Construction of Parking Garage for Kensington Road Development to Begin Soon

By Carol P. Bartold
Jul. 1, 2015: As site preparation for the Kensington Road project nears completion, developer Gateway Development Group, Inc., prepares to begin construction of the project's parking garage.
Geoff Thompson, partner at public relations agency Thompson Bender, noted that a small amount of soil and rock remains on the site and that it will be removed within the next week or two. The rock, he said, sits close to the Metro-North Railroad tracks, and Gateway is coordinating its removal with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
"The next step is to have the building department approve the engineering for the parking garage piers," Thompson said. He anticipates approval of that application to coincide with the completion of site preparation. The parking garage will be the first phase of actual construction on the project.
Plans call for concrete piers to be poured early this month, Thompson said. The piers will become the footing for the 300-space below-grade parking garage. He anticipates a six-to-nine-month construction period to complete the garage.
Two hundred of the parking spaces in the garage will be for village use, exclusively. They will replace the 180 spaces lost when the Kensington Road parking lots were closed. The remaining 100 parking spaces will be reserved for residents of the 54 one- and two-bedroom condominium units to be built on top of the garage.
Gateway received approval from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to remove contaminated soil and rock from the construction site under the Brownfield Cleanup Program. The program provides tax incentives to make feasible the cleanup and redevelopment of highly compromised real property.
To prepare the site for construction, Gateway removed 20,000 cubic yards of soil contaminated from the operation of Lawrence Park Heat, Light and Power as well as a gas station on the site. The developer removed an additional 10,000 cubic yards of uncontaminated soil, as well as 10,000 cubic yards of rock to enable excavation for the parking garage.
Pictured here: Current Kensington Road condominium construction site.
Photo by A. Warner








