Deeds and Leases

This story has been burning up the wires today. For a long time now the SFC $1.6 billion dollar plan to redevelop the Yonkers waterfront has been inching forward at a snails pace. Without getting too political here (and I DO have strong opinions on how this development has been moved forward to the present), The current pronouncement, while not a surprise is a huge disappointment.

There has been ongoing doubts about the ability of Cappelli to actually finance this project, especially as the economy has sunk into a sharp recession. What bank on Earth would lend on a ballpark which its developer admits is not a money maker, and its presence it to only be a “signature” of the project. Lending on bondable leases; absolutely. Lending on a money loser; not so much.

Earlier this week the City Council held a closed door secret meeting with SFC, obstensively to finalize the Land Disposition Agreement (LDA). This document sets forth the final terms of the agreement with Yonkers, as well as the giveaway below-market price (oops sorry political) the City is going to sell its land to the developer. Of course that is not exactly what happened.

Suddenly the $1.6 billion dollar development, after all this time and work was only $500 million. Obviously much of it is not to be built (at least for now), and the ’signature” ballpark will simply be a “shell’ of a building.

Well, after being “shell-shocked”  after reading this, my question is if SFC could not get financing together for a guaranteed money-loser of a Fully-Constructed ballpark, what chance do they have of getting the money to build one of the biggest movie back-lot props in existence?

I completely understand that SFC has to scale back due to the lack of financing. It is simply unfortunate that they misrepresented to the public the fact that they had financing for so long, and that despite a lot of prodding, the City Council did not push them harder into disclosing the details.

Now we have the ghost of a project. More may eventually be built, but how much is still ceded to SFC? All the land? Time limits? We do not know any of this because the details are being withheld from the public. I have no doubt in time all of the dirt will be leaked, but the Council President could have taken a leadership role and treated the public with respect. Lack of disclosure on such an important subject is not terribly smart politically or otherwise. We can only hope that he will do the right thing.

The LoHud article that follows presents the situation as we now know it. I am sure things will change as time moves on…..

Len Maniace
lmaniace@LoHud.com

YONKERS - The city’s massive downtown redevelopment effort could turn out a good deal less massive - at least initially - under a new plan released to the City Council.

Struever Fidelco Cappelli is proposing a minimum development plan estimated at $500 million rather than the $1.6 billion cost of the full plan, though the builders could go back to the ambitious plan when market conditions improve, three council members said yesterday.

The minimum plan allows the builders to forgo building more than 1,300 apartments: eliminating two 25-story towers along the Hudson River and both apartment towers atop SFC’s signature project, River Park Center, east of City Hall.

It also calls for only the bare shell of a stadium at River Park Center, rather than a built-out 6,500-seat baseball park, which was to sit atop an 11-story entertainment-and-retail complex that remains in the plan. The plan puts on hold a hotel and office building to be built across Nepperhan Avenue from City Hall. It would leave intact the art deco City Hall annex at 87 Nepperhan Ave., which some residents have attempted to preserve.

The plan was described yesterday in interviews by Democratic Council Majority Leader Sandy Annabi, Republican Council Minority Leader Liam McLaughlin and Councilwoman Patricia McDow, D-1st District, who represents the development area.

The scaled-down version was contained in the proposed contract to sell nearly 16 acres of city-controlled land to SFC, which had been worked out between the city and the developer.

City Hall yesterday postponed the expected release of details on that land deal. Mayoral spokesman David Simpson said the council and Mayor Phil Amicone agreed to hold off on the release. City Council President Chuck Lesnick confirmed that.

Annabi, however, said she believed the public needed to know about the changes.

“This is a much different plan than we were originally looking at,” Annabi said.

Lesnick had previously described the minimum development plan as a way to allow the city to reclaim the land if the developer had trouble building the project.

McLaughlin, however, said the sizable subsidies and public works planned by the city were based on a much larger development. They include $160 million in infrastructure improvements and roughly $50 million in tax breaks from the city’s Industrial Development Agency.

McLaughlin said he believed SFC probably would go beyond the minimum, at least when it came to the two waterfront housing towers, an attractive site for high-end condominium housing, once the market recovered.

“If you’re only requiring the minimum, then maybe only the minimum gets built,” he said. “Optimistically, hopefully, everything gets built out, but I don’t think the public wants to hear ‘hopefully.’ ”

McDow said she was concerned that the minimum development plan would jeopardize 194 affordable housing units that SFC previously agreed to build or finance.

Also, she said, a major cut in housing would hurt downtown businesses.

“We have merchants downtown who are hanging on by a thread, hoping that they are going to have new bodies coming downtown,” McDow said. “I think the merchants are going to be very disappointed.”