State Supreme Court Reverses Dromore Road Ruling, Clearing the Way for Multi-Family Housing

Edgemont Residents were surprised by a January 12, 2012 email they received from Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner concerning Dromore Road. Feiner’s email said, “In a court decision dated January 10, 2012, Judge Gerald Loehr has reversed the Town Zoning Board of Appeal’s determination that the 2.26 acre property at One Dromore Road in Edgemont is in the Town’s R-20 Single Family Residential District and has concluded that the property is in the CA-1 Multi-Family District and can be improved with multi-family dwellings. In addition, the decision may have implications for the Greenburgh Nature Center and Edgemont community. The Board will discuss a possible appeal.”

The problematic situation at Dromore Road started back on May 24, 2006 when S & R Development Estates LLC (S & R) purchased the property known as 1 Dromore Road (also known as 62 Dromore Road) in Edgemont for $1.4 million. The property is approximately 2.25 acres and is located right off Central Avenue between the Greenburgh Nature Center and the Edgemont High School campus. S & R purchased the property, which had a one family home on it at the time, with the intent of developing the land and building a four-story multi-family 37 unit apartment complex with approximately 35 bedrooms per acre . The developers believed that the parcel of land was located in a multi-family CA-1 zone and at the time, the zoning maps did show the land to be in the multi-family zone. However, in early 2007, the Town informed S&R that there had been an error on the zoning map (dating back to the late 1990s) and the land was actually located in an R-20 single-family zone.

Of course, this mistake changed everything for the developer; S & R argued that their decision to purchase the property was based on the belief that they could build multi-family units on the site. In preparation, they had already demolished the existing home on the property in December 2006. S & R understandably was shocked at this new information and the change in zoning had a tremendous impact on the value of the property. In September, 2005 S & R had the property appraised at a value of $10,200,000. The same size parcel of land in a single-family zone would be worth substantially less. In March 2011, S & R won a Tax Certiorari Settlement reducing the assessed value of the parcel from $37,050 to $13,000 in 2010 (the revised assessment for 2008 and 2009 was $18,525) and S & R received a $61,000 tax refund.

The town corrected the zoning map to show that the property was situated in R-20, with zoning for single-family residences on minimum half-acre lots. After much legal back and forth with the Town, S & R lost its appeal to the Town of Greenburgh Zoning Board of Appeals who, in late 2007, upheld the decision of the Town's Department of Community Planning and Conservation designating the property for single family residences. Last week, the State Supreme Court disagreed and upheld the 2006 zoning map, declaring that the property is in Zone CA-1. The developer can now submit his plans to develop the parcel of land and go forward with his original plans unless the Town appeals the recent court ruling. Supervisor Paul Feiner has said that the matter will be discussed with the Town Attorney next week.

Many Edgemont residents worry that if multi-family dwellings are built, it will bring even more students into the school district. Already facing the 2% state mandated tax cap, these extra students will put additional budgetary pressure on the district. Others in the neighborhood are concerned about the loss of open green space in an area that is already over-developed. Understandably the Greenburgh Nature Center is also not happy with the ruling. Last, Dromore Road itself is quite narrow and not ideal for the added traffic that the development will bring to it.

In 2006, the Conservation Advisory Council (CAC) also recommended trying to preserve this parcel of land as open space. In a January 2007 memo from the chairperson of the CAC, Theresa Mae Tori said, "While small, this parcel is a link between two larger open spaces; the Nature Center and the Edgemont High School Campus. When the Town established its Open Space Plan, the importance to local fauna of connecting open space was recognized as an element in identifying land to be acquired."

Learn more, by reading Judge Loehr’s decision here: