Chappaqua Crossing

While the Chap­paqua and Mill­wood ham­lets exist today with­in bor­ders that were out­lined in the TDP, there has been some change in regards to the com­mer­cial com­po­si­tion of the Town since 1989. At the time and as dis­cussed in the TDP, there were two oth­er prop­er­ties in New Cas­tle zoned for busi­ness and office use: a large prop­er­ty owned by IBM off of Cro­ton Dam Road, and the Reader’s Digest cam­pus sand­wiched between the Saw Mill Riv­er Park­way and Route 117. IBM did not end up con­struct­ing any facil­i­ties on their prop­er­ty. In 1997, IBM sold its prop­er­ty to Westch­ester Coun­ty. Today it is Hud­son Hills, a pub­lic golf course. In 2004, Reader’s Digest sold its prop­er­ty to a pri­vate devel­op­er, Sum­mit Green­field, and by Decem­ber 2010, had vacat­ed the cam­pus com­plete­ly. Oth­er ten­ants filled some of the 700,000 square feet of office space avail­able on the cam­pus, but large por­tions of the prop­er­ty remained underutilized. 

After acquir­ing the Reader’s Digest prop­er­ty, now known as Chap­paqua Cross­ing, Sum­mit Green­field pre­sent­ed the Town Board with var­i­ous rede­vel­op­ment sce­nar­ios for the site, which includ­ed retail and mul­ti-fam­i­ly res­i­den­tial uses. At the time, Chap­paqua Cross­ing was not zoned for such devel­op­ment; it was, and con­tin­ues to be, the only prop­er­ty with­in the Town zoned B‑RO-20, for research office and busi­ness use.

Rec­og­niz­ing the chron­i­cal­ly high vacan­cy rates on the prop­er­ty and the need for new and var­ied hous­ing options with­in the com­mu­ni­ty, and fol­low­ing the clo­sure of the D’Agostinos gro­cery store in the Chap­paqua ham­let, the New Cas­tle Town Board enter­tained the pos­si­bil­i­ty of per­mit­ting retail uses at Chap­paqua Cross­ing, anchored by a full-ser­vice gro­cery store. After much delib­er­a­tion and study, in Decem­ber of 2014, the Town Board estab­lished the Office Park Retail Over­lay Dis­trict (OPROD) zon­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion. The OPROD allows the estab­lish­ment of retail uses with­in the B‑RO-20 zon­ing dis­trict. The Town Board also approved a Mul­ti-Fam­i­ly Planned Devel­op­ment (MFPD) zon­ing dis­trict on the prop­er­ty to allow for the devel­op­ment of mul­ti­fam­i­ly hous­ing units. The Town Board has also approved pre­lim­i­nary devel­op­ment con­cept plans, includ­ing design guide­lines, for the retail and res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment of Chap­paqua Cross­ing. In total, the 113.7‑acre site will host 500,000 square feet of office space; 120,000 square feet of retail space, includ­ing a 40,000-squarefoot gro­cer and 40,000-square-foot fit­ness facil­i­ty; 64 units of mixed-income hous­ing (i.e., afford­able, work­force and mar­ket rate units); and an addi­tion­al 91 town­homes. It is impor­tant to note, how­ev­er, that the mixed-use Chap­paqua Cross­ing cam­pus was not intend­ed or designed to become a ham­let like the Chap­paqua and Mill­wood ham­lets. The addi­tion of retail and res­i­den­tial uses at Chap­paqua Cross­ing was dri­ven by the need to reeval­u­ate the role of this unique prop­er­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty in light of its dimin­ished use and obso­les­cence as a sin­gle occu­pant cor­po­rate cam­pus. For plan­ning and zon­ing pur­pos­es, Chap­paqua Cross­ing should not be treat­ed as a third ham­let, par­tic­u­lar­ly with respect to the estab­lished res­i­den­tial areas sur­round­ing the prop­er­ty. Doing so would be incon­sis­tent with the poli­cies and goals set forth in this Plan.

To help ensure that that the new retail and oth­er devel­op­ment at the Chap­paqua Cross­ing cam­pus does not divert sub­stan­tial busi­ness activ­i­ty and relat­ed pedes­tri­an traf­fic away from the Chap­paqua and Mill­wood ham­lets, the Town Board imposed a num­ber of con­di­tions upon the devel­op­er to help ensure that Chap­paqua Cross­ing com­ple­ments the Town’s ham­lets. For exam­ple, lim­i­ta­tions relat­ed to the size of build­ings and type of stores were care­ful­ly defined in the OPROD. The devel­op­ers plan to con­struct kiosks on their prop­er­ty adver­tis­ing busi­ness­es in the ham­lets and will facil­i­tate jit­ney ser­vice between Chap­paqua Cross­ing and the Chap­paqua ham­let. This Plan estab­lish­es the goal to con­tin­ue to exam­ine ways to enable the ham­lets and the mixed-use com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial uses at Chap­paqua Cross­ing to thrive indi­vid­u­al­ly and com­ple­ment one anoth­er so that the pro­vi­sion of civic, retail and com­mer­cial ser­vices for Town res­i­dents is bal­anced and coordinated.