Peekskill Planning Commissioners are seeing red over a lighter shade of gray.

With plans to start showing apartments to prospective renters next month, the developer of the new 51-unit apartment building at Grove and South streets has hit a snag. Members of the Planning Commission are not happy that the original deep green siding color they approved has been changed.

At the Jan. 13 Planning Commission meeting, chairman Jeff Stern fired the opening volley. “I’m a little bit upset that this project didn’t get built to what we approved, and I’m not here to just rubber stamp that mistake,” Stern told the project’s architect Joe Thompson.  “At a minimum they should be fined something, and part of me thinks take the siding all down and put up what we asked for.”

Thompson, who was not the architect for the project that was approved for the prior owners in 2020, told the board that he understood their concerns.

“It was brought to my attention that the color did not match the original approved renderings after the siding was installed when we approached the Planning Department for an application to [add two units]. At that point we understood that we needed to bring that before the board. The owner made that decision without realizing the restriction on the color,” Thompson said.

Next up was planning commission member Ruth Wells. “What we’re getting from the street now is a sort of white, featureless big blob sticking out in our skyline. I will never vote yes for the change of the color scheme,” Wells said. Fellow commissioner Mark Porterfield echoed Wells sentiment. “You can go down to Lowe’s or Home Depot and buy lots of cans of paint, or tear the siding off and put the right stuff on,” he told architect Thompson.

A New Developer, and a New Design

Originally called River View Place, the project started prior to the worldwide covid pandemic as a development by Louie Lanza and Unicorn Contracting Corp. principal Paul Guillaro along with Demetri Vourliotis. 

They purchased the property from a firm called Markeva Estates Co. for $825,000 in 2016. As time passed and the costs of construction and development increased, Lanza and his partners sold the project to Finkelstein Timberger East Real Estate (FTERE). In April 2024 the firm secured a $22.5 million mortgage through Tompkins Community Bank to finance the project. The building has been renamed “East Point on Hudson.” Originally planned as a condominium, the building will be offered at market rate rentals. The rental prices will be set after all the costs of construction and development are determined.

The new developer did secure approval for some changes, known as minor modifications, from the city Planning Department without having to go back before the commission.

Those changes included construction of an 8-foot to 9-foot high retaining wall in front of the building; added landscaping to mitigate views of the wall; conversion of a ground floor storage space into a new clubhouse space, including new windows and a door facing South Street; adding a new dog walk between the parking area and Smith Street along the north property line (walkway); removing the entrance gate at Smith Street and erecting a 6-foot high solid white vinyl fence around the east and north sides of the property, 
with lighting details for the site. 


Thompson said the dog walk plan and a proposal to turn storage space into two apartments are being withdrawn. But changes to the color, and other changes to some of the architectural features, weren’t presented to either the Planning Department or the Planning Commission.

“We wanted something distinctive there because we knew it was prominent on a hill,” Chairman Stern said. “Now we’ve ended up with something that’s the same old cookie cutter look as lower-cost condominiums that go up around town. We are not happy with the facade of this building. It changed from what we approved and they didn’t do what they were supposed to.”

Looking for a Solution

Reached by the Peekskill Herald, Tony East, a partner at Finkelstein Timberger East Real Estate, said, “We’re just in an eye of the beholder situation that we seem to have got ourselves stuck in. We’ll work with the board and come to some sort of mutually agreeable compromise.”

East is planning on starting tours of the building for prospective tenants next month, with a target of starting to move people in during late March or early April. City building inspectors, plumbing inspectors and other officials haven’t indicated that timeline can’t be met, East said. “Obviously the building is built. We’re moving forward getting all our sign-offs for plumbing, electric, fire suppression, elevator and all that. 

“As far as I’m concerned and our architect is concerned, it’s not a c/o [certificate of occupancy] issue because that’s aesthetic, not a safety issue, unless they turn it into one, which I don’t imagine they would.”

As far as taking any of the drastic actions commission members raised at the Jan. 13 meeting, East didn’t see a need for those.

“The building is structurally sound, so it’s just a matter of taste,” he told the Herald. “We had a meeting with the town planner last week and we’re coming up with our architect with some tweaks we can make to the landscaping, to some of the siding. Obviously, I’m not ripping the siding off an 80,000-square-foot building.”

Thompson told commission members that he and the developer will go back to the drawing board and return, possibly at the commission’s next meeting in February.

“This is the first time we’re taking in a strong adverse reaction. There probably are things that we could think of with the grounds and the building,” he said. 

“I understand the board’s position but I think we’ll probably have to go back with the owner and sit down and maybe have a workshop with the Planning Department.”