White Plains Council Closes FASNY Hearings
It has been several years since the French American School of New York (FASNY) purchased the 129-acre site formerly occupied by the Ridgeway Country Club. The debate has been fierce at times, including a lawsuit from the Gedney resident association, large town-hall meetings with several hundreds attending, slogans, signs, reports, investigations and more reports, public hearings and written responses at each point in the application process.
On Wednesday, Dec. 3, at the final adjourned public hearing on both the partial closure (even with limited public access) of a portion of Hathaway Lane and the Special Permit and Site Plan for a regional school campus, this chapter of White Plains history is nearing a close. The White Plains Common Council, lead agency on the special permit and site plan decision, voted unanimously to close the hearings and extend the 10-day written response time to 15 days to allow for last-minute submissions.
During the final days of the hearings, the back and forth took the tone of a courtroom with stern voices and deep questioning, most notably by Councilman Dennis Krolian and Councilwoman Milagros Lecuona, concerning many aspects of the development plan.
Michael Zarin, the lawyer representing FASNY, along with architects and traffic consultants, rewrote, redrew and responded at each point.
Krolian paid particular attention to traffic safety in the immediate neighborhood of the school should Hathaway Lane be closed to traffic during school days. Requesting NY DOT accident reports, he made a final request for information including 2013. FASNY had provided accident reports through 2012.
Krolian also read a letter from the White Plains Board of Education that said the FASNY traffic plan would create an unsafe situation for the district’s school children, referring to it as a “critical safety issue.” He also commented on Zarin’s response that suggested the Board of Ed did not have sufficient experience on regional school campuses and student populations to make the comments it did and also said the Board of Ed had met with FASNY over the several year process and had not made any conclusive statements until this final hour.
Lecuona took offense at the tone of Zarin’s response to the Board of Education and suggested he should apologize.
Lecuona, holding up a sheet of paper with a drawing, scoffed at the 3-D illustrations of the property FASNY had presented at her request. Zarin said that sheet did not represent the 3-D work that had been submitted and said tens of thousands of dollars had been spent on preparing the information. He suggested the resident drawing Lecuona proffered as a better example was not 3-D, but an aerial view and not what she had requested.
Several Council members asked about the mandatory busing plan FASNY had developed, trying to determine which hours were considered as peak and if the 530 vehicle cap was appropriate for two phases of building construction over 10 years, when the cap might be exceeded during phase 1.
Other questions related to landscaping and adequacy of screening, stormwater management below ground, access of public safety vehicles should Hathaway lane be closed and the issue of a possible addition to the response time for the Fire Department protecting the Gedney neighborhood.
