Merchants disagree, but town board freezes first floor uses for six months

Bill Holmes, Gina Gore and Jim McCauley
September 12, 2008
by Christine Yeres

The moratorium is on, by a unanimous vote of town board members. Throughout the next six months, retail shops and restaurants will remain welcome additions to the town’s merchant base; other uses are “frozen,” although there is an appeals provision through which exceptions may be granted.

The board hopes to come out the other side of the moratorium with some ideas on how to alter the downtown zoning so that the hamlet will attract more shops and restaurants that will, in turn, draw more clientele downtown, causing all merchants’ boats to rise.
 
Let the market decide uses, some argue

Several merchants spoke at the public hearing preceding the vote. They all discouraged the board from instituting the moratorium. Bill Holmes of Prudential Holmes & Kennedy was first to speak, telling the board, “I don’t disagree with a study of uses, but merchants and landlords are struggling enough; banks at least bring in foot traffic, but you can’t make four new restaurants come to town.” He advised the board to allow the market to create its own preferred uses of the space. “You can’t force people to support things; have your study, but you can’t dictate what people should want.”  Referring to town board legislation that prevented Chase Bank from using the space it rented nearly two years ago in the former Giona’s and Chappaqua Stationary space, Holmes said, “A retail store might have been better than a bank, but a bank would have been better than nothing.”

Instead, make the town look better

When Holmes’ suggested that the town board concern itself instead with improving the town’s overall appearance, Supervisor Barbara Gerrard agreed that he had a good point, and that the board was engaged in exactly that effort. She deferred to board member Elise Kessler Mottel, who told Holmes that the ten-member Downtown Steering Committee was engaged in planning improvements in landscape architecture, lighting and infrastructure.  “We met to discuss our conceptual plan just last night,” she told him. “And at Community Day, on September 27, these ideas will be available for the public to see and comment on.”  [See Downtown Steering Committee article in this issue.]

“OK, but let’s do it!” Holmes replied gruffly, adding that “our stores are not doing well.  Our rents [in New Castle] are very low; Mt. Kisco rents are double ours.”  Gerrard reminded him that the town is doing something, and that doing things takes time. In revamping the Citibank parking lot, for example, she said, “we needed to have a plan, to make sure we’re digging in the right spot.” The engineering study commissioned by the board took an extensive look at underground utilities.

Help businesses that are here

Gina Gore, owner of Greeley Home & Hardware—“the biggest business in the downtown,” as she characterized it—told the board that its job should be “to see how you can help us. I love this town, I support it, but I’m not being supported.”  She told the board that many landlords “don’t take care of their buildings. How can people want to move in here, looking like we do?”

A former owner of property on King and Highland, Jim McCauley, told the board he was “appalled by what this town did to the landlord and [Chase] bank.  This government doesn’t have the constitutional right to say what can go where. A moratorium will only hurt the town. I applaud the improvements, but going further than that is far in excess of this board’s rights. Next, you’ll be choosing what kind of restaurant you want to have.  Let the market decide which business should be in which space.”

Learn from other towns

Jane Holmes, owner of the Crown House on upper King Street, also questioned the purpose of a moratorium, noting that surely other towns had investigated “how to get their acts together,” and we could easily learn from their studies. Gerrard answered that other towns’ experience would be part of the board’s information gathering. Over the half year the town board will consult with the planning board, its outside planning consultant F.P. Clark, the town’s new in-house planner, Lincoln Daley, and Administrator Jerry Faiella and research which businesses contribute to downtown vitality and which do not.  They will seek public input along the way through work sessions and regular meetings.
“We may want lovely boutiques, but either lower the rent or provide incentives so that business people consider Chappaqua over Mt. Kisco and Pleasantville,” Holmes advised. “Look at the studies of what businesses work, get busy attracting them, help merchants to make flyers.”  She concluded, “There’s too much rejection and too little vision.”

Parking one of the culprits

Gerrard stated that the board strongly believes that current downtown parking regulations impede commercial success, but Holmes didn’t see it as a problem, “I wish I needed an underground parking garage.”  From her perspective, Gore, critical of the town board’s decision recently to amend its law that kept out new banks to permit real estate to take more first floor space, pointed out to the board that increasing real estate office space “doesn’t help make more parking for downtown retail.”

The board ended the hearing and voted to begin the moratorium.