Investors hoping to build large apartment complex at 1 Half Moon Bay Drive withdraw their petition to amend village zoning code.
A long saga ends, but will a new one soon begin?
As sharp-eyed Board of Trustees agenda watchers already know, on January 20 attorneys for 1 HMB Property Owner, LLC—the hopeful developers of the old “Finkelstein property”—wrote to Croton Mayor Brian Pugh to say that they would not be moving forward with their plans.
Last September, Pugh announced that the village had decided not to approve the developers’ original proposal, which was to build 280 apartment units at the site. The Board of Trustees in effect sent the developers back to the drawing board to come up with something more politically palatable, given the considerable opposition in the village to the project and the upcoming November elections for two trustee seats.
Thus ended the first phase of a project that had been proposed in July of last year, and which the village had been actively considering. (In reality, a few village officials had been talking with the Finkelstein family about the prospects of developing the property since February of 2022, discussions which were not made public to village residents.)
In the January 20 letter to Pugh, attorneys with the firm of Zarin & Steinmetz LLP, representing the developers, gave no explanation for their decision. We waited to publish this update, hoping that the development firm or its attorneys might provide some additional comment and explanation. However, after repeated requests, there has been no response from the parties.
It does seem likely, however, that the partners did their homework and calculated that they could not make a sufficient profit with much less than the 280 units they had originally proposed.
While we can only speculate, it also seems likely that a new proposal for development of the property will be forthcoming in the near future. The lead partner in the consortium, Monday Properties, paid $23,800,000 to the Finkelstein family to buy the property (which is still being leased out as a tire warehouse), taking out a mortgage from the family for $16,000,000—meaning that the family, which is part of the partnership, effectively retains control of the site. But Monday Properties has had significant financial problems recently, and it seems uncertain whether it will continue to be part of any future project, or rather bail out and turn the property back to the family.
Just what that proposal might turn out to be is anyone’s guess at this point, although it seems likely to be some kind of housing project. One thing seems clear, however: It will not continue to be a tire warehouse forever.
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Instead of any kind of apartment bldg. how about single family homes. This would be more in keeping with the aesthetics of this village. Of course no one would be making $$$$$ but it would be more in keeping with this village.