By the end of 2019, the first families will move into new,million-dollar townhouses at Edge-on-Hudson, a $1 billion development that willeventually bring more than a thousand new luxury apartments, condominiums, andtownhouses to Sleepy Hollow, New York.
“We expect—not just hope—but we expect this to be wildly successful,” says Mayor Ken Wray, speaking at a tour of the development held by ULI Westchester/ Fairfield in October. “For the village, this is incredibly important.”
Edge-on-Hudson should give the Village of Sleepy Hollow millions in annual tax revenue. It should also provide the energy and interest to redevelop crumbling buildings and pay for several new parks. Mayor Wray also hopes to build another bridge to the development—to better link the poor, immigrant neighborhood around Sleepy Hollow’s existing downtown with the luxury condos on its revitalized waterfront.
Developers PlanShops, Offices, Hotel Rooms, a Kayak Landing
The master plan for Edge-on-Hudson includes 1,177 condominiums, townhouses,and rental apartments—plus a new, miniature downtown next to a new trafficcircle with 35,000 square feet (3,300 sq m) of office space and 135,000 squarefeet (12,500 sq m) of retail space for restaurants and a specialty grocer.
“I think it is going to appeal to just about everybody,” says Jonathan Stein, founding and managing partner at Diversified Realty Advisors, based in Montville, New Jersey. Diversified partnered with SunCal, headquartered in Irvine, California, as the master developers of Edge-on-Hudson. “It’s live/work/play with waterfront access.”
Toll Brothers is building 306 units of housing in the firstphase at Edge-on-Hudson—including 118 townhouses and “loft” condominiums. Thefirst phase will also include 188 rental apartments. About a third of those (61units) will be workforce housing and senior housing. Several have already soldat prices from $499,000 to $1.2 million, according to Toll Brothers.
Later phases will bring a new 140-room hotel to the river’s edgewith another restaurant, a rooftop bar, and a waterfront promenade in a new,16-acre park (6.5 ha) with a playground and a kayak landing. The developersalso promise to carefully renovate Sleepy Hollow’s lighthouse, built in 1883.
Sleepy Hollow is best known as the haunted village in a famous ghoststory. The grave of the author, Washington Irving, is a 20-minute walk fromEdge-on-Hudson. It also has a gritty industrial past. Factories once lined theHudson River. In Sleepy Hollow, workers assembled cars for General Motors.
“There was a time when the tax revenue from this plant was50 percent of the village tax revenue,” says Mayor Wray. It closed in 1996 and the factory buildings stood empty foryears.
“It pretty much looked like the dark side of the moon,” says Diversified’s Stein. Theproducers of the post-apocalyptic movie IAm Legend and the TV series The Sopranos both asked to film at the spooky,abandoned factory.
In the very first year after the developers purchased the 68-acre(27.5 ha) site in 2014, they contributed $900,000 in property taxes. “Weare projecting several million a year in tax revenue,” says Mayor Wray.
Village officials hope to use the income from taxes to helpprepare several more old properties for redevelopment. For example, the 10-minutewalk from the new traffic circle to the Tarrytown train station passes thetired buildings of Sleepy Hollow’s Department of Public Works. “We havealready rezoned this for mixed use, with retail on the first floor andresidential above,” says Mayor Wray.
New residential developments already crowd the waterfront aroundEdge-on-Hudson. The walk to the Tarrytown train station also passes 44 luxurytownhouses at Ichabod’s Landing, built by Ginsburg DevelopmentCompanies, based in Valhalla, New York, along with roughly 200 new condominiums andtownhouses at HudsonHarbor, built by National Resources, a developer based in Greenwich, Connecticut, pricesstart around $1.2 million for a two-bedroom unit.
The developers of Edge-on-Hudson are expected to run a tramat peak hours from Edge-on-Hudson to the Tarrytown train station. Residentswho live at the northern edge of Edge-on-Hudson will also be able to walk inthe other direction to the next MetroNorth station at Philipse Manor. The 15-minutewalk passes under the century-old trees of Kingsland Point Park.
Building Bridges
The luxury condominiums along the waterfront are divided from the restof Sleepy Hollow by the train tracks of the MetroNorth commuter rail line. Afew footbridges and a single bridge for cars cross the train tracks.
Across the train tracks, the layers of Sleepy Hollow’s history jumbletogether—from the empty United Auto Workers union hall, which the village ispreparing for redevelopment as workforce housing, to the Sweet Ambateño Bakery,named after a city in Ecuador.
“We are a proud immigrant community,” says Mayor Wray. “Morethan half of the people who live in this village speak Spanish at home.”
Sleepy Hollow’s existing downtown is crowded with historic buildings,a few vacant lots, and houses often owned by absentee landlords, where renters oftendouble and triple up. “It shows more harmony with a challenged cityneighborhood than with a stereotypical suburb,” according to A Vision forSleepy Hollow: Managing Change and Building for Diversity, a report createdby ULI. The census tract around downtown has an unemployment rate higher thanthe average for Westchester County (7.4 percent) and the average income forthese workers is lower (44 percent earn less than $50,000 a year).
To connect Sleepy Hollow’s existing neighborhoods to the waterfront,the village should consider ideas including bus lines, bike lanes, and programsto help property owners renovate—particularly along Beekman Avenue, thecommercial street leading over the bridge and into Edge-on-Hudson, according tothe ULI report, which is based on a ULI technical assistance panel held inNovember 2017.
The village is also planning to open another bridge that would linkthe north end of Edge-on-Hudson with the street grid of the neighborhood on theother side, including another new park planned by the village and the plannednew location of its public works department. “That provides two-way access foremergency vehicles, obviously other vehicles as well and pedestrian access,”said Mayor Wray. The newbridge appears on several of the maps in the ULI report, though the developershave not yet added it to the map of their master plan.
