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The Regional Plan Association released a report yesterday with recommendations for ways to make six communities in Westchester County and Connecticut more livable. The report is based on a two-day workshop held last fall in New Haven, and included the mayor's and staff of the six communities, plus a bevy of experts from both states (the workshop was funding by the Westchester Community Foundation, which has long been a supporter of ours, and one of the participating experts was John Nolon, the head of the Pace Land Use Law Center and a member of our advisory board).
The communities were Mount Vernon, Ossining and Peekskill, in New York, and Norwalk, West Haven and Meriden, in Connecticut. You can find the full report and the news release here.
From the news release, here are the recommendations for the three Westchester communities:
- Mount Vernon, NY –
- Engage the public in a visioning session for the area around the Mount Vernon West train station
- Provide community retail, structured parking, and multiple pedestrian entrances at the redeveloped train station area
- Connect expanded Bronx River Pathway with a series of open spaces
- Ossining, NY –
- Create a “Transit-Oriented District” near the train station and along the roads leading to more pedestrian-friendly downtown
- Require market rate development on prime waterfront sites provide affordable units or pay a fee in lieu of that development to develop affordable housing elsewhere in town
- Remediate contaminated sites
- Use brownfield sites, air rights over train tracks or shared parking arrangements to locate parking associated with new development
- Peekskill, NY –
- Focus redevelopment opportunities on supporting the growth of their arts district and promoting tourism
- Encourage new residential housing along the Hudson River to increase tax revenues and capitalize on the views of the river
- Connect Peekskill’s development nodes to the train station with pedestrian connections and transit options
- Address traffic circulation and pedestrian safety problems associated with the hill next to the train station