Town Board Caught Napping

Citing a failure to accurately report the news and events of Westchester by the Journal News and other smaller area newspapers, ABG has learned that a new weekly local newspaper will be launched in the near future. “When the Gannett Corporation sucked up all the local editions of our community newspapers and put them under one banner as the Journal News, they created a huge paper with a talented staff but never ran it well. In fact, they ran it into the ground,” our source explained. ABG welcomes this new addition if they live up to their promise of not catering to the status quo with politicians and the like by ignoring the real or underlying story.

Case in point? This Monday night at Greenburgh Town Hall will be a public hearing for the re-striping and a few other minor changes in store for the Greenburgh Shopping Center between under the guise of improvements from the landlord seeking to perform re-striping of the existing parking lot, creating more parking for the disabled (re-striping), new crosswalks (re-striping) and stop signs (to coincide with re-striping), new shopping cart carriages, improvements in traffic flow (re-striping) and pedestrian safety enhancements and new ramps by the cinema for the disabled.

Why would this re-striping take an exhaustive plan and presentation from the landlord to the Town Board at the November 24th Work Session? Because the Town's Building Department and the Town Board dropped the ball! About two years ago the shopping center landlords took it upon themselves to re-stripe the parking lot without Town permits, plans or a public hearing, altering the already awkward and outdated driving patterns originated when the shopping center was created.

In true “Deflection Mode”, Mr Feiner claimed at the Work Session that the shopping center is very busy and cited increased activity because Acme supermarket has opened in place of the previous A&P. ABG estimates the activity to be about the same as it was when the A&P was still open and operating there. The changeover between the stores’ ownership, closing, restocking and opening took about two days. What he failed to pontificate on is that he, his Board and his Building Department completely ignored the new striping the landlord “just did” on their own, apparently during the night. So how did they find out about their blunder?

At a regular Town Board meeting, with the help of Ella Preiser and Madelon O’Shea of the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations, Worthington Woodlands Civic Association President and community activist Dorrine Livson brought up the fact that the lot had had been re-striped, possibly creating several driving and pedestrian hazards. The Board remained immobile. Then the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations was made aware of the issue from Ms Livson and got behind her. Together they went to the Commissioner of Community Development and Conservation and the Building Department. Perhaps when Mr Feiner realized the Town might have missed out on a fee or a fine that could be levied against the landlord, the Board began to pay attention.

Ms Livson’s diligence, along with that of the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations, should be applauded for being watchdogs of the Town Board and Mr Feiner. Too often we see Mr Feiner cater to developers and favored landlords with their projects. How one slipped by him is, frankly, astonishing. As a note, you may recall Ms Livson went to court seeking Mr Feiner and the Town release a copy of the frequently used GBList to her. They refused and a judge has mandated it. The Town is appealing that decision. ABG believes more information, unfiltered, needs to flow to the residents and taxpayers and residents. To that end, we pledge to continue doing just that. We also welcome this new newspaper and hope they will add another valuable and serious voice to the mix. It’s what will make for A Better Greenburgh.

Best Market Moving Into Mrs Green's Location

As we have previously posted, Mrs. Green's Natural Market is closing its Hartsdale location. However, the good news for area residents is that the Central Park Avenue store will reopen in only a few days while a new supermarket opens under the "Best Market" name. Best Market is a supermarket operator based in Long Island, opening their first store in the Lower Hudson Valley at this location. The new store is not a natural foods type of store but will offer a full line of produce, meat and deli departments.

ABG staffers took a quick look into Mrs Green's late Wednesday afternoon. They were in the process of a 50%-off liquidation sale. We spoke with one of the store employees whose family had been in the supermarket business for years. He felt the store was too big for what they offered, too limited in what they offered, too expensive for the area and unable to generate the sales volume they needed to succeed.

Mrs. Green's has locations in Rye, Eastchester and Tarrytown and is expecting to lease space in Rivertowns Square, the new development under construction in Dobbs Ferry by the Saw Mill River parkway. 

Best Market touts freshness and value of its perishable foods, with prices described as "middle of the road". They will take over the Mrs Green's store on Thursday when they will undergo merchandising, branding, stocking and general preparation changes. They will be opening by this coming Tuesday. Our source at Mrs Green's told us that Best Markets has offered jobs to many of the Mrs Green's staff.

While not pertaining directly to Greenburgh, but the shift in our area due to the A&P's bankruptcy, a DeCicco Family Market is set to open in place of the shuttered A&P at 132 Bedford Road in Katonah. That store will open in about a year from now.

After a blight of supermarkets having left the area, it's reassuring to see new ones joining our communities. We're hopeful for the success of these stores and wish them well. It's what will help make A Better Greenburgh.