Hours before Town Board votes on zoning—8:15 p.m. @ Chappaqua Library—Planning Board finalizes its comments on Chappaqua Crossing
Thursday, December 18, 2014

Editor’s Note:  Planning Board members followed up their Monday discussion of Chappaqua Crossing’s application for retail zoning with final comments to the Town Board. The 8-point letter ends: “In sum, after all this time and effort, the Planning Board believes that we need to look beyond the applicant’s immediate financial needs and legal posturing and get this right.  Frankly, a broader enabling law should work better than the more limited approval that [Summit Greenfield] seek[s].  At the same time, broader enabling legislation should serve as an important signal from the Town to the applicant that there is an expectation that we need to continue to work jointly toward a ‘best’ plan.”

December 16, 2015
~ from Bedford 2020

Bedford 2020 wishes to join with the Town of New Castle, Chappaqua, and the surroundings areas of Westchester County and beyond in paying tribute to Henriette Suhr for her untiring efforts to enhance the quality of the environment for the benefit of not only the current inhabitiants of planet Earth but primarily for future generations.

Thursday, December 18, 2014
~ from the Town of New Castle

Between October 1 and December 1 New Castle Police Officers issued 135 tickets to drivers caught using a hand held electronic device. The tickets were issued as part of the Town’s “Hands Off the Phone and On the Wheel” initiative.

Town Board will vote on the zoning legislation at 8:15 p.m. on Thursday, December 18, at Chappaqua Library Theater
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
by Christine Yeres

Last night, Bob Kirkwood, chair of Planning Board, proposed a way forward with the Chappaqua Crossing application that could lessen the impacts of the proposed retail development.  In a letter shared with Town Board members, Kirkwood proposed that that the Town Board give the town and the developer more flexibility to plan the site as genuine mixed-use.  Instead of three disparate office, residential and retail zones, he suggested, maintain the overall cap for retail of 120,000 square feet (and office space of 500,000 square feet), but draw a boundary around the entire property designating it as “mixed use.”  The single “mixed use” zoning could permit uses to move or mingle and create “traditional neighborhood development” conditions as both county and town Planning Boards have consistently called for over the 2.5 years of reviewing the application.

December 12, 2014

Editor’s Note:  What follows is an op-ed + public comment.  Since today is the deadline for comments on the proposed rezoning of Chappaqua Crossing as a retail shopping center, I am submitting into the record an email discussion with Town Board and Board of Education members.  It was triggered by my email to them suggesting they consider a roundabout rather than a “signalized” six-lane intersection at the high school entrance.  Roundabouts have been proven safer for pedestrians and vehicles that conventional intersections with traffic lights.  In the group email below, Supervisor Greenstein and Board of Ed members Jeffrey Mester and Vicky Tipp weighed in.  Thanks to a reference by Mester to a previous article in NCNOW, I found that the Town’s traffic consultant Michael Galante had told Board of Ed members in August of 2013 that only 5% of traffic could be “counted on” to use the back road into Chappaqua Crossing; the Greeley entrance and the main entrance on Bedford Road would serve as main access drives.

December 12, 2014
by Christine Yeres

Speaking for neighbors in Lawrence Farms East, Bill Devaney challenged the work of Summit Greenfield’s traffic consultant, John Collins, with a report of his own.  In the December 9 continuation of the public hearing on Chappaqua Crossing, Devaney asked Town Board counsel Nick Ward-Willis to confirm that the State would require Summit Greenfield to construct all roadway improvements before any certificate of occupancy were issued. Ward-Willis did so, explaining that Summit Greenfield cannot get a building permit until New York State’s Department of Transportation has approved Summit Greenfield’s proposed road improvements or “mitigations,” and cannot obtain a certificate of occupancy until those improvements are completed. Devaney then read sections of the report he had commissioned from an independent traffic consultant.