January 02, 2018

Edge-On-Hudson Progresses Toward Phase-One Construction

Robert Kimmel
The Hudson Independent

Naming a road “Legend Drive” is surely an appropriate action for the Village of Sleepy Hollow. As the major mixed-use development Edge-on-Hudson progresses, that is the name given recently to the first street completed on the 67-acre complex being built on the village’s riverfront.

Legend Drive leads to Phase One, the first of three districts to be constructed on the full site. A builder for that initial phase of 306 residential units will be announced this month, and a vertical building is expected to begin this coming spring following the village Planning Board’s approval of the final design.

Sixty-one units of affordable housing are to be included among those Phase One units situated within the eastern flank of the development. Forty affordable senior units and 21 affordable work force units are planned.

Ahead of schedule, a new roundabout linking River Street and Beckman Street was completed last month. It becomes the entrance to the $1 billion development, which overall will include 1,177 residential units, ranging from loft-style apartments to four-story condominium homes, as well as townhouses.

In addition to the residential units, there will be a 140-room boutique hotel, and “over 100,000 square feet of shopping and dining,” according to the developers, a partnership of SunCal and Diversified Realty Advisors. Some 35,000 square feet of office space is also planned, as are 24 acres of parks and gardens, including a riverwalk promenade stretching about a mile and a half along the Hudson. Completion of the entire complex could take at least another half dozen years.

This past year, close to 250,000 cubic yards of fill were hauled onto the location by both barge and truck, according to a spokesperson for the developers, Burns Patterson. The ground fill followed the removal of huge concrete slabs that served as the foundation for buildings of the General Motors auto factory that was operating on the site from 1896 to 1996. No additional land fill would likely be hauled onto the site until Phase Three work begins, Patterson noted.

In order to eliminate problems with ground settling, the street routes had to be topped first with five feet of soil to compress landfill, and then removed months later for the road beds construction. More than 1,600 linear feet of gas pipe was installed on the property, and 3,000 linear feet of electrical conduit, and extensive storm drain, communications conduit and additional infrastructure improvements have been completed.

Sleepy Hollow Mayor Ken Wray has estimated that the village’s population, now about 10,000, could grow by as much as a third when Edge-on-Hudson is totally built. In late 2014, when the full 96-acre GM site was purchased for $39,500,000 by the developers, by agreement, the 28 acres, east of the Metro-North Railroad lines, known as the East Parcel, were given over to the Sleepy Hollow Local Development Corporation (SHLDC) for use by the village.

The projected development of the village acreage is expected to include a community center, a Department of Public Works facility, a mixed-use synthetic turf athletic field, an outdoor performance amphitheater, a skate park, and the expansion of a “Great Lawn” for passive green space and a terraced community plaza. A Continental Street extension bridge has also been presented in the planning, as well as a pedestrian connection to Barnhardt Park.

Two acres of the East Parcel were sold by the SHLDC to Metro North after it was discovered Metro North did not own the acres it was using as a railcar siding, going back to when GM shipped its cars from the site by train. Metro North paid a one-time fee of $284,731 for the past use of the tracks, since the GM sale, and is paying $13,109 each month for their current use to the SHLDC. It had the option of purchasing the track’s site from the SHLDC for $1.57 million before the end of this past year, but has not done that.

The village has the benefit of collecting more than $800,000 in annual taxes from the Edge-on-Hudson developers as work continues on that project. Once the site is completed, totalled real estate taxes for Sleepy Hollow are expected to reach many times that amount.

As for the new thoroughfare of Legend Drive, there is talk that the famed Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” might now find even more room to ride as his stead gallops about the village.