Mount Pleasant Ready to Move Forward on Comp Plan Update

Mount Pleasant officials are closing in on adopting a revised Comprehensive Plan for the first time in more than 50 years, with a few key revisions including removing references to a form-based code.

Town planning consultant Patrick Cleary reviewed the changes with the Town Board last Tuesday evening that allow for three stories as of right with ground-floor commercial in the current Hawthorne and Thornwood business hamlets. Applicants may also request a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals to add a fourth story.

However, a new provision provides the board with leeway to grant a fourth or even fifth story to developers for about a dozen industrial-zoned properties on Broadway behind the Hawthorne train station if the builder agrees to make infrastructure improvements, provide open space or additional off-street parking or clean up a brownfield or derelict property, Cleary said.

“The more progressive and beneficial projects are where there’s a partnership between the municipality and a developer and the developer gets something out of it other than just the basic development, and as a result, the community gets something out of it as well,” Cleary said. “Once we start doing this, we’ll fix all sorts of stuff.”

Councilwomen Laurie Smalley-Rogers and Danielle Zaino said they were fine with granting a fourth-story bonus for the stretch of properties on Broadway between the Hawthorne Reformed Church and the ballfields at the end of the road, but were hesitant to go higher than that.

Cleary said the board should accept the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS) as complete at an upcoming meeting followed by the environmental findings statement. Once the findings is adopted, the town will refer it to the Westchester County Planning Department for comments, which must be returned within 30 days, he said.

The public hearing was closed on the FGEIS last fall.

Officials received pushback from some community members last year who were concerned that amending the zoning in the hamlet to allow for mixed-used development, including the introduction of multi-family housing above ground-floor commercial, might bring a transient element to the community.

Cleary said renaming the zoning plan from a form-based code to hamlet zoning could hopefully allay fears that the downtown business hamlets will be overrun with additional residents. Some residents’ perceptions may also have been impacted by the intense opposition to a form-based code proposed in New Castle, which was aborted last fall.

“The distinction between us and what happened in New Castle, that was a top-down imposition of zoning that nobody understood or wanted,” Cleary said. “We did ours the opposite way; this was grassroots up. Every element of (Mount Pleasant’s) zoning came from the folks in the community.”

Starting in 2018, Mount Pleasant held public engagement sessions by asking residents where improvements in town should be made. Public sentiment centered on improving the corridor along Commerce Street from the Hawthorne train station to the Four Corners in Thornwood.

Board members have also said they are not looking to introduce large major developments on that corridor but rather providing current property owners with the financial incentives to make improvements to their property and allowing for some diversity of housing stock.

Supervisor Carl Fulgenzi said what has frightened some in the community is a massive change in a short amount of time, something that the supervisor said he was confident wouldn’t happen.

“You’re not going to take a business owner who’s got a little retail store and nothing else, to now you’re going to be able to put three more levels (on a property) and make a lot of money,” Fulgenzi said. “You have to be able to have the money and the financial backing to be able to do that.”

What could happen, particularly on the stretch of industrial-zoned Broadway where a bonus could be granted, is for one builder to buy up several properties to have a somewhat larger project as long as they are willing to provide one of the agreed-upon improvements, Cleary said. A bonus of a fourth floor, for example, could potentially double the number of residential units from eight to 16 or 17.

He said there is interest from developers in Mount Pleasant’s hamlets.

“We’ve had how many developers saying the phrase, ‘We’re ready. When’s this happening? We want to do something,’” Cleary said. “We have guys queued up, ready to go, wanting for us to move on this.”

Zaino said there are some concerns but the town runs the risk of hurting itself if it remains stagnant. Some residents are worried that Commerce Street may be a continuous row of three-story buildings, which is unlikely to happen, she said.

“I mean it’s 52 years old,” Zaino said of the current Master Plan. “You can’t stay 50 years behind in the development of our town and then people are complaining when we don’t update roads and streetlights. We have to bring everything up to speed.”

Mount Pleasant does not have an affordable housing ordinance under Westchester County’s definition. The town was not a party to the 2009 affordable housing settlement between the county and the federal government because it had never accepted federal money to build housing.

Cleary said that residential units would be market-rate and that developers would be encouraged to provide what they would call workforce housing, a type of housing that is hard to find locally.

“Right now, my job is to focus on keeping Mount Pleasant affordable for the people who are living in our town,” Fulgenzi said.