Mayor Wray on GM Agreement with Tarrytown: 'This is Huge News'

“This is huge news,” Sleepy Hollow Mayor Ken Wray said Friday morning, eager to share his statement – read in the video above – after reaching agreement on the GM development with our “sister village” of Tarrytown.

Read the full story, and see more video, of Friday’s announcement here.

The special permit approved back in June, 2011 outlines all the major points of the GM project proposal in broad strokes -- its density, scope and traffic mitigation measures. 

This permit had a one-year expiration date before it became null and void. However, said Wray, the clock stopped “when we got sued,” which pretty much coincided with its approval.

Now that litigation is cleared up, “the clock starts again.”

GM now has 11 months and some days to secure a developer with the special permit in place, something Wray thinks will happen fast.

A special permit, said Wray, “makes the land a lot more valuable than it would be otherwise.”

When asked if the $384,000 due from the future developer to Tarrytown for traffic mitigation measures outlined in the agreement would make the deal less attractive to bidders, Wray said this was small change in a multi-million dollar bucket.

“I think a developer will welcome the fact that its fair share of the mitigation cost has now been explicitly defined,” Wray said, adding, “and given the scope of this project -- the developer will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars -- this is a rather small number.”

Next step on the building side of things comes the site plan, which outlines exactly what the project will actually look like. How high the buildings, how many buildings, what are the spaces like between them, and so on.

It’s up for GM or a chosen developer to formulate the site plan. So the next public step, said Wray, would be GM making an announcement on who that would be, the developer meeting with the village, the village holding a public meeting. A site plan review would take place once they submit one.

When asked how the behind-the-scenes agreement came to be, Wray said, “It became clear to me that after lengthy negotiation the two Villages were ready to settle, but that GM was not. I called [Tarrytown Mayor] Drew [Fixell] two days ago and we were able to quickly resolve this.”

GM had been at the table but apparently wanted to “inject some extraneous stuff in the agreement,” Wray said, not specifying what exactly that was. He said he also had “no comment” on what will they will think of the ultimate agreement made without their signature.

Mayor Fixell, cosigner of the agreement, has not yet been reached for comment.