Written by Carol P. Bartold 

Mar. 18, 2015: Pondfield Court LLC, the owner and developer of the former Morgan Manhattan Storage building at 100 Pondfield Road, will submit a substantially revised application to the Bronxville Planning Board at its April meeting.

Attorney Michael Zarin, partner at Zarin & Steinmetz, represented the developer at the March 12 planning board meeting and outlined the Pondfield Court LLC revised plan.

Pondfield Court LLC originally sought to add a fourth floor to the existing structure and convert the long-empty building to 11 luxury condominium units with 22 parking spaces on the ground floor. Instead, the developer will move forward with an application to develop the building's existing three stories to accommodate 11 two- and three-bedroom units with 17 parking spaces.

"We know the applicant has spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in carrying costs for the property during these proceedings," Zarin stated. "We did what we needed to do with the three stories to recoup the value of our investment." He added that the developer made an initial $3 million investment in the property.

Zarin explained that, under the application to be submitted, the developer proposes to develop eight three-bedroom units and three two-bedroom units on the structure's upper two floors with no unit larger than 2,000 square feet. Studies estimate that the units would generate five to six school-aged children, with four of those children attending public school.

Although a February 25 letter from Zarin & Steinmetz delivered to the planning board indicated the units would be offered as rentals under a revised application, Zarin made no specific reference to rental units at the March 12 meeting. A call to him for clarification was not returned.

According to Zarin, reducing the size of the units would alleviate the variances that would have been necessary under the original application. All parking spaces, he said, would conform to dimensional requirements and also eliminate the need for a variance on parking-space dimensions. The plan will provide 1.5 parking spaces for each unit, with the size of the unit determining the number of spaces granted. Zarin explained that some units will be assigned two spaces and some units, one space.

"We specifically reduced the parking because your concern was to reduce traffic," Zarin stated to the board.

Zarin estimated that, at peak morning and evening hours, six to seven vehicles will exit and enter the property. Pondfield Court LLC plans to install high-technology adaptive electronic signage that would add safety features to the easement driveway. Electronic pavement warning lights would both notify pedestrians when a car is about to exit the property and signal to drivers that pedestrians are about to cross the driveway.

Zarin further stated that Pondfield Court LLC intends to enforce the ingress and egress easements and prohibit parking in the driveway. He anticipates that the developer will not need to seek variances for fire and emergency vehicle access and that access points from Pondfield Road and Cedar Street and the access to the A&P loading dock from Park Place will meet all New York State fire and safety code requirements.

"All in all, we have reduced the impacts considerably," Zarin said, "and mitigated many, if not most, of the concerns and issues you have raised over the last two years."

The Bronxville Planning Board will meet on Wednesday, April 8, at 7:30 pm in the trustees room at Bronxville Village Hall.

Pictured here: Bronxville Planning Board members James Murray, Vice Chair Anna Longobardo, and Chairman Eric Blessing at the March 12, 2015, meeting.

Photo by Carol P. Bartold