Village Seeks Public Feedback on Freightway Development Study

The Scarsdale Village Board held a second work session on Tuesday July 28 to review the scope of the GEIS, or generic environmental impact study to assess all the impacts of development of the Freightway site.

Peter Feroe, a Planner with the firm AKRF, explained that the potential development site includes both the village-owned parcels that we know as the Freightway lots, the garage, the open lot and the Beedee lot. It also includes the Scarsdale Avenue lot. The Village has certain rights over the railroad tracks as well. And then, because of their adjacency, they are looking at the potential to include any or all of the privately owned parcels along Garth Road immediately adjacent to the Freightway sites in any evaluation of a redevelopment.

Feroe explained, “We want to figure out what the impacts of redevelopment would be, so we can get to a scenario that is beneficial to the village, and we're doing this through the SEQRA process, the environmental review process. The first step of that process is a public scoping process which creates the table of contents for what will be studied in a generic environmental impact statement and to get community feedback.”

In this iteration, the GEIS is being led by the Village of Scarsdale rather than by developers. Feroe explained, “To make a viable project here to help offset the costs of maintaining that public infrastructure, there would be a private redevelopment component of this project that would be led by likely a multifamily product with a certain number of units. That's what it's zoned for today.”

He continued, “We're looking at a broad range of what-if scenarios to look at traffic, infrastructure, utilities, schools. The draft scoping outlines how we're going to go about that that analysis, what we're going to look at, and how we're going to look at it. What traffic intersections, what data we're going to collect, and it's very, very detailed. If at the end of this study, you know, the village decides that there is not a path forward that meets Scarsdale's needs, they're under no obligation to continue. They don't have to move forward. There is no burden that's placed on them. “

“We're also looking at impacts to community services, and by that we mean first responders, police, fire, EMS. We're looking at parks and recreation. We're looking at impacts to schools. Fiscal impacts kind of goes along with the community service impacts, but kind of is the other side of that coin. What are the fiscal benefits? What are the economic benefits to the village and to other taxing jurisdictions, both in terms of new revenues, property taxes, sales taxes, etc. as well as avoided costs on the maintenance side of the garage?”

“Utilities, water, sewer, stormwater, electric, gas. What are the impacts to those? Obviously, both in terms of physical impacts, we know they're water, sewer, stormwater lines running straight through Freightway, as well as the capacity of those systems to serve a new development, and environmental site conditions, and potential environmental issues with the soil or anything else from past use, and cultural resources. We're proximate to several historic resources: the Bronx River Parkway downtown, a couple other individual buildings.”

Trustee Goldschmidt asked, “For public parking utilization, there is no subcategory of daily parking versus commuter parking. Is that something we should consider as a subcategory? Because is that a is commuter parking a different beast and has different characteristics than street parking or for the for homeowners or residents and people who are coming to the commercial area?”

Feroe, said, “Yes, and that is a subcategory that we intend to study. We've been taking counts out at the garage and the different lots at different times of day. We've been working with the village manager's office to obtain, and they've given us a bunch of data, current and historic, on permits that were issued to for various purposes, so we're putting that all together, and that is something we need to look at because that's going to inform how much public parking the village is going to require of a new development.”

Seth Ross, 21 Ardmore Road, Chair of the Scarsdale Forum Committee on Freightway thanked the board and the staff of AKRF.

He said, “there are a couple of things we would like to see dealt with explicitly in the the GEIS and therefore in the draft scope. One is some analysis of the project, both with and without the privately owned property.

The second thing is that we would like to see some discussion of alternative transportation, including bicycles, scooters, and other small motorized vehicles”

Trustee Kofman asked about the potential redevelopment scenarios, saying “It would be useful to understand what parameters that will be included in those scenarios. We're talking about unit count, unit type etc.”

Trustees also asked questions about the mobility and parking analysis and about proposals to mitigate impacts on traffic and transportation systems and requested that the analysis include the impact on pedestrian traffic and safety. Trustee Foley mentioned that the online survey on Freightway was very long and asked if answers to partially completed surveys would be counted. He was told that yes that information would be used.

The Village will hold their next public session on Freightway on August 11, 2026. Learn more about the project here.