Westchester County Business Journal The past at a price
The past at a price
Yonkers will have its downtown historic district and a developer of affordable housing there will have its design team go back to the drawing board for a $36 million project that could be more tenuous and more costly behind historic facades.
The Yonkers City Council last week unanimously agreed to create the Philipse Manor Historic District on Warburton Avenue, a preservation measure that had vocal public support and was recommended by the city Landmarks Preservation Board. The city Planning Board and Mayor Philip Amicone opposed the landmark district as a hindrance to the city’s downtown redevelopment thrust.
A block of 13 properties bounded by Wells Street on the north and Manor House Square on the south and taking its name from Philipse Manor Hall, the colonial stone mansion that dominates the western side of Warburton Avenue on Larkin Plaza, it is the first commercial landmark district in Yonkers. The block of mid- to late-19th-century brick and wooden buildings, some in deteriorated condition or with altered façades, stands at the center of a downtown and waterfront area that could be physically transformed and economically revitalized in the next several years by billions of dollars in private redevelopment. Residents who sought landmark status for the block have said its adaptive reuse would fit in well with the city’s larger redevelopment plans, with upstairs residences and small commercial firms and retail stores at street level in low-rise buildings that complement the 18th-century manor hall.
City Council members agreed the downtown properties “represent a variety of styles that form a harmonious unit in scale with their dramatic surroundings of hills, cliffs and related 19th-century architecture, not to mention a unit that harmonizes with the characteristic Yonkers of intersecting, curving streets and with a public square of moderate width and essentially human scale that is unique to Yonkers.”
The landmarked district, however, could be one property owner’s road block to redevelopment.
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