Town Board Violates Law, Approves ShopRite

On Wednesday, May 13th, the Greenburgh Town Board, via a Zoom meeting, unanimously and we believe illegally approved a site plan application by Lewis Masters Holdings LP to demolish the multiplex cinema at 320 Saw Mill River Road (Route 9A) in Elmsford across from Sam’s Club and build a ShopRite supermarket. 

There were 2 Public Hearings held on the ShopRite development. The March 11th Public Hearing, held at Town Hall, had public participation but the April 22nd Public Hearing via a Zoom meeting was presumed to be illegal because of limited participation by the public. Numerous letters of concern were sent to the Town Board which were not acknowledged or heard by the public. 

The site, which had other retail space and still has the KFC and Taco Bell restaurant, covers 10 acres and is in between 9A and the Westchester Hills Condominium. Old Country Road, which runs uphill from Route 9A(east) is a well-traveled road used by school buses from 4 different public school districts as well as Private and Parochial Schools, residents and pedestrians. 

The roadway was originally the only access and egress for the 215 Westchester Hills Condominium owners until Executive Boulevard was created and joined Old Country Road at the top of the hill. Pocantico Park scatter site housing which is run by the Greenburgh Housing Authority, lies to the north. That is the side of the property where the developer plans to build the entrance way which will circle up to the new building.

The ShopRite supermarket will be 75,711 square feet including an accessory interior restaurant space together with approximately 10,765 square feet of attached separate retail space after they tear down the existing National Amusements multiplex cinema and other buildings which contained a number of small businesses.

The application was first submitted to the Town Board on April 15, 2019. However, Mr Feiner instructed the developer to meet with the area residents to get their buy-in. They met at the Westchester Hills Condominium’s Recreation Center. The room was full. And, full of it. Mr Feiner snuck in after the meeting had begun with his Town Board members. Once recognized, he took a lot of hits from residents. While most were okay with a ShopRite coming in, they emphatically insisted that they did not want a curb cut on Old Country Road with the subsequent truck traffic and even car traffic as it’s already a congested road. 

Another major concern raised by the residents of Orchard Lane, which abuts Old Country Road, is the issue of blasting and rock chipping. Their homes were built on cement slabs which contain pipes for radiant heat and water. This issue must be continuously monitored as demolition and construction proceeds.

Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner said, “This is positive news for the town especially during this difficult time in our history when so many residents are out of work due to COVID-19. There will be significant construction jobs and permanent job opportunities after the supermarket opens up.” There may be people out of work due to Covid-19 but Mr Feiner also favors keeping the economy shut down which would limit who and how many people may get construction jobs from this project. Our guess would be very few from the area.

The approval contains a number of conditions that the developer must meet. Some of these are:
• The use of LED and motion activated lighting;
• Putting in new sidewalks;
• Making modifications to Old Country Road such as mountable curbs and shifting lanes;
• Designing and installing public improvements such as an updated bus stop and traffic signal modifications;
• Planting additional evergreen screening and repairing fencing;
• Restricted hours for truck deliveries and operation of the trash compactor

All of the claims by the Town Board to not want to vote for this resulted in what was expected: a unanimous vote approving another one of Mr Feiner’s pet projects. The phony compassion from this Board has to stop. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.

Watching Your Rights Zoom Away

During the C-19 pandemic, more and more organizations have resorted to using conferencing applications such as GoToMeeting, WebEx, Skype, HangOuts, FaceTime or Zoom. Regardless of which one you’ve been forced to utilize whether for work, an organization you belong to or hanging out with friends and loved ones, the first broadcast usually starts with the moderator saying something akin to, “This is a new experience for most of us as we try to maintain some normalcy.”

The question that has arisen is to what extent should we, or could we, use these meetings (we’ll use Zoom as the defacto app) and how legal and binding are any decisions made during their use? Keep in mind we are not talking about family members or friends speaking amongst themselves. Fraternal organizations that hold Zoom meetings are able to discuss pertinent or time sensitive issues such as paying bills or taking actions that assist others in the community, such as checking up on elderly members, delivery of food and/or supplies to home-bound members.

But what of the Town Board or the School Board (or any official governmental Boards) using Zoom to make decisions. How binding are those decisions that are being rendered given the lack of community participation via online participation? While it’s certainly seductive for these conference call neophytes to use a new and unproven tool, is this really reliable or secure? For instance, in the part of Greenburgh that is referred to as North Elmsford, the Town Board is routinely green-lighting the desires of developers seeking to build a new ShopRite on the former Grand Union/Masters/UA Cinema location. They’ve already given enough of a nod to the developer to have them force all the tenants to vacate the shopping center space.

Still the bigger issue is that meetings held via Zoom, tremendously limits public participation in the requisite approval/disapproval process. Make no mistake, the Town Board has already decided to allow the project under threat from the developer that they will walk if they don’t get what they want! What? We are the residents, taxpayers and community. And, while we welcome a ShopRite in the community, we welcome it within the parameters that we want, what the community wants. At hand is the insistence by ShopRite to create/open an entrance off of Old Country Road, which parallels Orchard Lane, for tractor-trailer and smaller truck deliveries. This curb cut and traffic increase will definitively alter the traffic flow, congestion and quality of life for the residents already negatively impacted by 9A traffic at all hours of the day and night.

The issue warrants everyone who a) has an opinion about this significant change and b) would want to be heard regarding this, to be summarily disregarded, dismissed and disenfranchised by Mr Feiner and his Board as they choose to move the project forward via computer users only. This is illegal if the current laws mandate that the public participate with a Public Hearing which must be held for this proposal for everyone. Holding a Zoom public meeting illegally limits the decision to a handful of people who have computers and may know about this shifty and suspect move. We already know that Mr Feiner and his rubber stamp Board are always looking for ways to remove the residents from participation in Town events, but this gives them and entirely new and unencumbered way to do so!

The Town Board has already moved the ShopRite proposal forward, certified by the Town Board having already voted to approve a SEQRA Negative Declaration that indicates the ShopRite proposal will not have a negative environmental impact. Proof positive this is a done deal. The Sam’s Club fueling stations request is meeting a modicum amount of resistance. These two projects should be evaluated in tandem with each other as they flank both sides of 9A at a most congested area and promise to do more damage to an F-rated traffic zone!

Holding Zoom meetings or utilizing any other conferencing program during this pandemic can serve a purpose in the short-term. Taking advantage of a difficult situation to achieve an agenda does not. These actions to move Mr Feiner’s friends projects forward should not happen. But it will because this is Greenburgh. It’s time to get back to normal, but until we can, moratoriums should be placed on all projects whether underway or not. Salaries for all politicians should be reduced to $0, and not resumed until the public is back to work, at which point they be resumed, and not retroactively. We need the politicians to try to do the right thing by their constituents no matter how contemptuously they're being treated by them. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.

Duplicitous Meeting Obscures Truth - Again

To the uninitiated, when taxpayers receive a neighborhood invite from Mr Feiner, they think it’s something special. Such was the case on Saturday when they were invited to the former Multi-plex for a site visit and another meeting with all of the interested players seeking to build another ShopRite store in Westchester, this time in Greenburgh, known as North Elmsford. It will be directly across the street from Sam’s Club. The same diagrams that had been used back in June were regurgitated for this meeting. In fact, no changes had been made since the initial offering. The only difference this time is all of the players were willing to acknowledge what we had learned even before June, that this would be a new ShopRite supermarket.

One might wonder why ShopRite would want to build at this site? Location, location, location. Don’t be confused, it’s not a great location yet. It will take about two years or less depending on how much green-lighting they need from the Town Board once they take on Lead Agency status. ShopRite knows what we have been reporting for years. The Mt Pleasant portion of property adjacent to Greenburgh’s Northern Elmsford has discussions underway to be developed with numerous apartments, motel, etc., giving them a perfect position to cater to those families. Already existing residents will also benefit. We’re sure Mr Feiner had his hand in this offer as he traditionally is planning for projects several years into the future.

But here’s what doesn’t gel. Residents who participated with this site visit were told numerous things. In part, they heard Feiner-speak and the other part, code for done-deal. So the proposed ShopRite will be 75,711 square feet. Also proposed will be a yet-to-be-announced restaurant or retail business that will be 13,765 square feet in size. The proposal also includes an additional 3,000 square foot restaurant that should be close to the entrance/exit off of 9A. The 20,000 square foot multi-plex theater as well as the stores and bank will be demolished. When looking at the dimensional layout of the project, it’s been crafted to solely benefit the developer and ultimately, ShopRite, by moving the building closer to the Westchester Hills Condominiums and the Orchard Lane residents in the Beaver Hill community.

But this walk through was not about hearing the community residents’ concerns. Rather, it was the developer and Mr Feiner, along with his Town Board, and Commissioner Garrett Duquesne letting the residents know what they can expect with this project. There was nothing different this day from the previous meeting held in the Westchester Hills Condominium’s Rec Center room in June. Everyone here continued to say they had no objection to ShopRite coming into the space. What they all seemed united about was that they did not want an entrance/exit onto Old Country Road. They said an already dangerous area would be made worse by even more tractor-trailer and truck traffic as trucks currently use Old Country Road as a cut through to get to the businesses in the Executive Boulevard complex, which is zoned for light commercial businesses. Old Country Road, which currently prohibits commercial traffic, is the only access/exit road for the Westchester Hills Condominium complex.

The developer’s plans call for major working of the property’s grade from what it is now to a more leveled one. The excuse given was that the zoning requires it and they also wanted to control runaway shopping carts. That was almost laughable. Mr Feiner, his Town Board, and/or his hand-picked Planning and Zoning Boards give out zoning variances like candy at Halloween. Some recent projects where this was done was on Old Colony Road for steep slope; Brightview Assisted Living for setbacks; Deli Delicious for setbacks; Westhab for setbacks, building size; Shelbourne Assisted Living, with a 3,000% variance and setbacks; and on a Central Avenue office building at Ardsley Road and Central Park Avenue for setbacks, undersized building parking and structure heights.

In fact, every developer that pre-meets with Mr Feiner privately before they submit plans at a Town Board work session already know what few obstacles they may face. Regardless, this was a fake argument to make for this crowd because they don’t follow these Boards, nor understand that this deal is already underway. How do we know? Because everyone from the applicant’s side, Mr Feiner and Walter Simon, the Chair of the Planning Board said that once the Planning Board has the project on their agenda, residents can come and speak about it. This is interesting because the Planning Board doesn’t allow comments to be made.

So, looking at the unrevised site plans that everyone struggled to see because the presenters stood by the front of the building’s glass doors and windows with the bright sun blinding the crowd of about 50 or so people, we were shown how the trucks will be coming in and going on a two-way roadway on the perimeter of the property. They will head northward, making a right-hand curved turn toward the rear of the building, pulling past the rear loading docks with their tractor-trailer trucks and then backing into the loading dock proper. Once unloading is completed, the trucks will pull out onto Old Country Road. The unchanged site plans also allow the tractor-trailers to enter from the proposed Old Country Road entrance. An unmentioned aside is that the condominiums are built on what used to be marshland. The piping for the condominium’s storm water, waste, etc., were not built for truck traffic, but for residential vehicles. Let’s not forget that there have been numerous shifts in that entire complex and Old Country Road itself as settling and sinking still occurs.

We see no reason that the developer cannot make adjustments to their plans to be a good neighbor with the three existing residential surrounding this property. Instead, they’ve dug their heels in and continued with the phony slope argument. The Town is famous for allowing steep slope variances and could do so here. The trucks can continue around the building and come down the south side of the drive and exit at the same light that they enter. This isn’t rocket science and in this day and age, computers are doing the reworking once new coordinates are put into the developer’s CAD system. The next step in this scam would have been for Mr Feiner to offer to help create a neighborhood committee so they can meet with a few neighbors to discuss this. He prefers this angle as he likes to try to talk to one or two people at a time to sway their opinion. But since he didn’t offer this, it proves our “done-deal” theory.

This may not be the right project for this property. On a much smaller level, when people are looking to purchase a home, they shop and look at numerous properties before making a decision. Frankly, if there’s something they don’t like, the driveway is too long or too small, or, they don’t like the schools, or the area floods, whatever the reason, you walk away. Will ShopRite walk away? Maybe they desire this property enough to work with the neighbors, maybe not. Another one of Mr Feiner’s ploys is trying to coerce neighborhoods to accept what he wants by saying you don’t know what else might come in here. It could be a methadone clinic or a homeless hotel. It doesn’t have to be if he stuck to the Town’s Comprehensive Plan.

We don’t have to accept this either. You can keep pressure on him, his Town Board and yes, ShopRite. You’re entitled to have a good quality of life and what you want, just as they can want what they want. The difference is that we live here – they are outsiders looking for us to give into their pressure. We’re convinced that this not a good deal as it stands. Let them come back to the Town and its residents with an reworked proposal and see if there can be a compromise. It’s what will make for A Better Greenburgh.

ShopRite Welcomed AND Rejected By Community

We've previously written about the Multi-Plex movie theater closing on Saw Mill River Road in what's referred to as North Elmsford. The theater  has finally officially closed about two weeks or so ago. A ShopRite supermarket is planned to be built after the movie theater building is torn down. While the Town and the attorney for the property owner are not at liberty to say which store brand it is, many in Town Hall have shared the information. We believe this was to quell the rumors that a Walmart, a Wegmans, CVS and other stores of various names would be moving in. Ironically, a Grand Union, Masters Department Store and later a Masters Liquor store resided there for years many years ago.

The Town's Planning Commissioner Garrett Duquesne agreed to meet with the Westchester Hills Condominium Association, Beaver Hill Civic Association, the Pocantico Park residents and the ShopRite developer's attorney, William Null of Cuddy and Feder. While many were saying this was a ShopRite, Mr Null remained steadfast in refusing to acknowledge his client until the contracts are signed and he gets the go-ahead to release the name. While Freedom of Information Law requests take agonizingly long to get from Town Hall, this information is readily shared in an otherwise porous Town Hall.

There was an overhead projector set up displaying the first slide of their presentation.  The grade, or pitch of the parking lot and how it slopes down to Saw Mill River Road (9A), is no longer allowed by code and will pose one problem for constructing a new supermarket in that location. The excuse for lowering the lot and reducing the grade was to stop car doors from swinging open and hitting cars next to them. The other reason is to stop runaway shopping carts from soaring down the lot hitting parked vehicles, people or going into traffic. Who knew supermarket parking lots could be so perilous?

But what would likely be the most vociferous complaint of everyone in attendance was when the slide was changed to show traffic patterns. Those in attendance didn’t even wait for the explanation and jumped on the small detail of the parking lot opening onto Old Country Road. 
“Is that parking lot opening onto Old Country Road?” someone shouted out. Several people jumped into that conversation.
“We already have too much traffic on that road as it is with cars AND trucks coming and going to Executive Boulevard businesses.”
“We’ve had cars go into our backyards,” claimed a homeowner on Orchard Lane.

“We're okay with a supermarket as long as it doesn’t open up onto Old Country Road!” The developer also had several variances it would need for the project: an increase in the exterior lighting from 14ft to 20ft; a 24-7, 365 days a year operation, increased number of sign and sizes of signs and a reduced amount of parking spaces from what is currently there.

Regardless of what the representatives tried to discuss from that point on, residents were only interested in one thing: not opening access to Old Country Road. Some even suggested removing some parking spaces to accommodate the trucks and tractor trailers entering from 9A going up the drive on the left-hand (north) side drive, making their delivery and exiting on the southern side back to the traffic light entrance where they came in.

Also in attendance and each sitting by themselves were Mr Feiner, Mr Jones and Mr Sheehan. At one point Mr Jones and Mr Feiner spoke and when Mr Feiner identified himself, a long-time resident said, “Wait, you’re Paul Feiner?” He waffled a bit because while someone else had shouted out this was a done-deal, Mr Feiner’s classic two-step shuffle veered the conversation toward coming up with a compromise --a classic ploy when his original decision bites him in the butt.

After pitching what might be an alternative, the attorney William Null of Cuddy and Feder said they can revisit the plans but there is little to no room for alterations from this plan. Here’s what we think happened: ShopRite and their representatives met with Mr Feiner and maybe one or two Board members along with Mr Duquesne to discuss redeveloping the property. He either told them or strongly alluded that he would make the Town Board the lead agency for the project and as long as the project fits the zoning, they build a sidewalk to nowhere, somewhere to be determined later, make a donation or two to some fund within the Town, donate a fire truck, etc., and they'll sail right through the approval process. Once all the ducks were in the flooded 9A row, he had one more stipulation, which was present it to the condominium owners.

Most people in most neighborhoods do not pay attention to what is going on in the Town. We call it OIMBY. People get involved when it’s Only In My Back Yard. It’s then that they show they are concerned with their quality of life, their families, work, school and affordability. This project will have a direct impact on all of those for the people in the immediate area, Beaver Hill and the housing to the north that abuts this property. Despite the fairy tale they were being told, Mr Feiner and his Town Board do not really care about them (“Wait, you’re Paul Feiner?”) which is why this moved ahead to this point. Here, the populace has been awoken only to learn their well-being was again ignored for what Mr Feiner wants. He should have had the community meeting before he had the developer meeting. But he really is out of touch with the Town constituency and once again, he did not do what is right for the residents. This has to change. We’re sure there will be more to this story. It’s what will make A Better Greenburgh.