Developers have started to break ground on the town’s first mixed-use development along the Platinum Mile, after securing approval for the project almost one year ago.
Normandy Real Estate Partners and Toll Brothers, a publicly owned home development company, are constructing a 421-unit rental complex at 103-105 Corporate Park Drive, which is the former site of a commercial office building.
The mixed-use development, known as “Carraway,” will include a five-story rental apartment building that features studio, one- and two-bedroom units. Additionally, the development will feature 5,000 square feet of space for a restaurant and other commercial expansions, as well as 10,000 square feet of recreational amenity space such as courtyards, a gym, a bike lounge, a pet spa and a swimming pool. There will also be 752 indoor and outdoor parking spaces on site.
After efforts by former town Councilman Joe Stout, a Democrat, to include affordable housing at the site, Carraway will also offer 42 units at market-rate costs.
That affordable housing plan will accommodate 21 units for households earning up to 60 percent of the area median income—about $52,000 for a family of two—and 21 units for couples earning up to 80 percent of the area median income, approximately $69,000.
In addition to Stout’s emphasis on affordable housing at the Corporate Park Drive location, the idea was met with support a year prior from several county housing organizations such as the Habitat for Humanity for Westchester and Community Housing Innovations Inc., which spoke before the Harrison Planning Board to advocate for affordable housing.
The push for market-rate housing at the location came amidst a controversial county affordable housing debate, in which former U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development monitor James Johnson, who is running for governor of New Jersey this year, included the town/village of Harrison amongst six other Westchester municipalities that weren’t complying with a 2009 affordable housing settlement that required 31 communities to create 750 units of market-rate housing within a seven-year time frame.
Harrison had gone nearly a quarter of a century without approving any units of affordable housing in the area.
Last year, Mayor Ron Belmont, a Republican, told the Review the development would help reverse a trend of corporate departures from the “teardrop” area off of the Hutchinson River Parkway and Interstate 287. He said, during the late 1970s and ‘80s, Harrison generated as much as 68 percent of its annual tax revenue from companies such as General Foods, Texaco and IBM.
Today, Harrison generates approximately 18 percent of its tax revenue from businesses along the Platinum Mile.
“All the ingredients [for success] are there and it gives us the opportunity to offer new housing choices to our residents and employees,” Belmont said previously about the land designated for construction, which has been abandoned for nearly 15 years.
Belmont could not be reached for additional comment, as of press time.
