Developers Submit Plans for Landmark Bronx Armory
From the New York Daily News
Developers submit plans for Armory
BY BILL EGBERT
Wednesday, February 7th, 2007
The bids are in!
After more than a decade in limbo, the gigantic Kingsbridge Armory, which the city inherited in 1996, is on track for renovation with three developers filing bids with the city.
The contenders – Atlantic Development Group, the Related Cos., and Rosenshein Associates – submitted their plans with the city’s Economic Development Corp. in response to a carefully crafted Request For Proposals drafted by a task force to balance financial realities and community desires.
Since the city took control of the 575,000-square-foot National Guard armory at 29 W. Kingsbridge Road 11 years ago, plans have come and gone, from one backed by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani for a glitzy, basketball-themed arena and mall, to a proposal from community groups to fill the vast building with schools.
The RFP, drafted by a task force of Bronx elected officials and community leaders, states that EDC “will view favorably development plans that maximize the number of jobs that meet the city’s living-wage and health-benefits standards,” and whose proposed tenants “endeavor to not duplicate or directly compete with the existing retail.”
The EDC also said the city Department of Education is prepared to fund and build one primary school with 441 seats, and one primary/intermediate school with 630 seats at the site.
Atlantic Development Group’s Peter Fine has already pitched a plan to Community Board 7 that includes public schools for 2,000 students; a 57,200-square-foot YMCA; 13,000-25,000 square feet of community space, and a retail portion with a department store, a movie theater and a parking garage.
No details are known about the Related proposal, but if the the politically connected developer wins the bid, it will be the company’s third major Bronx project now underway. Related broke ground last year on the $345 million Gateway Center Mall at the old Bronx Terminal Market. Its proposal for a Home Depot in the East Bronx has just begun the approval process.
The Mamaroneck-based Rosenshein Associates has built shopping malls since the 1960s, including the Peartree Shopping Plaza in Co-op City.
EDC spokeswoman Janel Patterson said no target date has been set to decide on the winning bidder.
“We will continue to work with members of the task force to evaluate the proposals,” she said.
Any redevelopment of the 90-year-old armory will have to preserve its landmarked exterior, which features Romanesque arches, decorative brick and terracotta, and imposing battlement towers.
From the Norwood News
Bids Are In For Armory, Three Firms Submit Proposals
By ALEX KRATZ
The race to redevelop the Kingsbridge Armory into a massive mixed-use facility is now a three-way contest.
While the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the quasi-public entity spearheading the Armory’s development, remains tight-lipped about which developers submitted proposals, the Norwood News learned that three candidates have thrown their hats in the ring.
The Atlantic Development Group and the Related Company have each submitted detailed proposals on how they would develop the Armory if given the opportunity. The third candidate remains a mystery.
Atlantic, headed by prolific affordable housing magnate Peter Fine, signed on with the Richman Group last year and worked closely with the Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment Alliance (KARA), an umbrella group of community organizations, to create a detailed Armory proposal, which was presented to the community in late May.
Fine made his presentation to Community Board 7, which was generally well-received by KARA, in hopes of bypassing the Request for Proposals (RFP) process. Atlantic even took the extra step of securing a new location for the two National Guard units currently housed in the Armory’s annex buildings. In the RFP, the EDC maintains that the relocation of the Guard units will not be a factor in its decision making process.
If Fine’s new proposal looks anything like the one he presented in May, it will include 1,000 parking spots, a movie theater multiplex, large and small retail stores (including a big chain such as the home improvement giant Lowes or the department store Kohl’s), a National Guard recruiting station, and community space for youth and seniors. At the time, Fine said the YMCA was interested in opening a branch at the Armory and that he would like to identify a bookstore chain as well.
“We worked closely with local residents, civic leaders, clergy, education advocates and elected officials to create a community-oriented plan that would deliver schools, jobs, athletic facilities, entertainment, retail and community space,” Atlantic officials said in an e-mail statement through its public relations company.
Atlantic has completed several affordable housing developments in the Bronx and recently won the contract to build a new Boricua College campus in Melrose. In addition to classrooms and other school facilities, the plan for the private bilingual college, which also has campuses in Brooklyn and Manhattan, will include retail space, a high school, and 700 units of affordable housing.
Meanwhile, Related, which has close ties to Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, is currently developing the Bronx Terminal Market into a massive million-square-foot mall just south of Yankee Stadium. While Atlantic primarily operates without much publicity in the New York City area, Related is a multi-faceted national company with offices in Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago in addition to its Manhattan offices.
Related’s portfolio includes $10 billion in developments, according to its Web site (Atlantic, by contrast, doesn’t have a Web site). In total, Related has developed or acquired 35,000 apartment units and four million square feet of commercial space.
Dean Vanderwarker, one of Related’s associate vice presidents, said that he couldn’t go into the details of his company’s proposal, but that it was “still very interested in becoming the Armory’s designated developer.”
Related boss Stephen Ross and Doctoroff are longtime friends and former business partners. When Related was pursuing the Bronx Terminal Market project, residents and merchant advocates complained that they were shut out of the negotiating process and that penalties weren’t steep enough if Related did not come up with the goods stipulated in a Community Benefits agreement, such as a provision that BJ’s Wholesale Club accept food stamps, and invest $3 million in job training and referral programs. Elected officials hailed the benefits agreement, however.
“This agreement should serve as the benchmark for doing business in our borough and throughout the city,” said Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrión at the time.
While Related appears to enjoy the support of City Hall, Fine and Atlantic have increased their ties with several prominent Bronx politicians through tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions over the past few election cycles.
Many of those same Bronx politicians, including Assemblyman and Bronx Democratic boss Jose Rivera and his son Joel, the City Council majority leader, among others, are represented on the Armory Task Force, an advisory group that helped craft the RFP and will be reviewing the proposals and providing input.
One member of the task force, Greg Faulkner, who chairs Community Board 7 (which contains the Armory), says he’s looking forward to reviewing the proposals at the next task force meeting on March 1. Task force members will be
asked to sign a confidentiality agreement before seeing the proposals, which will be presented without the company names listed, kind of like a blind taste test.
“I’m going in with a completely open mind,” Faulkner said when asked if Fine’s earlier proposal would give Atlantic a leg up on the competition.
Faulkner said he’ll be looking at several different aspects in each proposal. “I want to see what kind of businesses are going in. How creative is the community space? How do you take advantage of the retail venue? Can you sit in an area and read a book?”
Community Board 7 will have a chance to review the proposals soon after the task force. The board will also be involved once the developer is selected in June through the ULURP, a land review process mandated by the city charter, during which time the community will have another chance to express its opinion.