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FOCUS ON
NEW ROCHELLE
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times, development has not halted in Q
residential core of New Rochelle to the Long Island Sound waterfront.
With three vibrant colleges, New Rochelle has been able to accommodate expansion without compromising quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods and the City overall.
progress over the past two years, increasing the sustainability of both our municipal government and the City as a whole as we implement various GreeNR initiatives. In
the City government, we are improving the energy efficiency with new heating and air conditioning systems at City Hall and at the Court Building, with upgraded windows at City Hall to follow. We have changed to LED lighting in our two largest parking garages, thereby greatly reducing their energy use, and are currently analyzing the best energy- efficient streetlights for the City. Internally, our Municipal Green Team has developed recommendations for staff, including double-sided printing as the default setting, and expanding recycling on-site (our paper recycling rates are outstanding!). Finally, the City Hall campus is now smoke free, benefitting the health of all visitors and employees, and a new Employee Wellness Initiative featuring nutrition seminars and exercise classes is underway.
For our residents and businesses, we have provided free energy-efficiency training workshops for superintendents of apartment buildings to lower their energy costs. We have enacted Complete Streets legislation for all new streets to ensure safe access for all. We are in the midst of a green gardening education campaign to teach our residents about the environmental benefits of leaf and grass mulching. We have a successful cell phone-recycling program with collection bins around the City. In the area of enhancing public health, we ran a City-wide walk
called NewRo Walks that attracted over
200 residents to kick off our program to encourage a healthier lifestyle and we now have two Farmers’ Markets providing fresh fruit and vegetables to our residents. We work with our schools to teach sustainability and to ensure healthy school grounds. Our Green Page on the City’s website is filled with environmental articles, resources, and tips. These are just some of the highlights
of our many sustainable programs that
make New Rochelle such a healthy and environmentally outstanding city.
Even during these challenging economic
What accounts for your success? Q
New Rochelle. In fact, the Echo Bay project is continuing. Are you able to provide an update on its progress?
A. Colleges add vibrancy to a city and our three institutions—College of New Rochelle, Iona College, and Monroe College—are important stakeholders. I believe the key
A. New Rochelle is privileged to have
over 13 miles of waterfront, hardly any
of it viewable from our main arteries. The City has been working closely with Forest City Residential to transform land on Echo Bay—a sheltered inlet on the beautiful
Long Island Sound—that is currently inaccessible and environmentally stressed into a vibrant, mixed-use community
with extensive public parkland. This redevelopment project consists of the construction of 285 rental units, 23,800 square feet of neighborhood retail uses
and over four acres of public open space
on the waterfront, creating view corridors from adjacent neighborhoods. The site is composed of several City properties and the benefits of this project are enormous: views and vistas of the Long Island Sound from Main Street; public access to the water for local residents and visitors; and residential living on the waterfront at a density in
scale with development of the surrounding community. The land use and zoning processes continue to move forward on this project with the City’s recent adoption of a Final Environmental Impact Statement and public hearings scheduled on zoning and urban renewal amendments.
To determine the best end use of a formal Naval Armory on site, the City recently kicked off a competition seeking innovative proposals for the design, planning, and workable development program for the historic military armory on 2.92 acres plus potentially three adjacent land parcels on Echo Bay. The first phase seeks solutions that link the commercial and
to our success is an open and ongoing dialogue that balances the needs of the college with those of the larger population. While the details of each are specific, the outcome is the same. Monroe College,
a for-profit entity, houses approximately 2,000 students in our downtown through
a carefully planned building expansion, including the latest—a 300-bed dorm slated for construction this year. This project will create an estimated 400 construction jobs and 12 full-time, permanent jobs. Iona College, located in the City’s North Avenue ‘College District’ has an undergraduate enrollment of approximately 3,800. A
joint City-College committee was recently tasked with finding a suitable location
for a proposed new dormitory building
along North Avenue, which led to zoning recommendations and a proposed pathway that would further strengthen this residential- commercial district. Finally, the College of New Rochelle, situated in the center of one of our most picturesque neighborhoods,
has successfully navigated the town/ gown tension through strong relationships with neighborhood associations and the City as a whole, introducing a special local scholarship in honor of our 325th Anniversary.
NR2 Q3 2013
Q
Sustainability Plan, is now in its second
New Rochelle is proving to be a model city of sustainability. GreeNR, the City’s
year. How is it progressing?
A. New Rochelle has made enormous