Development’s proposal for the site a conditional declaration that it would have no negative environmental impact under the state Environmental Quality Review Act. The condition to the declaration was that the developer adhere to requirements of the state’s brownfield program, which is administered by the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Department of Health. Soil and groundwater samples on the site by the state DEC found it was contaminated by a variety of materials, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and polychlorinated » HOTEL, page 8