Answers to NCNOW’s Questions for December 9 public hearing on Chappaqua Crossing retail zoning
Design-wise, Summit Greenfield’s plan is a Whole Foods 50,000 square foot strip center within a fake-traditional neighborhood development
Tuesday, December 9, 2014—UPDATED December 13, 2014—with answers
by Christine Yeres
Ignoring Planning Board and County Planning Board objections to the proposed retail “mixed use” development of Chappaqua Crossing, the Town Board is fine-tuning its draft zoning—and seems to be giving Summit Greenfield everything it asks for. The draft zoning has bypassed the original “adaptive reuse” concept advanced by Susan Carpenter: a grocery special enough to draw customers even though relatively hidden away in existing buildings, plus some accompanying retail.
1. When will the Town Board announce what kind of deal they are striking with Summit Greenfield?
Step by step, the proposed retail development project seems to be tipping in the direction of a “win” for Summit Greenfield and an undisclosed no-one-knows-what for New Castle. The plan for retail has 1) has marched outside into new construction, 2) pays lip service to the Planning Board’s traditional neighborhood development “main street” requirements, but 3) positions the 40,000 square foot Whole Foods and its 10,000 square foot attached building with its service-back to Roaring Brook Road and a vast parking lot between its storefront and the “main street”—in effect, a 50,000 square foot strip center within a fake-traditional neighborhood development. Is this what the Summit Greenfield and the Town Board means by “a hybrid”?
ANSWER: The Town Board will announce the details of its arrangement with Summit Greenfield when Board members vote on the application, presumably next Thursday, December 18.
2. Mothballing office space in exchange for newly added retail
Using the words “adaptive reuse” to characterize the retail proposal for the Reader’s Digest site is not the same as genuine adaptive reuse of its existing buildings. What Susan Carpenter and Westchester County mean by “adaptive reuse” is the latter.
According to the thinking of the Town Board and developer any different use of the site—say for a car dealership, since 100% of New Castle’s automotive dollars are ‘leaking’ outside the town—is something they might call “adaptive reuse” of the site. But the proposed retail plan does not adaptively reuse the hard-to-lease existing office space—it adds new retail space and permits Summit Greenfield to “mothball” an equivalent amount of space.
ANSWER: The Town Board intends to require Summit Greenfield to “decommission” 162,000 square feet of existing office space. According to Greenstein’s Supervisor’s Report of this week,“162,000 SF will be either decommissioned (i.e. taken out of use) or demolished” and “No lower level/basement space can be counted towards this 162,000 SF.”
3. “Mothball”?
How will it work to “mothball” 120,000 square feet of office space in exchange for the new retail use when the retail, office and residential zones are sold—as Summit Greenfield has said they will be—to different developers, as many as three different ones?
How can the developer-owner of the office space be expected to be guardian of the “mothballed” sections of its space for the benefit of the developer-owner of the retail? What will a purchase agreement between Summit Greenfield and the would-be office park owner look like? How would the “integrated operating plan” among the three entities handle “mothballed” square footage?
ANSWER: An owner would have to make application to the Town Board to make use of the “mothballed” space.
4. Summit Greenfield can add 300,000 square feet of additional office space “as of right”
Neither the Town Board nor its counsel have answered the question of how to ensure that Summit Greenfield (if indeed SG remains the owner of the property or any part of it) will not build out another 300,000 square feet of office space—up to 1,000,000 square feet, as Summit Greenfield has described is its “right” to do?
Town counsel has suggested the Town Board has the authority to “cap” that number, but he has not explained which developer-owner—the retail, the office or the residential—in splitting up the property, inherits the “as of right” to build another 300,000 square feet of office space? Can this “as of right” be sold separately to a developer?
ANSWER: According to Town Board counsel Nick Ward-Willis, the new “retail overlay” zoning amendment would cap office space at 500,000 square feet, period. The 1 million “as of right” square footage will disappear.
5. Where is a model of the proposed development?
What will the retail development and the roadways bordering it look like? Any client or buyer in the development world might rightly expect to see a three-dimensional model of the proposed development. But neither the applicant nor the Town Board has presented the town with a model of the proposed development and the roadways and entrances that serve it. The draft zoning says the Town Board can ask for one. Residents have asked to see one. None has been produced.
ANSWER: Ward-Willis noted that Summit Greenfield had fashioned a model of the original residential proposal, but “they have not done a model of this one.” The Town Board does not intend to require one.
6. Where has such a retail/office development worked?
There have been no examples of success for this type of retail development: one with established residential neighborhoods and a high school on three sides of it; and on the fourth side, a parkway closed to commercial vehicles—and with an on-grade railroad crossing.
Another key claim by both the Town Board and Summit Greenfield is that the addition of retail to the office-zoned property will aid in attracting tenants to the antiquated, hard-to-lease office space. Where has this worked? Where has this occurred before in a configuration such as the proposed development? Neither the Town Board nor Summit Greenfield has provided successful examples.
ANSWER: No successful models—or comparables—have been offered. [To my question of whether the retail development proposed by Summit Greenfield can be successful, Greenstein responded that I should consider the bright side: If it’s not successful, then there won’t be traffic to worry about.]
7. Two intersections that are “unmitigatable”—the Town will “encourage” drivers to use the Chappaqua Crossing entrance rather than the Greeley intersection
Michael Galante told School Board members in August of 2013 that no more than 5% of the traffic entering Chappaqua Crossing could be counted on to enter the property from the Saw Mill by bearing left into Chappaqua Crossing’s back entrance. The vast majority of vehicles, he told them, would use the Roaring Brook Road and Bedford Road entrances.
How does this comport with Town Board members’ belief that 80% of vehicles will come to Chappaqua Crossing by means of the Saw Mill? Does the Town Board believe that 80% of vehicles drawn to Chappaqua Crossing will come from the Saw Mill, or that 80% of those vehicles will use the “back door” into Chappaqua Crossing?
If Town Board members believe that only 5% of traffic into Chappaqua Crossing will enter by bearing left into the Chappaqua Crossing property (rather than right onto Roaring Brook Road), do Town Board members also believe that this 5% can be changed by “directing” traffic to the left? Will there be a traffic signal there, where the two roads split?
ANSWER: I still have no definitive answer to this “5%” question, which I included in my own comments to the Town Board and Board of Education members and submitted to the Town Board yesterday as written comment on Chappaqua Crossing. See Op-Ed: A six-lane intersection between Greeley and CC shopping center is a monstrosity, NCNOW, 12/12/14.
By email from Town Board counsel Ed Phillips responded to the 5% question on December 6, 2014: “I’ve seen 5% associated only with the amount of traffic expected to approach by traversing across RBR (eg, via 120, and then crossing over the SMRP) – not as the ratio (5/95) that could be expected to use the back entrance vs proposed RBR entrance.”
And by email—in response to my Town Board/Board of Ed comments—from Supervisor Greenstein on December 12, 2014: “I was not present to hear what Galante said, but I don’t think the 5% statement attributed to him is accurate. Unfortunately, Galante is not available due to medical reasons. I would request that you confirm this figure before possibly spreading misinformation.”
8. “We made the changes your Planning Board suggested, and our anchor stores aren’t so interested. Now we need small stores too.”
Since Summit Greenfield reported that its short list of “junior anchor” stores preferred the strip center layout to the redesigned “main street” of Chappaqua Crossing, six months ago Summit Greenfield pleaded to be allowed to divide the buildings of 25,000, 18,000, 15,500 and 10,000 square feet into any number of smaller stores it wants. (Summit Greenfield has provided an extensive list of “high-end” small stores as potential tenants.) Supervisor Greenstein at first called no-limits-on-smaller-stores a “non-starter,” but now the zoning includes the ability by Summit Greenfield to have an unlimited number of smaller retail stores 1,500 square feet or larger.
Can the Town Board and counsel confirm that the zoning intends to permit small stores to lease retail space at Chappaqua Crossing in addition to—not instead of—Summit Greenfield’s ability to lease to “junior anchor” chain stores such as Petco and Staples, and that Summit Greenfield may lease to any combination of large or small stores it wishes?
So apart from the discussion of whether or not the Town Board should allow “chain” restaurants, the current proposed draft zoning does not prevent Summit Greenfield from leasing to “chains” such as those frequently found accompanying Whole Foods—Petco, Staples and CVS—and perhaps to chain restaurants often found alongside Whole Foods such as Chipotle and Five Guys (depending on how you decide the “chain restaurant” matter). Is this correct?
ANSWER: The retail zoning would allow Summit Greenfield to choose its tenants, whether “junior anchor” or “high-end” small stores. See Town Board members debate whether to allow chain restaurants, NCNOW.org, 12/6/14.
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Here’s what the Planning Board and County Planning Board don’t like:
~ from “Near to public hearing, Boards’ thinking on Chappaqua Crossing is all over the map,” NCNOW.org, 6/20/14
Redesign rollercoaster
Since to the Planning Board it looked as though both the previous and present Town Boards fully intended to approve retail at Chappaqua Crossing despite Planning Board reservations, the Planning Board sent its architect member, Tom Curley, to work to redesign Summit Greenfield’s original plan for a strip center along a single parking lot into a less objectionable, more neighborhood-y design oriented along a “main street.” The Planning Board has said that Curley’s efforts should not be taken as an endorsement of the project. In fact, Planning Board members are still questioning whether there should be retail development at Chappaqua Crossing at all.
But now a complication has developed from the redesign of the site along a main street. According to Summit Greenfield, Curley’s re-working of the “strip center” plan into more of a village main street has had the effect of alienating the interest of “junior anchor” stores which are accustomed to standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other stores, all facing a parking lot.
Consequently, the newest version of the grocery-retail plan shows the larger spaces divided into spaces for smaller stores. While Planning Board members were conflicted over whether large stores or small stores at Chappaqua Crossing will harm the hamlets more—Curley calls the large ones “category killers,” stores that overlap with, and overtake, multiple smaller single businesses—Greenstein, seeking perhaps to approve the retail at Chappaqua Crossing yet show that he also intends to protect the downtown merchants, has called the unlimited-number-of-smaller-stores idea a “non-starter.”
So back to the bigger-box stores, which, according to a June 16 letter from the County Planning Department, is a less desirable layout, and contrary to “a more pedestrian-friendly, village-type street with buildings close to the street and parking in the rear.” The County is critical also of the strip-center-style parking lot for the grocery, noting “the placement of the Whole Foods building behind its own large parking lot would further erode the functionality of a ‘main street’ environment and significantly discourage walking between uses on the site.”
If there is a coherent argument against a Whole Foods (and a Chipotle, for that matter) in our town’s underutilized acreage, I’d love to hear it. I’ve been following this for years and I haven’t yet.
You guys will not agree on anything till you are forced
To do so.
The Town Board should publicly answer all of these well-thought-out questions by Yeres before it votes on this development. If they had done so earlier, this could have become a much better project. As it stands now, it’s just a glorified strip mall. Hopes, wishes, and free market ideology are not enough to ensure a well-planned development of this scale for our community.
I do not believe for one moment the supposition that Susan Carpenter understood enough about ‘adaptive reuse’ to make this project better when she opened the floodgates to retail chain, big box development in the findings statement her board approved. To suggest that she did understand is a revisionist whitewashing of her incompetence. She does not need apologists, she needs to apologize.
Aren’t you supposed to be unbiased? Getting a little too close to approval, isn’t it? This isn’t even marked as an “Op-Ed”
Editor’s Note: It is marked as NCNOW’s questions.
CC, to a large extent, is a larger version of Armonk Square. What’s wrong with that?
The community needs to relieve the pressure that the Town Board must be under by making it known that the community as a whole will accept the Municipality being sued by the developer. Not one member that works or is elected in town hall wants to have the stain of a major lawsuit on their record. Not one Town Board member, Planning Board member, or Zoning Board member, wants to be the link pin to a chain of events that gives CC the only possible avenue of relief but to place this matter back into the Courts. If you are for this project, great, and if not, then those who oppose this project must make it very clear that they are willing to see that The Town of New Castle would most likely be sued for a historic amount of money damages. So the question becomes, why didn’t the Town of New Castle work with the community 10 years ago in coming up with their own concept of Planning, Design and layout, and drawings, that take into account ROI and the ability to attract leaseholds or investors. If you think that Town Hall can tell a person to go ahead with a $64,000,000 dollar purchase, burn an additional $40m plus and then not allow that buyer to do something with their property, then you are dreaming. So the question becomes, how has town hall been protecting the future of downtown Chappaqua; or is this a question that we will expect each and every landlord in Chappaqua to answer on their own, using their own wallet, trying to find leasehold solutions in a piece meal fashion when it is town hall that is about to destroy the Chappaqua that we all love almost in a spiritual way. This is why we need to allow chain stores into New Castle. KFC in downtown Chappaqua, Friendly’s, Panara Bread, Cozi, should all be allowed to come into downtown Chappaqua; the landlords will need these types of tenants to keep paying CCSD taxes. The ratio of approval should be 10:90. 10 percent of chain stores at CC, with 90 percent being allowed in downtown Chappaqua. Think about it!
Another biased slanted NIMBY position piece by the editor. These are not benign questions intended to illuminate and inform your readers. These are loaded questions intended to put our Town Board and others in a poor light.
Shame on you!
Editor’s Note: Correction: These are questions to which the public has still not had answers from the Town Board.
Editor – this another example of your biased yellow journalism. These are not legitimate questions. They are suppositions and thinly veiled criticisms. Even your by-line is dishonest. You write ” Summit Greenfields plan is a Whole Foods 50,000 sq ft strip center within a fake- traditional neighborhood development”.
Originally the first plan was categorized by some as a strip mall. Then after commnity and board feedback the design was changed to a ” town square” design. The suggestion and backing of this town square design came from a New Castle Planning board member. The only time we have heard this new term – strip center- was when your buddy Napoli used it. It has not been called a strip center by the developer or on any plans.
You use the term fake also as a negative characterization like fake wood or fake leather. You write fake traditional neighborhood. You go out of your way to portray this plan in its worst possible way. You never write about its potential and what it will likely be. You never give the town board and the developer credit enough to deliver a wonderfully planned designed and laid out multi use facility.
Definition: Yellow journalism is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.
Very disappointed in Greenstein. No difference between him and Chapin.
These are significant questions that the Town Board needs to answer for the wellbeing of this community.
Thank you, Editor.
So what where the answers to the questions?
Editor’s Note: I’m trying to figure them out and will try to report them when I next publish, on Friday.
I am in total agreement with I’m Done Reading NCN.
The editor used this blog – her blog- as a foil- striking out against retail at CC every time and in every possible way. While some of these may be legitimate questions they are asked and presented in a negative fashion. I have not seen one article or oped from her that discusses the positives and benefits this development will bring to our community. I have not read a single view of hers that shows vision and positive spin. It’s always exaggerated and unfounded negatives.
Editor’s Note: I have absolutely presented what TB members believe are the positives and benefits of the project.
Editor Yeres – when did the design at CC become a “strip center”? Those opposed, like you, had labeled the early retail design as a strip mall. Then the developer (with Town planning Board suggestions) redesigned it to a “town square” design. Never , other than Chuck Napoli’s recent characterization, was this current plan called a strip center. CLEARLY, this is your use of a term that conjures up a negative image.
You also inject your bias by using the adjective “fake” in labeling the community development. Fake as in not genuine; counterfeit. Says who? You?
You are the editor and you can write whatever you want but your NIMBY attitudes come shining through. This is no longer an open community website/board. It is largely slanted to you and those sharing your opinions. You selectively offer “editors notes” to correct and illuminate positions that you want to correct and challenge. You never write a note pointing out the inaccuracies of the anti retail at CC positions.
Editor’s Note: Strip center is characterized by a line of store fronts facing a large parking lot. Whole Foods’ insistence that its back be to Roaring Brook Road, its front facing the Reader’s Digest main entry road to the cupola and its parking lot between the two makes it—and the 10,000 SF retail space attached to it—a strip center layout that helps to degrade the few “traditional neighborhood development” characteristics that the Planning Board attempted to encourage.
Excellent questions! The waters have been so muddied by all the back-and-forth, new proposals, old ones revisited, complicated language, that most of us don’t know what is going on. And name-calling makes reading the reader’s comments most distasteful.
@ Armonk Square Model,
No, no , no. This proposal at CC is NOTHING like Armonk Square. You do not know what you are talking about. Either you do not understand what will be built at CC, OR like Greenie, Chapin and Brodsky you do not care.
Did you and Lisa Katz come up with these questions at her coffee talk at Langes?
How about a few articles, a few stories, an Op-Ed on all the good things that Whole Foods, a gym, recreational facilities, ancillary retail and a well planned efficiently designed multi- use facility will bring to all residents of our community.
There are 2 sides to every story and the CC story is no different. You do your readers and the community at large a disservice by framing all content related to CC in only negative ways.
Retail at CC will be a big positive for all of us. I applaud our elected officials for finally advancing this development.
Christine – based on your response to 10514 it is clear that you and your minions have coined this phrase or borrowed the phrase “strip center”. The first time I read it was in Napoli’s recent letter. So now you adopted it it. Past planning board and current developer plans repeadtly refer to the design as town square. You have the right to rename and reclassify if you like but using negative descriptors only hurts your credibility. Fake is not a term used by any of the parties until you decided to use it. In your editors note you take it a step further when you say the layout ” degrades” the traditional neighborhood development chatecteristics ….
Once again you put the negative spin when it’s not necessarily so. Now you are an architect, a town planner, a real estate developer?? I agree with other comments – you are a NIMBY using your blog to promote your cause- your opinion. At the very least all of these are Op-Eds not articles or objective reporting.
Editor’s Note: Wrong. It is the Planning Board’s own term and definition.
The editor says the Town Board “seems to be giving Summit Greenfield everything it asks for”
Everything it asks for? The statement is ridiculous on its face!
The line seperating news worthy and propaganda machine has been crossed.
Editor’s Note: “Ridiculous on its face”? Really?
1) New construction for retail rather than reuse of existing buildings
2) All 120,000 SF of retail the developer says that WF says is necessary
3) WF at the back of its parking lot, as opposed to parking behind and WF on “main street”
4) SG gets big stores AND small stores, any number it wants
4) Reliance on a six-lane intersection at Greeley entrance as a main entrance to shopping center
These are all things that one Town Board or another or the Planning Board or County Planning Board did not want or advised against.
Madame Editor – thank you for your definition of strip center. You write – Strip center is chatecterized by a line of store fronts facing a large parking lot. Excuse me , wasn’t that the definition of strip mall? You just change a word and assign a new description to Whole Foods? Do you think we are stupid. The strip mall concept was changed last year. Besides you totally ignore the larger plan and fail to view the project in its entirety. You label Whole Foods a strip center but you totally ignore and dismiss the gym , the ancillary retail, the residential and the commercial components of CC. Looked at in its entirety ( Whole Foods in harmony with the rest of CC) it is not a strip center- not at all.
You should knock off your NIMBY bias – you are embarrasing yourself. We all see through it.
Christine – based on your response to 10514 it is clear that you and your minions have coined this phrase or borrowed the phrase “strip center”. The first time I read it was in Napoli’s recent letter. So now you adopted it it. Past planning board and current developer plans repeadtly refer to the design as town square. You have the right to rename and reclassify if you like but using negative descriptors only hurts your credibility. Fake is not a term used by any of the parties until you decided to use it. In your editors note you take it a step further when you say the layout ” degrades” the traditional neighborhood development chatecteristics ….
Once again you put the negative spin when it’s not necessarily so. Now you are an architect, a town planner, a real estate developer?? I agree with other comments – you are a NIMBY using your blog to promote your cause- your opinion. At the very least all of these are Op-Eds not articles or objective reporting.
when the Editor becomes the story. The slanted views presented in this article are not objective reporting but just opinions disguised as questions. And it is a poor attempt at that.
@ long time resident,
No, retail at CC will not be a big positive for all of us. That is simply not true and not supported by anything at all. Nothing. What you offer is a worthless lie.
What’s in a name? A Strip Mall or Strip Center by any other name would smell as bad.
To say you are splitting hairs is an understatement!, Twisted sister.
strip mall or strip center is no difference. It’s the editor splitting hairs. The point, which you clearly missed, is that it is neither. The design is called a Town Square concept. It was suggested by New Castle town planner to replace the original strip mall / strip center design. The use of “strip” is distasteful and conjures up negative optics. That is why Mr Napoli and Editor Yeres refer back to it. They want it viewed poorly and they are dishonest in their description. The point is that a town square design should be judged as a development that is home to Whole Foods, other retail, a gym as well as office space and condos. Taken as a complete picture there is no strip mall or strip center. That’s pure fiction. The editor knows this but she offers no Editors Note to set the record straight.
The comment above is spot on – these are opinions disguised as questions.
yellow journalism,
You really are full of crap. It should be viewed poorly. Our Planning Board views it negatively.
Everyone who understands the layout, the financials, the traffic nightmare, the harm to the surrounding neighborhood, the harm to the downtown hamlet knows that this is the wrong thing to do to the town. And, btw, we never did a study to learn if the majority of the town wants this,
Greenie wants it that is for sure. Brodsky wants it , that is for sure and Chapin, and tortured “financial” analysis wants it.
Who would have thought that Susan Carpenter , Robin Stout and the majority of the sitting board could wreck a town through ignorant and poorly though out strategies to make S. G, whole.
It is shameful.
How is CC a “Town Square” with parking lots in front of chain stores instead of sidewalks and pedestrians?
It’s a shell game, now you see it, now you don’t. The brochure pictures are nothing like the submitted plan. That’‘s why SG will not present the customary requirement, a three dimensional model.
Where are the answers to these questions T.B., ???????
How can you vote without answering these questions ??????
There is an election next year. ANYONE BUT GREENSTEIN !!!!!
To You have to be kidding, Twisted Sister and others debating strip mall vs strip center. Why bother? You are doing exactly what Napoli and Editor Yeres want you to do – that is focus on the negative “strip” chaercterization. They are promoting a false narrative. The current design for CC is not a strip center and it is not a strip mall.
The Town of New Castle commissioned / paid a professional firm to conduct 2 studies. In neither of AKRF’s studies is the development and specifically the Whole Foods component described as a strip center or strip mall. The developer has submitted multiple documents plans and paid for it’s own consultants study. Never do they call it a strip center. So who decided to rename and charectieize this as such? Napoli and Yetes. That’s who. Each has his/ her own agenda and it centers on trashing this development whenever they can.
The project will be great. It will be well designed – a true Yellow journalism, or the yellow press, is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.
If Rob is too in love with SG to be the tough negotiator he promised, maybe the PB will stand up for the town when it comes time for the site plan and make it a true TND. SG hides behind Whole Foods, but we never see any proof. We don’t even know what, if anything, WF is paying as the anchor. BTW, the “strip mall” term came from our current town supervisor. Hope we get a new choice for Supervisor other than Rob or some old board retread.
Hope we get a new choice for Supervisor other than Rob or some old board retread.
Looks like Jason is going to have a hard time too next year running for Supervisor.
@ Fake (Freudian slip?)
If only the town board did the careful research this reporter does and were as well informed.
Perhaps, then, they could answer her questions intelligently.
A strip is a strip is a strip. . . be it Mall or Center.
Agree with other commenters. No more Rob Greenstein.
Let’s start an “Anyone but RG” campaign now.
