FASNY Meets With Neighborhoods

The French-American School of New York (FASNY) discussed its dream of having a complete K-12 campus on the former Ridgeway Country Club site, at Tuesday’s meeting of the White Plains Council of Neighborhood Associations.

The meeting was attended by members from several neighborhood associations, as well as residents from all over White Plains, who turned out to learn about FASNY's plans and ask them questions. Some explained how the development would be a nightmare for them and the city, in addition to forever changing the character of the Gedney Farms neighborhood.

FASNY currently operates their three schools (upper, middle and lower) on three separate campuses in Westchester, in what its’ Board of Trustees Chair Mischa Zabotin described as “some pretty decrepit buildings.”

“It’s not what kids expect or frankly need today,” said Zabotin, at the meeting. The board chair explained that having a suitable consolidated campus has been FASNY’s dream for 30 years.

As of now, FASNY plans to retrofit the exiting clubhouse and build an upper, middle and lower school, in a typical college quad-like layout. The buildings would be no higher than 2.5 stories. A soccer field would be added near Hotel Drive. Buffering would be put in to shield the homes on this street near the field. Environmental and other assessments must still be completed, which could alter these preliminary plans for the project.

FASNY's lawyer Michael Zarin, said at the meeting that the development would remain in the same "bubble" where the site's current facilities are. Remaining property would remain largely untouched, and would not affect views from most neighboring homes, according to Zarin. 

The club is visible from, running around and through, the following streets: North Street, Hathaway Lane, Heather Lane, Oxford Road, Gedney Esplanade, Southdale Road, Northdale Road, Westdale Road, Murchinson Road, Macy Avenue, Robinhood Road, Florence Place and Anthony Road.

Bob Leonhardt, the head of FASNY schools, promised that the school will house no more than 1,200, plus teachers, administrators and other staff. 

“No way would we want to get beyond 1,200,” said Leonhardt, at the meeting. “We won’t be the same school, that’s about the limit we want, and that’s where we’ll stay.”

City residents at the meeting countered with the fact that the , another private cultural school in White Plains, is currently seeking to expand their enrollment from 375 to 500 Students.

Residents fear that the character of the Gedney Farms neighborhood, as a quiet and serene residential neighborhood, will be turned into a traffic-congested area—which drains the tax base and is detrimental to the property’s sensitive environmental nature. The Gedney Farms neighborhood was once farmland and includes the club’s property, which has been a golf course since 1923.

Click here for letters written by White Plains residents, and here in the comments section in our previous articles on this issue.

Zabotin said FASNY plans to stagger their school start and dismissal times with other local schools to lessen the impact on traffic. Buses and cars will be stacked onto the property to relieve congestion on Ridgeway. He estimated that his school would add an additional 4 percent of traffic to the street. Click through the pictures to see the slide with more information on this. FASNY would not make the slideshow of their presentation available to White Plains Patch.

 Zabotin said the school would not allow families to go through local roads, like Hathaway Lane, to get to the campus. Families and the school’s 20 plus buses would have to access the school by traveling on Ridgeway from Mamaroneck Avenue or North Street. If a family is caught on a back road, they will be warned first, then suspended, then asked to not come back. Zabotin said FASNY would pay for additional traffic lights and other improvements the City would require.

“It’s not difficult to enforce,” said Zabotin. “We enforce traffic in very tight quarters today.”

Some local residents weren’t convinced.

“ I don’t see how you could possible prevent traffic a traffic issue on Ridgeway,” said one woman.

Some residents at the meeting explained that the German School, at 50 Partridge Rd., and Ridgeway Elementary School, at 225 Ridgeway, already cause massive congestion on Ridgeway when the schools start and end their day.  In addition to adding traffic, some have alleged that the taxpayers will have to foot the bill to provide service to the school—like police, fire and infrastructure costs. Since FASNY is a school, they would not be required to pay property taxes.

In 2010-11 the Ridgeway Country Club, which was failing financially, paid $287,929 in property taxes.  If improvements were made to the property, its value could increase and so would the amount of taxes the owner would pay. The German School would have paid $1,359,802 in property taxes in 2010-11 if they weren’t tax exempt.

FASNY said they plan to extend the school’s public service program to the White Plains community, allow the City and its residents to use its facilities, as well as find ways to partner with the White Plains School District. The school would not draw funds away from the district, since FASNY is funded by private tuition.

“I think we could be an asset,” said Leonhardt. “We have French speakers you have a French program. Those are just skimming the tip of the iceberg, there’s a lot of stuff we want to do and could do.”

Residents expressed concerns that their property values could go down since they used to live by a quiet open golf course, and will now live near a campus filled with new buildings and noisy school children that will be on site Monday through Sunday, and during the summer for camp.

“I disagree that a school, whether it’s ours or another, is any way detrimental to a neighborhood,” said Zabotin.

He said that the development would help raise property values and encourage families to move to the city, to be near the school.

Residents also expressed concern about building new impervious surfaces on one of the last large parcels of open space in the city, which already has existing drainage problems and is located in the Mamaroneck-Sheldrake River Basin.

FASNY officials said that they would like to add an additional 108,000 sq. ft to the site’s footprint, and they would increase the impervious surface on the 128-acre site by 5 percent, or about 6.4 acres. They say that 60 acres of land would remain open to the public. Zabotin said the school would also implement sustainable feature in their buildings and obtain LEED certification.

Environmental studies will eventually be done to see exactly where FASNY can build on the site, since wetlands regulations and a 100ft barrier from the wetland area protect some of the area. FASNY said that there are 28 acres of the land, which cannot be built on—however, the city's planning commissioner, Sue Habel, corrected FASNY explaining that the true acreage and location of wetlands are unknown and won't be identified until further studies are done.

FASNY also promised to pay for enhancements that need to be made to the site’s drainage to mitigate flood problems. Zabotin said that plans for the site, and exactly what they will do with it, is still unclear and that more will be known once they engage in the City’s review process, which requires extensive studies on the environment, traffic and more.

“We haven’t even filed our formal application,” said Zabotin.

Since, the site’s zoning allows for golf courses and single-family homes—FASNY must apply or a special permit, which gets approved by the White Plains Common Council. The council is considering implementing a six-month moratorium on land use approvals for certain parcels in two zoning districts that are listed as open space in the City’s comprehensive plan, the areas includes Ridgeway and Westchester Hills Golf Course.

The council would study their land use regulations during this time, and make sure it conforms with the comprehensive plan or vice versa. The council, which will vote on the moratorium at their April meeting, maintains that the moratorium is not an effort to halt FASNY’s plans, since they can still start their application process during the moratorium.

Residents argue that FASNY’s plans would fail the approval process since they feel the plan isn’t in line with the comprehensive plan, because the plan “envisions residential development at the City’s lowest residential density, clustered to preserve open space and environmental features and providing public access to public and quasi-public.”

FASNY, however, says the plan is a low density and park-like development that preserves open-space available to the public.

“What we plan to do is consistent with the plan,” said Zabotin. “It’s the most feasible and adaptive use in context of that plan.”

Zabotin pointed out that the , but didn’t and that FASNY is a better alternative than the property being clustered with single-family homes. .  

“Residential development, though it could of happened here, there is no financing out there for spec developers in this world, which I think is a good thing,” said Zabotin. “It’s an alternative I’m not sure people would have been more sanguine about.”

One thing both parties agreed on was that FASNY is a nice high quality upscale school, however, residents said it just isn’t the right fit for this White Plains neighborhood. 

What is the view of the country club like from your house? Add your own pictures and show us!

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