Editor’s note: This video and the transcript below were prepared and provided by the Village of Pelham. The Pelham Examiner publishes such materials in the form received as a service to the community.

Hi everyone,

I hope you’re well.  I’m coming to you from Village Hall to share some exciting news. The Pelham House project has now earned conditional approvals from both the Planning Board and the Architectural Review Board. The project will now return to the Village Board for final reviews and public hearings so we still have work to do. But this is a very important milestone for a very important project, and every time we reach a milestone in this process, it gives us an opportunity to take stock of where we’ve been.

My seventh grade son was just 8 years old when this process began and if we continue forward, he’ll likely be a sophomore in high school before construction is fully completed.

When we started down this road, it was for a very obvious reason. As I’ve said many times before, our deteriorating infrastructure is the single greatest threat to the long-term sustainability of our community. In 2019, we commissioned a report to determine the potential cost of renovating our facilities, and the cost was enormous. We would need to spend $17.4 million and increase our tax levy by approximately 12% just to make them safe and bring them all up to code. As difficult as it is to imagine asking our community to foot such a bill for properties that don’t function very well to begin with, it is even more difficult to imagine making progress on any of the other infrastructure needs we have if we started this process so far in the hole. We are facing another $5 million for our traffic infrastructure. We’re just completing our Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Study and about to embark on a Flood Mitigation study, all of which will undoubtedly require millions more.

That’s where Pelham House comes in. Four years ago, instead of throwing good money after bad, we issued a Request for Proposals from interested developers to purchase some of the land where our facilities are located to build a mixed-use residential building with commercial storefronts along the first floor – but instead of paying us cash, they could build us a new consolidated municipal center for fire, police and Village operations, and a new public parking facility on their property. This project would not only avoid the massive expense looming before us, but would deliver significant public benefits. We are now finalizing the numbers, and in a nutshell, we’d be selling $6.8 million worth of land in exchange for $18.1 million in upfront public benefit financed by Pelham House and another $12 and a half million paid out over the next 20 years in tax relief for residents townwide. It represents a massive financial turnaround for us as a community, and it would give our struggling downtown a long overdue boost. It’s a good deal.

We’re now wrapping up four years of professional review, impact studies, negotiations and public input, all done to ensure that the Village is getting the best deal possible.

As proud as I am of my contributions to this project, this is not the Mayor’s work. This project has been guided by the decisions made by two Mayors, eleven Trustees, multiple advisory boards, and a team of planning consultants, engineers, professional architects and attorneys all representing the interests of our community. For the last fourteen months, members of our professional staff have been working with the developer’s architects to design our consolidated municipal center. For the last nine months, the full project has been reviewed and sculpted by the resident volunteers on the Architectural Review Board and Planning Board. Elements of the project have also received input from the Sustainability Advisory Board, the Climate Smart Communities Task Force, and the Pedestrian Safety and Traffic Calming Committee. Alongside those perspectives, residents from the public have weighed in throughout – in public sessions, neighborhood meetings, and even in private meetings organized directly between residents and the lead developer (Patrick Normoyle, a fellow Pelhamite with three children currently attending Pelham’s schools). It’s been a long process, and it’s still not over.

So what comes next? The project will now return to the Village Board for its final review, and the board will dig into a Generic Environmental Impact Statement, which is an impact study developed by our consultants over the last 11 months following statutory actions required under New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act. We’ll have public hearings related to that study, amendments to the BDFZ we’re considering (professional analysis related to these amendments was included in that study). And then we’ll hold a public hearing specifically related to Pelham House’s final site plan. When we finally arrive at the end of this journey, we’ll put our pencils down and the Village Board will be tasked with the responsibility of making a final determination.

I do just want to acknowledge that some folks are wary of this project. This is a lot of change all at once. And it’s big, there’s no getting around it. We dedicated some artwork in our downtown a few weeks ago, and I shared at the time that the problem with change is that we usually experience it as loss. Even when we know the thing coming next will be objectively better than the thing we have. Even when we know it’ll be worth it.

If you’re in that place, you still have time to ask questions, give us constructive feedback, and put your thoughts in the room.  I’ll be sending out some information soon about the schedule for the public hearings, and I hope you’ll join us. We may not be able to resolve your concerns, but we can talk it out, and just like the pandemic, we will get through this together.

Before I sign off, I’d like to express my gratitude to the volunteers on the Architectural Review Board and Planning Board who have committed so much of their time and talent in service to our Village: Ron Czajka, Kristin Austin, Greg Breskin, Greg Shunick, Jess Young, Joe Marty, Ben Ascher, Ronald Diaz, Matt Margulies, and Sid Burke. Thank you for the work you’ve done on our behalf. We are deeply indebted to you.

I hope you’re all enjoying your week. Talk soon.

Chance