Underground Parking Completed for Pleasantville’s Memorial Plaza Project. What’s Next?
Three underground floors of parking have been completed at the 70 Memorial Plaza project in the heart of downtown Pleasantville.
The garage has parking for 137 vehicles and will serve as the concrete foundation for the planned four-story building that will house 82 apartments and street-level retail space.
Pleasantville Building Inspector Robert Hughes said the main structure will be an all-steel frame infilled with metal studs supporting a brick exterior.
The project’s developer, Vito Errico of Pleasantville Lofts, LLC, submitted plans in January 2018 requesting to build the structure from Memorial Plaza to Cooley Street.
Since starting, work on the project has hit a couple of significant snags – the unexpected and substantial amount of rock discovered under the site and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic last March that slowed construction. The health crisis has limited the number of construction workers on site because of social-distancing requirements.
Pleasantville Lofts has been operating under a license agreement with the village that has allowed the developer to store construction material and cars off Cooley Street. That area has been cleared since the underground garage was completed, allowing for the vehicles and equipment to be moved into the new structure.
Construction of the steel building is the next phase and requires a crane. Earlier this month, village officials discussed issuing a permit to allow the crane to operate at the site.
“The crane will be on the site for at least six months and will be located on one or two sites on the property,” Hughes said. “One place for the crane will be next to the post office, which will eventually be a walk-through and which has been prepared to handle the crane.”
Under consideration by the developer and the board is temporarily halting through traffic on Cooley Street.
“Cooley is not a formal two-way road but it is sometimes used as such,” said Village Administrator Eric Morrissey. “Since this is going to be an active construction site for the foreseeable future with trucks coming in and out, it may be in everybody’s best interest to stop through traffic.”
Cooley Street, according to Morrissey, hasn’t been utilized for through traffic in several months.
“We don’t see a lot of activity back there, but in terms of public safety, for the duration of several months we might want to stop the ability of cars to get from one side of Cooley to the other.”
No final decision has been made to close Cooley Street. As part of a final phase of the project, Pleasantville Lofts intends to reconstruct Cooley Street as a two-lane road by repaving and reconfiguring its parking area. The one-block-long street is where the garage entrance will be located.
Apartments planned for 70 Memorial Plaza include seven studio apartments, 38 one-bedroom apartments, 33 two-bedroom units and four three-bedroom residences.
Eight units will be set aside as affordable housing. Those apartments will be spread throughout the building and will be of different sizes.
“This is the biggest project in the history of the village,” said Hughes. “The developer is running a first-class operation and they are trying to get this done and completed.”
Hughes estimates the project will be finished in about two-and-a-half years.
The 110,300-square-foot building will also contain street-level retail facing Memorial Plaza, a pedestrian walkway that connects Memorial Plaza to Cooley Street and a landscaped courtyard, according to the developer’s plans.
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/
