Lead Stories

Rye weighs lawsuit over United Hospital project

After the removal of a major traffic mitigation facet to Starwood Capital’s $450 million plan to revamp the former United Hospital site in neighboring Port Chester, the Rye City Council will ready itself to enter litigation.

“These Article 78s are never a slam dunk, so I’m not going into this with any delusions,” said Rye Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican. “But they served this one to us on a silver platter.”

According to Sack—who said the city will wait to file a lawsuit against Starwood until the April 6 deadline in hopes of negotiating with the developers out of court—a major provision that would have added two lanes of traffic to one of the development’s major exit points was removed from the project at the last minute.

Specifically, the Rye City Council’s focus has been on two major arteries; exit ramps from Interstate 287 and Interstate 95 that already see a high volume of traffic. The project, the City Council worries, may only exacerbate current conditions. Sack said, the deviation from the traffic plan—for a project which is proposing 730 units of housing in addition to 90,000 square feet of retail space—will force vehicles into adjacent Rye neighborhoods through one of its back entrances.

“We had relied on the fact that it was in there,” Sack said. “We are shocked and dismayed that it was taken out at the last minute without telling us.”

Sack added that the city has been in negotiations with Starwood following the lanes’ removal.

The two lanes—which were set to be constructed on Boston Post Road, outside the development’s entrance—had been a long-included facet of the developer’s plan to transform the site, but according to village of Port Chester officials, who voted in favor of accepting a set of crucial zoning changes allowing the project to move forward earlier this month, the two lanes were taken out due to their own traffic concerns; at least for the time being.

“If we make Boston Post Road into an eight-lane super highway, it’s going to make it very unsafe for people to cross it,” said Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla, a Democrat. “And it won’t help the aesthetics either.”

According to Pilla, while the construction of those lanes is not currently in the plan, Starwood will be required to keep empty where the lanes were slated to be built, in order to afford the board an option to construct them at a later date.

The decision on whether to add the lanes would be the purview of the village board and would likely come after a post-implementation traffic analysis, Pilla said.

Additional lanes had been previously included in the project as per the recommendation of traffic consultants hired by the village, the city, and also the New York state Department of Transportation.

Rye City officials had also been in active negotiations with Starwood over money the developers agreed to provide toward the city’s traffic mitigation efforts. However, a current offer, according to Councilman Terry McCartney, a Republican, was too low.

A zoning change adopted earlier this month will allow the project to press forward into a site plan approval process where the village Board of Trustees would take in additional public input regarding the project.

However, litigation could hamper the project’s progress.

Rye City Attorney Kristen Wilson told the Review that the city will not be seeking an injunction  as the project hasn’t entered the construction phase.