By Carol P. Bartold     

Jul. 8, 2015: Pondfield Court LLC's application to redevelop the former Morgan Manhattan Storage building at 100 Pondfield Road will be a key item on the agenda at the Bronxville Planning Board meeting this evening at 7:30 pm.

At its June 10 meeting, the board issued a conditioned negative declaration relative to the project. The developer must satisfy the conditions before the village will issue a building permit for the proposed redevelopment of the landlocked building.

Pondfield Court LLC first presented its plans to the board in 2013 as a pre-application and in July 2014 as a formal application. It seeks approval to develop the 32,242-square-foot building into 11 residential condominium units on the upper two floors with a 17-space ground-level parking garage.

Unique obstacles under consideration in developing the property have centered on issues raised by limited building access. An easement, approximately 15 feet wide, from Pondfield Road provides the only ingress and egress for the building.

Safety concerns, as well as the enforcement measurers the developer intends to impose to prevent blockage of the easement, owned by Mosbacher Properties Group and used for decades by its commercial tenants as a delivery area, make up the primary conditions that are part of the conditioned negative declaration.

Conditions call for the final site plan to include all fire safety systems required for compliance under the New York State Fire and Building Code. In addition, the developer will be required to designate and stripe the easement as a fire lane in which no parking or standing would be permitted.

Additional measures to ensure pedestrian safety in and around the driveway and to alert pedestrians when vehicles are exiting the building must be included in the project's traffic management plan. To satisfy that condition, 100 Pondfield Court has proposed installing bollards, short vertical posts with electronic sensors, which would trigger in-pavement lights on the Pondfield Road sidewalk when a vehicle exits the parking garage.

Discussions between 100 Pondfield Court and Mosbacher Properties Group about the developer's legal right to enforce its exclusive use of the easement, as opposed to the property owner's intent to continue allowing its tenants' delivery vehicles to use the easement, had not resulted in agreement by the June 10 planning board meeting.

The conditioned negative declaration requires 100 Pondfield Court to obtain from the court a declaration stating that delivery vehicles will not be allowed to stop to load or unload in the easement and stipulating that the easement may not be blocked in whole or in part at any time.

Conditions also call for the 17 parking spaces proposed for the garage to be reduced to a maximum of 14 spaces, or 1.25 parking spaces per unit, to achieve the parking space size, layout, and traffic circulation acceptable to village traffic and parking consultants.

The conditioned negative declaration was published in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation's Environmental Notice Bulletin.

The public comment period regarding the declaration is open and ends on Friday, July 24, 2015.

Comments can be addressed to Vince Pici, superintendent of buildings, at 914-337-7338.

Pictured here: Entrance from Pondfield Road to proposed condominium redevelopment at 100 Pondfield Road.

Photo by A. Warner