New Assisted Living Plan Readied for P’ville Church Site

An investment group is set to submit an application for an assisted living project on the United Methodist Church property in Pleasantville one year after another proposal was narrowly defeated by the village board.

The group, which calls itself Bedford Road Partners, is expected to formally deliver its submission to village officials for the nearly four-acre parcel by early fall. It would be similar to the 87-unit facility put forward by Benchmark Senior Living, said Sy Gruza, an attorney representing the investors.

The identity of the developer was not revealed since agreements have yet to be completed, he said. The precise size and scope of the project is also not known since the developer that is selected will have input into the plans, but Gruza said it should be close to what the Benchmark proposal entailed.

Last June Benchmark’s request to rezone the property from residential to a special floating zone was defeated when only three board members supported the move. A valid petition carried by neighbors of the church property required a supermajority (four votes) approval.

Gruza said unlike the previous proposal, his clients, comprised entirely of Westchester residents, although none live in Pleasantville, intend to widely distribute factual information to the community at large that shows strong support for senior assisted living at the church’s location and in the village.

The partners commissioned a survey polling 300 village and Pleasantville School District residents that was conducted from June 29 to July 1. Results showed that 58 percent of the respondents support senior assisted housing at the Methodist church site and 65 percent backed having it built somewhere in the village.

“The results of that poll show that a majority of residents want that type of project to proceed and the poll also showed that a majority of the residents want this project there,” Gruza said of the site at 70 Bedford Rd.

Jeannette Boccini, a public relations spokeswoman for the group, said with the general population aging and more families hoping to remain near their parents and grandparents, demand for senior housing, including assisted living facilities, is greater than supply. She said the group is confident that once the benefits of the proposal, such as projected annual tax revenue of close to $500,000, is more effectively publicized, the outcome may be different than the Benchmark proposal.

“The more information that the community has to see the more likely the board in Pleasantville may be willing to support the project,” Boccini said.

The Methodist church has been trying to sell a portion of its property for years. Before the Benchmark plan, the village briefly explored acquiring the site for municipal offices and its recreation center. Previously, proposals for private houses went nowhere.

Gruza said the investors will enter into a contract to buy the property, which is contingent on acquiring all approvals.

Despite the renewed efforts, the new team will have to find a way to pick up at least one vote assuming the neighbors file another petition asking for a supermajority. Mayor Peter Scherer said he is willing to listen to the investors, but it will have to be materially different for him to support it.

He reiterated previous comments that he made at the time of the Benchmark vote, saying that the plan was a good project in the wrong location.

“My personal opinion is that if the project is very similar to the one I voted against last year, I couldn’t find myself supporting it now,” Scherer said.

Trustee Steven Lord said it would be premature for him to comment, adding that he didn’t want to speculate on a proposal that he hadn’t seen.

Last year, trustees Mindy Berard, Colleen Griffin-Wagner and Jonathan Cunningham voted for the Benchmark plan. Cunningham was replaced on the board by Joseph Stargiotti earlier this year. None of the other current trustees could be reached for comment on Monday.

Two neighbors who were among the most outspoken against the Benchmark plan said they were surprised that a new proposal would return so quickly after the last plan was defeated. Eileen West, a resident at Foxwood Condominiums across the street from the church, said she questions what the investor group hopes to accomplish.

“I’m totally shocked because there was so much input on the Benchmark proposal,” West said. “That was debated, vetted and defeated.”

She also said it was hard to believe the would-be applicants would be so confident to trust their survey, which she called “a joke.” She said many of the questions were leading and that it likely provided the group answers they wanted to hear.

Maple Hill resident Bill Stoller was equally harsh in his critique of the survey. He said he was surprised that the group would “rely on the results of a push poll that was so blatantly amateurish.”

Michael Dawidziak, president of Strategic Planning Systems, the Sayville, L.I.-based company that conducted the survey, said anyone who would call the 29-question survey a push poll “doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Dawidziak said he is a 40-year polling veteran who has worked on four presidential campaigns, including the 1988 and 1992 campaigns for former president George H.W. Bush. He’s also had many other types of clients.

A pollster job is to help his client gauge public sentiment on issues by devising a list of questions. The goal is to get a statistically significant and random sample, he said. In this instance, Dawidziak said 300 respondents in a village of about7,000 residents is very significant. He said the poll has a margin of error of 5.7 percent.

“I can’t tell you whether this is a good project or not. I don’t know anything about the project, but I’m here to defend the accuracy of the poll,” Dawidziak said.