Train complex to include housing, retail, parking

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Wednesday (July 30) announced that it has selected a developer to transform the Beacon Metro-North station with a complex containing 265 apartments, 15,000 square feet of retail space and a parking garage for 573 vehicles.

Jonathan Rose Companies, a real-estate firm that specializes in the development and management of environmentally sustainable, mixed-income communities, won the bid. It was founded in 1989 by Jonathan F.P. Rose, a Philipstown resident who is a co-founder of the Garrison Institute, a retreat and research center on the grounds of the former Glenclyffe Monastery.

The parking garage will replace 484 commuter and 89 MTA employee spaces on the station's 41/2-acre north lot. The apartment complex will have 270 spaces for tenants.

The contract will be finalized after the Beacon Planning Board completes an environmental review of the development. The MTA received eight proposals for the project, which was announced in November.

Beacon is "an amazingly vital, creative community" Rose said in a statement. "We are so pleased to have been selected."

The development will be owned by New York State and leased by the Jonathan Rose Companies. The parking structure, which will be built first and take about a year, will be funded by a $24 million grant from the state's Redevelopment of Underutilized Sites for Housing program.

Once the parking structure is complete, it will be turned over to the MTA to operate. The residential and retail components will be built next over about two years and be leased and operated by the Jonathan Rose Companies for an initial payment of $669,430 annually. The residential development must conform to Beacon's zoning by renting at least 10 percent of its units at below-market rates.

Mayor Lee Kyriacou, who attended an MTA Finance Committee meeting on Monday in New York City, called the project a "win-win-win" that would provide environmentally friendly housing, replace impermeable blacktop with shops and waterfront activity and contribute tax revenue to the city.

Without state funding, "it is very, very difficult" to complete transit-oriented developments at suburban stations, said Robair Reichenstein, the vice president of transactions for transit-oriented developments at the MTA. "It's very expensive to replace that [parking]. This was the reason it happened."

In 2023, to address an affordable housing crisis, Gov. Kathy Hochul directed agencies to repurpose underused, state-owned sites. The 2025-26 state budget includes $500 million to build up to 15,000 homes on state-owned property, including the Beacon development.

In a statement on Wednesday, Hochul said the Beacon project would revitalize the area surrounding the Metro-North station, "giving more New Yorkers the opportunity to live in a vibrant community with an express train to New York City just next door. This project is a model for how thoughtful development can strengthen communities and make our state more affordable and livable."

Kyriacou noted that Beacon has come a long way since 2007, when the MTA asked developers to submit "expressions of interest" for projects on 18 acres adjacent to the train station. The city received proposals that included as many as 600 apartments in buildings ranging from two to six stories, along with a parking garage. A citizens' group, Beacon Deserves Better, opposed the plans.

In the years since, zoning has been revised to open land around the station to residential and commercial development while preserving areas such as Dennings Point and Seeger Riverfront Park. A 2017 update to the comprehensive plan names the east side of the Metro-North station as one of four locations where the densest residential development should occur.

The MTA "had a lot of places it could go to, and they chose here," said Kyriacou. "That's a statement about how far Beacon has come and where it's headed."

Kyriacou added that...