Planning Board Session on Rivertowns Square FEIS

The Rivertowns Preservation Civic Association is looking forward hearing Rivertowns Square developers make their case for the multi-use development off the Saw Mill River Parkway at Thursday’s Dobbs Ferry Planning Board meeting.

The planning board will conduct a work session during its meeting at 8 p.m. at village hall, 112 Main St., to discuss the proposed project’s final draft environmental impact statement (FEIS) in order to present input for the findings statement—the final step in the proposal’s environmental impact review.

Click here for a memo from Mayor Hartley Connett on the environmental review process, known as the state environmental impact review act (SEQRA) process, and here for the FEIS document.

Rivertowns Preservation Civic Association is a community organization that has advocated for and against various local projects, like Mercy College’s proposed addition and the Ashford Avenue Bridge, and has about 20 active members on their executive board with dozens who attend meetings and demonstrations on their behalf.

The civic association said that the Dobbs Ferry Village Board of Trustees was wrong to accept the FEIS as complete on Sept. 20. 

“We still believe the FEIS is incomplete and the more we read, we see that the answers the developer gave to some of the questions were very cursory and in some cases omitted,” said Carolyn Whittle, a former county legislator, retired financial analyst and vice president of the civic association. “In some places it said a person’s letter of interest or comment was noted, but there was no discussion of that person’s concern.”

Whittle said the environmental review process is flawed because the public only has a few weeks to digest the document before a public hearing on Oct. 30 at 6:30 p.m. at the Embassy Community Center, 60 Palisade St. in Dobbs Ferry.

Though this meeting wasn’t required by the state environmental impact review act (SEQRA), the village board wanted is extending the opportunity to the public. Members of the board of trustees are also accepting written comments up to 10 days following the public hearing.

Whittle said the civic association has requested a second public hearing on the FEIS and an extended comment period.

The Rivertowns Preservation Civic Association feels that the project is still too massive and that Rivertowns Square developers did little to scale it down. 

The modified proposal—which reduced the size and uses of some of the project’s aspects—would transform the 17.7-acre 4-parcel site off the Saw Mill River Parkway that is in the middle of Lawrence Street and Ogden, Livingstone and Stanley avenues to include a: 

• 18,000 sq. ft. market
• 123-room hotel
• 33,600 sq. ft. and eight screen Sundance movie theatre
• 62,028 sq. ft. of retail/restaurant space
• 202-unit rental apartment (which includes affordable housing, per Village code)
• 1,228 parking spaces

Whittle says that while the FEIS reduces the previously proposed square footage of the supermarket, it adds an eight-screen Sundance Movie Theatre that she says will completely overwhelm the already congested area with traffic. 

The civic association is also calling for the total re-use of both buildings on site, rather than just maintaining the slab from the buildings. Other concerns include: paving over 3.5 acres, removal of hundreds of trees, economic implications, storm water management and the type of hotel that is being proposed.

What are your thoughts on the project? Tell us in the comments.

• For more information on the Rivertowns Preservation Civic Association visit: http://rivertownspreservation.org
• For more information on Rivertowns Square visit: rivertownssquare.net and dobbsferry.com/Rivertowns-Square
• Click here for our coverage of this project.

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