Three years ago, an ambitious proposal to invest $5 million renovating the landmark Workers’ Compensation building in the heart of the city played a pivotal role in downtown revitalization hopes for Peekskill.
Instead, with that proposal long abandoned, a new plan is on the table to bring 22 lower-income apartments to be developed by Children’s Village.
For Children’s Village, buying and renovating the building is an experiment to see if the non-profit can build affordable housing on a smaller scale than the two large projects they’ve completed in Manhattan. Children’s Village provides services to children and young adults in the foster care and the juvenile system.
But for the economy of Peekskill, the failure to bring 30 high-efficiency micro-apartments targeted toward young professionals, privately financed, and an arts and cinema center to draw visitors, is an opportunity for growth missed.
The Workers’ Comp building, at 41 N. Division St., has a long history as a central focus of downtown Peekskill. Over the decades, retail store Genung’s then Howlands and eventually Steinbach brought bustling shoppers to Peekskill.
The building then became home to a state Worker’s Compensation department office in the 1990s where the public visited regularly throughout the week. The site generated lots of foot traffic and spillover economic activity, helping to make Peekskill’s downtown a busy and vital place.
But after the Worker’s Comp office closed, the building has sat vacant for at least ten years, creating an eyesore along Restaurant Row at the corner of Main and North Division.
According to a deed filed in the county clerk’s office, in 2016 North Division Main LLC purchased the building for $1,312,500. According to documents filed with a proposal for funding from the city’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI), North Division Main LLC is led by Louie Lanza and Paul Guillaro.
“[Lanza’s] real estate company, Hudson Realty Investors, owns multiple properties in downtown Peekskill and at the waterfront. Mr. Lanza has a long history of developing property in Peekskill and operating successful businesses in the city,” the DRI proposal says.
“Paul Guillaro is the President and CEO of Unicorn Contractor Corporation and is a real estate investor and developer in addition to being an engineer. He has over 40 years of experience in the construction industry and has developed over 2 million square feet of residential, commercial, and medical space.”
The empty building has been listed for sale for several years at an asking price of $2.2 million. According to the city finance records the annual property taxes are $60,132.14.
Childen’s Village in Peekskill – scaling down
The Children’s Village founded its 180-acre residential campus in Dobbs Ferry in 1901 and serves children and young adults in the social services system or foster care. They also operate Woodfield Cottage in Valhalla, Westchester County’s juvenile detention center and offer shelter for homeless and runaway children age 12 to 17.
Children’s Village runs Bay House in Yonkers in collaboration with Westhab, a large developer of affordable housing in Westchester. In New York City, Children’s Village built the 10-story Harlem Dowling, a building with 60 affordable apartments for residents of Harlem including 12 studios of transitional housing for young adults aging out of foster care.
They also recently opened the 14-story Eliza in the Inwood neighborhood in Manhattan, with 175 “deeply affordable” apartments, a new public library branch and various community services.
According to its annual report, Children’s Village receives $134.56 million from government sources annually. The operating budget is $144.27 million.
Louie Lanza is a long-time supporter of Children’s Village and is a believer in the Peekskill project.
“I’ve been working with Jeremy at Children’s Village for 25 years. I’ve seen some incredible results from the kids and I believe in the capabilities of what he can accomplish,” Lanza told the Herald. “I went to his new building in the New York City and it looks real promising to give some of these kids a chance.
“We can’t find people to work in the restaurants in Peekskill and these kids are willing to work. It can be a game changer if they’re willing to come in and learn about the hospitality business, it would be great. Hopefully these kids coming in are the rights ones, we don’t know,” Lanza said.
He said his family foundation would lend financial support to the Workers’ Comp building project.
Jeremy Kohomban, Children’s Village President and CEO, explained at a Planning Commission meeting on Aug. 13 that his agency now wants to see if they can make a smaller project work. The Peekskill site will have 22 apartments, ten of them set aside for young adults leaving foster care or supervised living, and 10,00 square feet of commercial space. State and county funding will mean the 12 affordable units will be open to all county residents in a lottery.
The goal of Children’s Village in Peekskill is to provide transitional housing for employed young adults leaving the social services system and entering the world of independence. They will pay 30 percent of their income for a 500-square-foot apartment while living with other residents from the general public. [The Zoning Board of Appeals granted an area variance for the unit size, which is below the city’s 600 square foot minimum.] “I don’t want to live with kids who have the same situation I have. I want to live with everyone else,” Kohamban hears from his young adults leaving foster care.
Making the Workers’ Comp building project economically viable is an open question and filling the street level space with commercial tenants will be critical.
“We face challenging economics with just 22 apartments,” Kohomban said. “It will have a huge impact on our bottom line if don’t fill ground floor, but that’s a commitment on our part. We believe well-designed Class A space is still marketable given the location and the design elements of our plan.
“I know we are taking a massive risk – my board has asked me the same question. You can run the numbers, we’re not making any money on this, but we think, if we can prove this concept here, Peekskill will get something beautiful and we get something that we might be able to replicate elsewhere.”
Children’s Village has longstanding ties to the Lanza family. The Lanza Family Foundation donated funds to build a recreation center on the Dobbs Ferry campus. “Thanks to generous gifts from hundreds of friends, The Children’s Village qualified for a $1 million matching grant from Pat Lanza for our new Activities Center,” the website reads. “Thank you to Mrs. Lanza, her family, and everyone who helped us meet this important goal. Mrs. Lanza has supported The Children’s Village for many years and has taken a personal interest in older youth finding permanent families, completing high school, going on to post-secondary education, and successfully getting and keeping a job.” [Patricia Lanza, Louie’s mother, died in 2014].
The Lanza Recreation Center includes a full size gymnasium, fitness room and swimming pool. The facility provides paid work experience at the Center’s kitchen and café, barbershop, recording studio, greenhouse, dog training program, and more. The Lanza Family Foundation is listed as a donor in the $50,000 to $99,999 category in the 2023 annual report.
“One of our main donors asked can this [the Manhattan buildings] be replicated,” Kohomban said. “We thought of Westchester but you can’t build 14 stories except White Plains or maybe New Rochelle. This Peekskill building, one of co-owners is a dear friend and a donor, his family has done a lot for us.”
Too much affordable housing?
The Children’s Village project needs a special permit from the Planning Commission and approvals from the Historic and Landmarks Preservation board. Several Common Council members toured one of the group’s buildings in Manhattan and expressed admiration for the site while planning commission members seemed to indicate their initial support for the plan. [The Common Council will not have a vote on the project].
At his Aug. 13 presentation, after being questioned regarding financing, Rose Noonan of the Housing Action Council, a consultant on the project, said there is an urgency to get site plan approval by October at the latest in order to win county financial support.
If the Children’s Village project targets eligible income at 50 percent of the Westchester County area median income, the residents will have incomes of $78,100 or less. The median income in Peekskill now is $86,695.
With funding from county and state sources, the apartments will go to winners of a lottery open to all county residents. At 645 Main St., another affordable housing development, 20 Peekskill residents moved into the units out of a total of 82 apartments.
At the eastern end of Main Street, a proposed development of 57 units at Broad and Howard streets will now seek state and county funding for affordable apartments instead of the original plan to build all market rate.
Consultants for developer Chuck Lesnick told the Planning Commission at the Aug. 13 meeting that it could take until 2028 to clear the property of contamination under the state’s Brownfields program.
Common Council member Dwight Douglas does not support the plan for affordable housing at the Workers’ Comp building. “Regarding the Children’s Village proposed development, I am opposed to it,” Douglas told the Herald. “It is my opinion that we have too much affordable housing in the downtown. I had thought when the project came before the council, I would vote no, but as I looked up the approval process I found the council does not have a vote.
“The city bears the burden of providing a full range of municipal services for properties that do not pay a full share of city and school property taxes,” Douglas said. “In the current case of 901 Main Street, our police department is having to provide enhanced policing to offset the building’s inadequate security and overall management.”
