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Community Corner

Downtown Ossining Development

Ossining’s  “top-down” planning approach for developing Downtown Ossining runs counter to the needed revitalization of this neighborhood. A venture like this requires that the Ossining community buy into it at the very beginning and not later. While it is true that the community has been presented with several alternatives, all of them support the Village Administration’s vision of a densely built, out of scale city. Despite their protestations that the massive block representations of the structures are not final and that there will be later consultations with relevant community boards like the Historic Preservation Commission and others, the fact remains that the major decisions have already been made and anything after that is literally window-dressing.

Regardless of what the buildings will actually look like, they will be massive, block-out light and air and overwhelm the immediate surrounding neighborhood. Two of the most negatively impacted buildings will be the one story commercial building on Spring Street just to the south of the parking lot. Another is the Calvary Baptist Church on St Paul’s Place. This building dates back to 1834 and is on the National and Village Historic Registers. (Incidentally, this building was damaged during the construction of the nearby Post Office several years ago and given its great age, the chances for further harm should not be lightly dismissed.

During the recent public presentation the consultant group made reference to the idea that in order to attract developers the project would have to be large enough to turn a profit. This is true. The more rentable space there is the more developers like it but the reference is to major developers and the fact is that there are smaller developers that are ready, willing and capable to take on smaller-sized projects, under the right conditions.

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I suggest that the Village give away its parking lots to those developers who will build a smaller-scaled, less dense projects that are in general sync with the architecture of the near-by historic district. Further, these developers should get a five-year tax holiday. The fact is that these lots have not produced  tax revenue for 50 years  and a few more years  of no taxes is not going to make up for all that time. Furthermore ownership of buildings and rental tenancy in them should be conditioned on membership fees of a Business Improvement District in order to finance maintenance security and other quality of life projects commercial Additionally, some of the lost revenue will come from the sales taxes that the new stores will generate and we should not discount that existing neighboring business will see a surge in sales as well. In addition, the State of New York has a number of tax and other incentives to bring business into Downtown Ossining as this area meets all the criteria of the State’s various economic development programs.


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