January 26, 2012
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1 comment
Home plans to build ‘retirement community’
The Hebrew Home at Riverdale hopes to build a new “green” continuing care retirement community adjacent to its existing campus overlooking the Hudson River, according to Daniel Reingold, its president and CEO. The site now includes a 116-year-old Victorian mansion that has housed Catholic visionaries such as Father Tom Berry, a green movement pioneer and author who described himself as an “eco-theologian.” The mansion is one of several buildings on the 14-acre, $16.250 million plot — at 5801 Palisade Ave., opposite Sigma Place — that the Hebrew Home purchased from the The Passionist Fathers on Nov. 18. The Passionists, a Roman Catholic religious order founded by Saint Paul of the Cross in 1727, moved to the property from Kingsbridge in 1927. In the 1960s, the order built a three-story red brick structure, designed by Franciscan Brother Cajetan Baumann — the first religious figure ever to be named to the American Institute of Architects — to house the Cardinal Spellman Retreat House. Father Columkille Regan, a representative of the Passionist Fathers, told The Press in September that financial concerns forced the Passionists to close the doors to the retreat house last January. Mr. Reingold said his new low-rise building will include underground parking. He said he is anticipating having to get city approval for rezoning in order to build in the Riverdale Special Natural Area District. The district’s guidelines are aimed at preserving unique natural features by requiring that the City Planning Commission review new developments and site alterations. In the past, neighbors have complained about traffic and “urbanization” at the Hebrew Home, but Mr. Reingold hopes that plans for his new property could help alleviate those concerns. Though the project is still in the initial stages of conception, he said he would like to maintain as much open space as possible, perhaps opening some of it up to the Hudson River Greenway. He also said he is considering creating one central entrance to the two adjoining properties and will take traffic and parking into consideration.
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Expanding a noise polluting for profit commercial enterprise which has complete disregard for its polluting footprint into a Natural Zone and cloaking in it in a green flag is flagrant hypocrisy
I will stand no more I am a furious neighbor of the Hebrew Home for the Aged who for fifteen year have suffered quality of life declined by their for profit expansions and increasing noise footprint.
A new Air Conditioning Tower was built which has a progressively noise increase as temperature rises creating noise above far 45 Db noise violation level inside my house. DEP has never responded on hot days as I have requested and in speaking the Grounds Manager for thirty years Mr. Abaham Garland he states to me that he does not hear anything.
In addition in violation of Quiet Hours as specified in Local Law 113, from 10 p.m. until 7 a.m there are nightly routine delivery trucks and dumpster noise, not to mention full siren ambulance runs nightly.
Nursing Home personnel are routinely speeding and driving aggressively on Palisade Avenue, a non sidewalk thoroughfare causing panic for pedestrians and in my case, with small children.