Comprehensive Master Plan
March 18, 2024
Honorable Members of the City of White Plains Common Council
City Hall
255 Main St
White Plains, NY 10601
Re: Comment on City’s Draft Comprehensive Plan
Dear Mr. Mayor, Council President Presser, and Members of the Common Council:
Coalition for Addition Without Subtraction Inc. (“CAWS”) is a local, grassroots organization whose Board is made up entirely of White Plains residents. We formed our organization to advocate for public benefit specifically in the redevelopment of the City’s Galleria Mall site. None of us have any direct economic interest in the site or its potential redevelopment. We are simply motivated by the desire to be involved citizens and help achieve an outcome that is beautiful and beneficial for the City as a whole.
We greatly appreciate your attention to the many issues involved in finalizing the Comprehensive Plan that has been proposed to you by the City’s Comprehensive Plan Committee. And we also commend you for investing substantial amounts of time in hearing from the diverse public as to their hopes and fears in relation to this impactful public decision-making. We ourselves observed and participated in your extended public hearing on the draft Plan held February 5 and March 4, 2024.
We are also grateful to the Comprehensive Plan Committee for its work. The public meetings held by these dedicated citizen volunteers were very informative for us. At several times they raised crucial issues and either resolved, or made progress toward resolving, those issues. The Comprehensive Plan Committee has already made certain changes, reflected in the current draft, that our organization advocated.1 These include:
In Item “connectWP 6,” editing the language to reflect a conceptual differentiation between the developer-owned and publicly-owned elements of the Galleria Mall site (so as not to pre-ordain future transactions not yet negotiated or finalized).
1) CAWS made extensive written comments to the Comprehensive Plan Committee dated November 7, 2023. A record of the Comprehensive Plan Committee’s final edits is maintained in the “Compilation of Redline Edits” version of the draft, available at https://one-white-plains-comprehensive-plan-1-wp-planning.hub.arcgis.com/pages/element-chapters, labeled “Compilation of Redline Edits / Based on Comments from the CPC Public Hearing on October 23, 2023.”
In Item “liveWP 11,” again taking care not to treat the Galleria Mall site as completely unified, thus honoring the distinction between the privately-owned and publicly-owned elements.
In Item “liveWP 11,” edits that counteracted the perhaps unintentional implication of the prior draft that the baseline for City/developer negotiations over the site’s future would be set at a very high level of height and density.
In Item “liveWP 11,” explicitly calling for an assessment of community parking needs as they relate to the Galleria Mall site, the current parking structures, and future plans.
We felt these changes were very positive and we hope they are included in the final Plan.
As feedback to you at the current juncture, we would first like to raise our continuing questions and concerns regarding how the City-owned parking garages at the Galleria Site (and underlying land) fit into the redevelopment plans.
The redevelopment consortium composed of Pacific Retail Capital Partners, The Cappelli Organization, Aareal Bank Group, and SL Green Realty Corp. has presented redevelopment plans to several different local audiences, including the Council of Neighborhood Associations and the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors.2 Each such presentation has incorporated the land currently occupied by the parking garages into the imagined future development.3 These presentations fail to account for the fact that the redevelopment consortium has, so far as the public knows, no ownership or control of the parking garages and the land underneath them. Meanwhile, the draft DEIS Scoping Outline submitted by the redevelopment consortium and included within Item 31 of your March 4, 2024 Common Council meeting packet4 is shocking in the extent to which it treats the parking garage structures and underlying land as composing part of the desired redevelopment. The problem, simply put, is again that the redevelopment consortium does not appear to own the parking garages and underlying lands and no guidelines regarding how, when, and under what conditions it might acquire them exist.
The draft DEIS Scoping Outline suggests that you should re-zone the entire site, including the land where the parking garages now sit, to a “Transit Development 2” zoning district. This “Transit Development 2” zoning district was apparently invented out of whole cloth by the redevelopment consortium for the purpose of enabling its plans. The “Transit
2) See The Examiner News, Rick Pezzullo, Dec. 4, 2023 “Plans for $2.5B Redevelopment of Galleria Site Presented” (reporting on the redevelopment consortium’s presentation to the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors), available at https://www.theexaminernews.com/plans-for-2-5b-redevelopment-of-galleria-site-presented/.
3) See, e.g., Westchester and Fairfield County Business Journals, Peter Katz, Sept. 28, 2023, “$2.5B redevelopment concept proposed for WP Galleria mall,” available at https://westfaironline.com/latest-news/2-5b-redevelopment-concept-proposed-for-wp-galleria-mall/.
4) Available at https://www.cityofwhiteplains.com/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03042024-2133.
Development 2” zoning district does not currently exist, is not currently contemplated or planned for in any public document, and is enjoyed by no other landowner anywhere in the City. The redevelopment consortium has gone beyond simply requesting a dramatic rezoning, and has requested a dramatic rezoning to a non-existent zoning district that would enable massive density throughout the site, including on the parking garage land.
At your March 4, 2024 meeting, you initiated the “scoping” process – the first stage of environmental review for this proposed re-zoning. We are at a loss to understand how the City can validly and meaningfully conduct environmental review for a proposed re-zoning when the proponent of the re-zoning does not even have a property interest in much of the subject land. Surely, as to the land owned by the City, it should be the City, and not a private redevelopment consortium, that proposes any re-zoning of the land and identifies the rationale therefor.
The redevelopment consortium has taken an aggressive approach toward both the re-zoning and toward obtaining control of the publicly-owned elements of the site – and you have tolerated and, to a certain degree, enabled, that aggressive approach. The result has been widespread public misunderstanding. As a striking example, the front page of the March 12 – March 18, 2024 White Plains Examiner bears the headline “New Zoning District Established for Galleria Property.”5 The newspaper reports, “The ‘Transit Development-2 (TD-2)’ district will apply to the 11-acre parcel on Main and Court streets and Lexington and Martine avenues.” This front-page reporting is inaccurate because: (1) No new zoning district has yet been established; the redevelopment consortium has applied for the creation of a new zoning district, and the City is considering that application; and (2) There is no unified 11-acre parcel, as the approximately four acres occupied by parking garages remain under public ownership.
We do not blame the journalists. The redevelopment consortium’s presentations are calculated to create an air of fait accompli surrounding their plans for massive densification and profit extraction at the Galleria site. Plans and designs which have remaining procedural and public-participatory prerequisites are spoken about as if they do not. And certainly, the high-handed way in which the City went about obtaining authority to alienate the parking garages and underlying land without public auction or sealed bids contributed to the sense of fait accompli. The City introduced and advanced its legislative proposal on a very rapid schedule in June, 2023,6 having never previously disclosed that it had been in talks to sell the garages and land since at least early 2021.
The City’s role in advancing the sense of fait accompli surrounding the redevelopment consortium’s plans undermines the public’s faith in our democratic institutions. If a developer submits plans to redevelop its property and include in that redevelopment plan a private citizen’s
5) Available at https://www.theexaminernews.com/archives/whiteplains/WhitePlainsExaminer3-12-24.pdf. We have also maintained a copy of this issue of the White Plains Examiner on file.
6) See New York State Senate, Senate Bill S7521 (2023-2024 Legislative Session), https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2023/S7521.
neighboring property simply because it is adjacent would the City Council consider and advance that plan? Could a private homeowner in the City find themselves facing deep pocketed redevelopers and fighting City Hall for their own land? Why should the City treat a public asset differently than a private homeowner’s asset? If anything, the duty of care owed to the public to protect City assets is the same or higher.
We would like to offer these concrete suggestions for how the Comprehensive Plan could take a managerial approach to the present, troubling situation:
The Comprehensive Plan should state the goal of maintaining the approximately four publicly-owned acres at the Galleria Site as publicly-owned lands. We do not believe that continued public ownership would pose a bar to redevelopment, even along the lines of the redevelopment consortium’s ambitious plans. 50-year leases are often used to enable development without land transfer. While there are obstacles to such arrangements when the transacting parties are both private entities, these long-term lease arrangements are much more feasible when the landowner is a public entity.
The Comprehensive Plan should express the principle that money is not sufficient consideration for the approximately four publicly-owned acres at the Galleria site, even if monetary consideration is based on a superficially reasonable appraisal. Given its key location, this land is extraordinary and unique.7 Maintaining public ownership gives the public a voice in the aesthetics, social impact, and other characteristics of development that it would not otherwise have. Such a statement of the need for non-monetary consideration would provide a helpful framing for forthcoming negotiations between the City and redevelopment consortium. If the land is to be transferred or leased to accomplish the consortium’s purpose, there should be substantial public benefit, other than payment of money, as consideration in that transaction.
In furtherance of the principle that money is not sufficient consideration for the conveyance of the unique publicly-owned lands, the Comprehensive Plan should express the goal that any development plan that applies to the publicly-owned lands should be designed to yield 100% of residential units constructed as designated affordable units, made affordable to households between 30% and 50% of Area Median Income.
7) CAWS has produced a March 10, 2024 video-recorded discussion addressing the uniqueness of the Galleria Site’s publicly-owned lands and potential strategies for using public land ownership to obtain public benefit. The video is entitled “$ Isn’t Everything | Don’t Let an Invaluable Public Asset Be Transferred Away for Private Gain” and is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xha85CoRsuA.
Page 303 of the December, 2023 draft Comprehensive Plan, in the workWP section, refers to the site as a unified “10-acre site” and also implies, perhaps unintentionally, a high-density planning baseline. The relevant passage is: “[T]he vision for the former Galleria Mall site . . . aims to ensure that the 10-acre site is redeveloped into a world-class project that emphasizes a high density mix of land uses.” As with similar passages that were edited in the Comprehensive Plan Committee’s drafting process to address these same issues, we feel this passage should be edited to avoid: (1) describing the site as a “10-acre site” without differentiating the privately- and publicly- owned aspects of the site; (2) suggesting, even inadvertently, that high density is a given or a baseline rather than something to be negotiated for in exchange for public benefit.
We also offer these further recommendations in relation to the Galleria site:
The Comprehensive Plan should recommend a scale for development on the site that relates more naturally to the surrounding streetscape and does not exceed the height of the current mall structure, as opposed to the redevelopment consortium’s desire for massive towers, in some cases reaching 450 feet in height. Greater density could be considered if it yields extraordinary public benefit, but a more modest baseline should be explicitly established.
The Comprehensive Plan should recommend an aesthetic scheme for the redevelopment that is resonant with the City’s history, with the Federal architectural style and the Art Deco architectural style being examples.
The green and bucolic ambience that defines much of White Plains should be recovered, in the downtown, at all costs. The re-envisioned Galleria Mall site should provide the opportunity for saplings to grow into majestic trees for future generations to enjoy.
Gentrification and displacement should be specifically named as possible consequences of a redevelopment of the Galleria site, opening the door for more effective mitigation of these issues. See Chinese Staff and Workers Association v City of New York, 68 NY2d 359 (1986) (“The fact that the actual construction on the proposed site will not cause the displacement of any residents or businesses is not dispositive for displacement can occur in the community surrounding a project as well as on the site of a project.”).
The period of the construction of a major redevelopment is sufficiently long that the construction process itself can be addressed in the Comprehensive Plan, given the Plan’s ten-to-fifteen-year timeframe.8 For the Galleria site, it is not unreasonable to think that the combined process of demolition and construction will exceed five years. What we are driving at is that five years or more is an awfully long time for the residents of the public and subsidized multifamily buildings who live one block to the south of the site (e.g., Brookfield Commons; Fisher Court public housing buildings) to live amidst the fences, noise, and dust of construction. The groundwork for mitigating measures should be laid now, in the Comprehensive Plan itself.
In addition to the above, we have one further area of question and concern regarding the draft Comprehensive Plan, namely, the environmental review of the new Comprehensive Plan itself. At his presentation at the Common Council’s October 30, 2023 meeting, Commissioner of Planning Christopher Gomez stated that the City plans to issue a “negative declaration” with respect to the action of adopting the new Comprehensive Plan,9 thus avoiding most of the possible environmental review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
As best we can infer, the Commissioner of Planning believes a negative declaration is appropriate because the plan does not itself effectuate any re-zoning of land. We find this view difficult to square with 6 NYCRR § 617.410 and General City Law § 28-a(9). Nothing about municipal comprehensive plans as described in General City Law § 28-a suggests that such plans always, necessarily, or even usually directly re-zone land. Nonetheless, 6 NYCRR § 617.4(b)(1) holds that “the adoption of a municipality’s land use plan” is a “Type I action” that “carries with it the presumption that it is likely to have a significant adverse impact on the environment and may require an EIS.” (Emphasis added.) Read in concert, the two provisions seem to imply that the norm is that the adoption of a municipal comprehensive plan, with or without direct re-zonings, will require a positive declaration and environmental impact statement (“EIS”), with exceptions being neither unthinkable nor particularly common. We add to this analysis the context that White Plains is a sizeable city that is developing at a fast pace, and this plan is intended to cover a ten to fifteen year period.11 The conclusion that a “positive declaration” and full environmental review is the more prudent course feels, to us, almost inescapable.
8) See December, 2023 draft Comprehensive Plan, ImplementWP section, p. 327 (“OneWP is intended to guide the City over the next ten to fifteen years from the time of its adoption.”).
9) See Oct. 30, 2023 Common Council meeting recording at 48:25, available at https://whiteplainsny.new.swagit.com/videos/293067.
10) Available at https://govt.westlaw.com/nycrr/Document/I4ec3a764cd1711dda432a117e6e0f345.
11) There is at least one environmental impact of the mere act of adopting a new comprehensive plan that we can foresee. That impact is that the Plan’s contemplation and enablement of numerous re-zonings and development approvals across the City will cause land transactions and business closures based on the future expectation of re-zonings and approvals. As we have seen with the Galleria, developers will begin laying the proverbial groundwork for the future, including by shuttering buildings and electing not to renew tenants’ leases, long before actual re-zonings are in-hand. This is an environmental impact, as the composition of significant parts of the city can change dramatically.
Nonetheless, we would like to better understand the City staff’s reasoning on this matter, and whether they have a response to our arguments or can identify points that we have not considered.
Thank you very much for your work on behalf of our great City.
Very truly yours,
The Board of Directors of Coalition for Addition Without Subtraction Inc.
Ben Brown, Gary O’Brien, Milagros Lecuona, Valerie Simmons, Yvonne Gumowitz
