If You Build It, They'll Run Away

This letter was sent to Scarsdale10583 by Ronald Binday of Advocate Brokerage in Scarsdale: Westchester County, and Scarsdale in particular, developed from New York's rural and agricultural hinterlands into the city's most beautiful suburbs beginning more than a century ago.

Farms and summer estates gave way to towns and villages where people of taste and refinement built businesses and homes that reflected their best visions of what a hometown should be.

Scarsdale, one 1920s historical booklet notes, was hallmarked by an "attractive, homogeneous Tudor business district surrounded by beautiful private residences." It has stayed that was, pretty much, thanks to citizens and officials who wish to maintain the high standards of construction and aesthetics that have served us so well.

And then there's 1 Palmer Avenue, at our most important central crossroads, the "Five Corners," where we go to shop and dine, and where many no doubt glean their dominant impression of Scarsdale. This location is not the Village, to be sure, but it is our alternate "downtown," and should display the best Scarsdale has to offer.

Instead, it's now overwhelmed by an ugly building that didn't have to be that way.

We all know the story: a highly-praised international architecture firm whose first name on its shingle lives in Scarsdale collaborated with an esteemed local developer, won approval for a multipurpose new building that would replace a tired, old gas station and offer new services to the Scarsdale.

The anchor tenant was to be a Seasons store, a high-end grocer specializing in kosher food, and it would be right across the parking lot from Balducci's, another fine food vendor that serves Scarsdale's discriminating gustatory needs. For the local consumer, the juxtaposition of the stores meant easy, one-stop shopping for all gourmet tastes.

As proposed, the home of Seasons would have closely modeled traditional Scarsdale, with appropriate design accents tracking the Tudor theme prevalent in town, and an architectural aesthetic that would please the eye of neighbor and stranger alike.

Ha!

Those of us who watch Washington these days are familiar with marvelous concept yielding to miserable execution; and so it is in Scarsdale, as well. 1 Palmer Avenue diverges significantly from the plan presented and approved more than three years ago, earning it 11 violations from the Village for departures from what was approved by the Board of Architectural Review. The litany of unsightly discrepancies includes changes to the roofline, railings, windows, doors and lighting – and none of them for the better.

The result today is an empty, nasty-looking monstrosity, out of sync with its surroundings and unlikely to be embraced by the tasteful community it was built to serve.

This building certainly did not take its cue from its neighbors. Caddy corner across the road sites Real Living Five Corners Real Estate in a beautifully restored Italian Renaissance-style building that was formerly home to the Scarsdale Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and a century ago was built as the local depot of the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad. Its recent restoration is a testament of love and respect for the building and the town.

And diagonally across the street in a grand and classic Tudor building, elegantly utilized, is Massa, formerly Heathcote Tavern, and before that Charlie Brown's. This amazing building is one of the most stunning in all of Scarsdale, and has a most varied history as a restaurant, tavern and inn, among other interesting uses.

(One caveat is the four-story apartment building proposed as an addition to the Massa property; we sincerely hope that its developer will pay attention to the beauty of its surroundings and Scarsdale as a whole. In any case, the wonderful and historic buildings at the Five Corners deserve to be in better company than the new 1 Palmer Avenue has afforded them today.)

When other projects in other towns have gone astray, we've seen architects, builders and officials point fingers at each other and litigate long into the future about who was responsible and who should pay. We hope that doesn't happen here. What we'd like to see is a building made right; a new facade reflecting community standards, a roof rebuilt to hide the mechanicals that were never supposed to offend our eyes, and a new structure to emerge that adheres to both what was approved and to the spirit of Scarsdale.

The old saying that "if you build it they will come" has obviously not worked with 1 Palmer Avenue, at least for tenants. Instead, those who hate the building have come out to say so, and their public declarations should be heeded.

We live in one of the best communities in the United States. Let's strive to hold onto our standards, and let's make sure that 1 Palmer Avenue is compelled to meet them.