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CORTLANDT, N.Y. A small trailer park and a few two-family homes next to the Cortlandt Yacht Club, just east of Verplanck in the Town of Cortlandt, could be redeveloped into town homes in the coming years if a proposed development is approved.
Rocco Triglia, owner of the piece of property on the Hudson River, presented a pre-application proposal to the Cortlandt Town Boards Monday evening work session.
The plan would utilize the towns residential reuse special permit to redevelop the trailers into 23 new townhomes grouped into five buildings, 58 boat slips and a club house. In the proposed site plan, each townhome owner would buy a boat slip with the purchase of their home and the rest of the slips would be for rent.
Triglia is the former owner of the property, which was eventually developed into the Roundtop affordable housing development in Montrose. Triglia initially came to the Cortlandt Planning Board in the 1990s with a proposal to develop the same land into town homes, but after two decades of various proposals and finally getting the planning board's go-ahead in 2008, Cortlandt Town officials said Triglia never moved forward with the proposal.
The property was then sold to Westchester County, which sold the property to Wilder Balter. Wilder Balter then developed the property into the 92-units of affordable housing in construction today.
During the pre-application meeting, Supervisor Linda Puglisi asked Triglia if the property would go down the same road as his previous development. Triglia said that would not happen.
"Im asking him tough questions because this is what he did on the other agreement so, I thought it was a legitimate fair question," said Puglisi. She said the Town of Cortlandt has done more than its fair share to generate affordable housing.
Each townhome is proposed to be about 2,000 square feet on two floors, about 1,000 square feet per floor. Triglia said he was uncertain if they would use an affordable housing option, which would allow the developer to build an additional four units.
Jeff Contelmo, the engineer on the project from Insite Engineering, wouldn't estimate the price of the townhomes, saying there was no way to predict market conditions in the future. Council member Frank Farrell wondered if the units were sellable in the neighborhood.
Its out of scale with the rest of the community," he said. "Do you think people would be attracted to something like this in the area?
Although the general consensus among council members was that, if the property were developed into town homes, it would be an improvement on the current housing. Council members asked what would happen to the owners of the trailers now residing on the land. The developer said the owners could be terminated, because they had ample notice that the property would be redeveloped.
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