My community spotlight series takes a look at some of the interesting businesses and establishments that give New Rochelle its unique character and about which many residents may be unaware.

Trinity St. Paul’s Church at 311 Huguenot Street has long been one of our community’s most beloved historic sites (with many connections to New Rochelle’s original Huguenot settlers), as well as a vibrant house of worship. Now, with the establishment of the Parish House PAC, Trinity St. Paul’s can lay claim to another distinction: performance and arts center.

Spearheaded by local entertainment producer Eric Woodlin, the PAC House Theater has seating for more than 100 and has already featured outstanding performances from Blues Mothers, Helen Sung’s Electric Company, and Spare Change Comedy.

At look ahead at February’s line-up demonstrates the breadth of offerings. On February 11th, singer, songwriter, and guitarist KJ Denhert performs with an acclaimed group of musicians. On February 18th, five NYU Tisch School MFA students take the stage to present a theater festival of short plays. And on February 25th, there will be a reading of an original play “The Cupcake Conspiracy” by Westchester’s C.J. Ehrlich and Philip J. Kaplan.

You can learn more and get performance details at the Parish House PAC website. And you can reserve seats at SmartTix (212)-868-4444.

The Parish House PAC is also open to the public for special event rentals, theater and music productions. Those Interested in booking the venue should send an email to parishhousepac@gmail.com.

As described in this post, the City aims to undertake a comprehensive review of municipal operations, service levels, and spending priorities, with the goal of improving efficiency and better respecting resource constraints in coming years.

During the past two weeks, the City Council appointed fifteen citizen volunteers to lead this effort. They are (in alphabetical order): Judith Berger, David Bieber, Michael Boyle Sr., Emily Bromberg, Kyran Cassidy, Matthew Costa, Michael D’Ambrosio, Jeffrey Hastie, Linda Kelly-Fauci, Bo Kemp, Todd Kern, Martha Lopez-Hanratty, David Peters, Ann Rolett, and John Rorer. Together, they bring to this challenge diverse perspectives and a wealth of experience in financial and organizational analysis. I am grateful to each of the Panel members for their anticipated service.

From this outstanding group, the Council selected Todd Kern to serve as the Panel’s Chairperson, a difficult role that demands a serious time commitment and a talent for collaborative leadership. Todd is more than up to the job, as you can see from his background, and we are lucky that he has consented to this assignment. We’ll also benefit from the pro bono consulting services of North Avenue Research, led by New Rochelle resident Mark Grotevant.

The number of qualified applicants for the Panel exceeded the number of available positions. As a result, we had no choice but to turn down many offers from capable residents. The Panel’s activities should include opportunities for public input, so I hope that those who were not selected will still choose to contribute to this process.

I will be a member of the Panel myself and look forward to rolling up my sleeves and taking an active role in its deliberations.

The Panel will convene in February and work through July, with recommendations generated in time to help shape New Rochelle’s 2013 budget.

The Wall Street Journal this weekend published a positive overview of New Rochelle’s real estate market, drawing particular attention to the several large developments that have transformed New Rochelle’s downtown since the 1990s. The Journal also notes the effect the current economic downturn has had on new construction, but overall sees continuing progress in the city’s downtown and shoreline, while praising the neighborhoods that have made New Rochelle an attractive place to live for decades.

For several years, New Rochelle has worked with developers Forest City Residential to improve the Echo Bay waterfront. The potential of our shoreline is significant — the right kind of development could enhance recreational opportunities, strengthen neighborhoods, and improve our economy. But achieving these goals means surmounting significant environmental and financial hurdles. The complexities of the site, together with the weakness of the national economy, have forced us to delay the project and to reevaluate many of its components.

The public-private agreement that describes a project’s components and defines the responsibilities of involved parties is called a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). When the City Council last extended Forest City’s MOU one year ago, we simultaneously launched analyses of: (1) the public costs and benefits associated with waterfront development; (2) options for the modernization of the City’s public works yard; and (3) the adaptive re-use potential of the former Armory on East Main Street. These studies were funded by Forest City Residential, but conducted independently by the City, without any influence from the developer.

Now that these studies have been completed, the City Council, City staff, and the developers need a little time to digest the information and consider the prospects and terms for moving forward. With this in mind, the City Council voted last night to extend Forest City’s MOU by 60 days. The vote should not be seen as a judgment on the merits of the project, but rather as a brief interim step intended to ensure that decision-making is guided by a complete understanding of our choices.

When the 60-day extension expires in the late winter/early spring, we’ll have a much bigger debate about whether and how to renew our partnership with Forest City. I remain fully committed to the goal of revitalizing New Rochelle’s waterfront and will keep that objective foremost in mind as we evaluate next steps.

About 20,000 square feet of retail space, new public parking to replace an aging and obsolete garage, and more than 500 high-quality apartments, containing residents with annual spending power in the tens of millions. These are the essential features of a major new mixed-use project, proposed to be sited on the Church-Division and Prospect lots, half a block south of Main Street. If fully realized, this development would have a significant positive effect on the physical fabric and economic vibrancy of our downtown, while also helping New Rochelle overcome a recession-induced lull in private commercial investment.

The developer of this project would be the Albanese Corporation, a highly respected and successful team, responsible for designing and constructing much of Battery Park City, including the Solaire and the Visionaire, two of the most admired residential “green” buildings in the nation.

The project is enormously complicated in every respect. Construction and demolition must be coordinated in a delicate dance to provide adequate parking availability at all times. Housing must be introduced on a rolling basis to ensure that supply does not outpace demand. Federal, state, and local revenue streams would impact affordability standards and rent levels. And the first phase must be capable of standing on its own, in case the full project can not be accomplished. Tax incentives would be necessary to finance the project, but taxpayers would be in the black, especially when the cost of the alternative (that is, improving parking without a development agreement) is factored into the equation. In its totality, the project illustrates the difficult trade-offs that cities like New Rochelle must consider in order to attract beneficial investment. It’s quite a juggling act, but worth it.

You can find additional details in this presentation, made to the City Council on January 10th. As you view the presentation, please keep in mind that the pictures are NOT renderings of the project; they are intended only to illustrate massing and approximate scale.

Like all major developments, the Albanese project must jump over several regulatory and approval hurdles before it can proceed. A more careful examination could result in either the developer or the City pulling back. And the Council will not make a final judgment until a full environmental review is conducted, along with public hearings.

With all those caveats, I am excited. This effort is fully consistent with the City’s strategy of attracting transit-oriented development that gives residents, shoppers and commuters more choices in their lives, while gradually strengthening our economy and tax base.

The status and potential relocation of New Rochelle’s Public Works Yard on East Main Street has stirred a long-running and sometimes heated debate. With the release of a new, detailed and conclusive engineering study, that debate should now be over.

The study, delivered to the City Council this week and illustrated in this presentation, leaves little doubt that the Public Works Yard should be relocated to a site near Beechwood Avenue (adjacent to I-95), and that doing so would (a) save millions of dollars for taxpayers and (b) free up the Echo Bay waterfront for higher and better uses and benefits.

In a press release on this subject, City Manager Chuck Strome put it well: “New Rochelle’s Public Works Yard must be modernized to meet current and future service demands and avert the ongoing, escalating cost of emergency repairs. Further delay could expose taxpayers to significant risks, while raising the cost of inevitable and unavoidable infrastructure expenses.”

Here are the key facts and conclusions:

• Constructing a new Public Works Yard on Beechwood Avenue would save taxpayers more than $3 million, compared to the cost of modernizing the Public Works Yard at its present East Main Street location. The estimated price tag for the Beechwood site is approximately $13 million, while the estimated price tag for the East Main Street site is approximately $16 million, and that excludes the additional East Main expense of developing and operating a temporary facility during the construction period.
• The Beechwood site meets all current and projected operational standards and spatial requirements for the Department of Public Works and has already been rigorously reviewed under the terms of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA.)
• Once the Public Works Yard is moved, the East Main Street site will have great potential for alternative public and private purposes, including public access to the Long Island Sound shore. While the modernization of the City’s Public Works Yard must occur regardless of any waterfront development plans, relocation to the Beechwood site has the added benefit of freeing up East Main Street for a higher value re-use.

This is a big expense for New Rochelle, and it comes at a time when our finances are already very strained, but large municipal projects of this kind are paid for through the issuance of bonds, spreading the cost over many years — probably twenty years, in this case. Acting now lets us benefit from historically low interest rates. Most importantly, the alternatives are far more costly in terms of both monetary outlays and foregone economic growth.

It is time for a fresh look at the fundamentals of local government.

For several years, New Rochelle, like cities throughout the nation, has confronted increasingly painful budgetary and fiscal decisions. As a consequence, the City’s municipal workforce is smaller now than at any previous time in our modern history, and a variety of important investments have been scaled back, deferred, or cancelled entirely. (You can read more in this series of posts.) Despite these cuts, the financial burden on taxpayers and residents continues to escalate, driven primarily by State-imposed mandates and recession-induced revenue stagnation.

During our most recent budget deliberations late last year, I pointed out that the fiscal constraints impacting local government are likely to persist for the long-term, and that we must, therefore, undertake a more comprehensive and in-depth look at local service levels and options, one aimed at setting priorities in an era of limits. The City Council agreed, and we committed to launching a publicly-inclusive process for examining current practices and identifying possible changes.

Earlier this week, the Council put flesh on the bone of this concept by defining the mission, membership structure, and scope of analysis for a new “Citizens’ Panel on Sustainable Budgets.” The Panel is likely to convene for the first time in February and will then labor intensively for the next six months to deliver recommendations to the City Council and Administration. Our intent is that the Panel’s report be delivered in time to help inform the drafting of New Rochelle’s 2013 budget. You can read the details here.

I will be a member of the panel and look forward to devoting considerable time and energy to this important priority in the months ahead.

A pair of recent articles in the Westchester County Business Journal highlight the positive impact that New Rochelle’s Business Improvement District (BID) is having on our downtown.

Ralph DiBart announcing receipt of a Main Street Grant for Downtown BID Facade Improvement Program last month.

The first, a profile of Ralph DiBart, executive director of the BID, promotes the multiple lines of support the BID offers business and property owners in New Rochelle: grants to convert unused space into artists’ studios, matching grants for facade improvements, and assistance for entrepreneurs like Rhonda Hamilton, who is opening a store for her handcrafted art on Division Street this spring. DiBart notes that even in a recession, “we have property owners investing on Main Street. This is a beehive of investment by small and mid-sized businesses. This is how economic development is done.”

The second is an editorial that explicitly praises the BID’s success at renewing New Rochelle’s downtown without the influx of money that can come from new development. “New Rochelle is one shining example of a city on the move,” say the editors of the journal, who note approvingly that the BID’s recent award of a $500,000 New York State Main Street Grant for its Facade Improvement Program is a sign that DiBart and the BID are “doing it right.”

As I have often said, New Rochelle’s downtown has a long way to go before it achieves its potential, and we’ve got many problems to solve, but the successes profiled by the Business Journal give us good reason for optimism.

While most of my web posts focus on non-partisan local issues, I make no secret of my strong support for President Obama. I think that the President has confronted an exceptionally difficult set of challenges with intelligence and determination, and that his reelection this November is important to the future of our country.

In 2008, the Obama campaign assembled an unprecedented grassroots organization, with dedicated volunteers mobilized in communities all across the country. Now that the 2012 campaign is underway, it is important for the President’s supporters to get involved again.

If you are interested in assuming an active role here in New Rochelle, then please consider attending an organizational meeting this Saturday, January 7th at 10:00am at Trinity St. Paul’s Episcopal Church at 311 Huguenot Street. You can learn more here.

If you can’t make the meeting, but are interested in learning more, than please get in touch with the New Rochelle leaders of the Obama campaign, Sharon Kaplan at shkaplan@aol.com or Pat Carter at pat26june@aol.com.

In a pair of ceremonies yesterday, newly elected and re-elected City Council members received oaths and assumed responsibility for leading our community during the coming term. My inaugural remarks, which follow below, were quite simple and brief, because I felt that the ceremony should focus primarily on the Council Members taking office for the first time and not so much on those of us returning to the same post. We will surely confront difficult choices in the months ahead, but I am eager to get to work and excited about our many opportunities for progress. Happy New Year!

Inaugural Remarks of Mayor Noam Bramson

January 1, 2012

Good afternoon. This is a day of new beginnings. A new year. A new term. A new council. I congratulate and extend a hand of partnership to each of my colleagues of both parties. We are privileged together to receive the trust of the people of our city. Now we must prove worthy of that trust, in both purpose and deed.

We should do so fully mindful of the difficult challenges that confront New Rochelle — fiscal, economic, environmental and human — yet knowing also that in each of these challenges is the seed of opportunity, ready to be nurtured by our labors and our faith.

So let us in the months ahead refresh the priorities of local government to align wisely with an era of limits. Let us build a more vital and vibrant community center, drawing on the energy of mass transit and the appeal of the shore to attract the next wave of investment. Let us achieve a higher quality of life for our residents, in accord with greener practices. And let us position New Rochelle to capture the imagination and the allegiance of a new generation of families, workers and entrepreneurs, who see in this place the diversity of view and experience that has always been our finest quality.

Successful leadership balances realism and optimism in equal measure, faces our problems with candor and political courage, while also seizing with determination and genuine excitement every possibility for a better future, confident that the hardest choices can produce the greatest rewards.

This must be our commitment. This is our commitment.

So let me affirm today that I believe in New Rochelle. I believe in what we are and what we represent. And I believe that our best days as a community are still to come.

Thank you for the privilege of service. May the hopeful spirit of this New Year guide our works.