This house could be yours for just $35,000 (a month)
Neighbors wonder whether homes at the controversial Villanova Heights development will be able to command the lofty rental prices the builder is asking.
The announcement took up just a couple of inches in the bottom corner of a real estate ad in last week's Riverdale Press. It described a large French Provincial house in the "Fieldston vicinity" designed by Robert A.M. Stern, the celebrated father of post-modern architecture.
Though its exact location and price were discretely withheld, anyone familiar with the ongoing controversy that has bedeviled the Villanova Heights development could easily discern it as one of two houses now rising along Iselin Avenue and West 250th Street.
As for the price, according to Weichert Realtors' Joe Greene, the house could be yours for just $35,000. That's not a purchase price - it's the monthly rent.
Mr. Greene said that advertising has been "very low key" so far, but he has already gotten calls about the house, one of two he expects to be finished by February 2008. He believes it's being offered for rent because developer John Fitzgerald has agreed to a deal under which none of the planned homes at the site - once known as Chapel Farm - can be sold until all 15 are completed, which he estimates will take five years. Mr. Fitzgerald did not return calls asking for further explanation.
The unprecedented price tag is causing neighbors to wonder whether Mr. Fitzgerald will ever find a tenant. In fact, they question the future of the entire project which occupies approximately 17 hilltop acres just north of Fieldston and east of the Henry Hudson Parkway.
"That's bizarre," said Stewart Newman, whose house abuts the property. He is a longtime critic of the development whose house has repeatedly been flooded by storm water runoff since the once densely forested property was denuded of trees. He's worried that the development could be in financial trouble.
But Dan Hort, whose Grosvenor Avenue home has also been flooded, flat out asked, "Who's renting? What are the parameters? Will this be a month-to-month rental situation? Who's regulating this? Is this legal?"
Mr. Hort said that Mr. Fitzgerald is "not someone who's shown the ability to make communityminded decisions," and said he may take him to court over this and some issues relating to flood damage at his home.
Robert A. M. Stern and his project architect Gary L. Brewer are no strangers to Riverdale. The pair is best known locally for having turned a non-descript garage at Wave Hill into the eye-catching Perkins Visitor Center.
Out with the old
Their work on the house at 421 W. 250th St. is also something of a reclamation project. Mr. Stern's firm was summoned to replace another architect after framing had begun on both the 250th Street house and an adjoining home at 5000 Iselin Ave. All of that work was stripped down to the foundation and begun again after Mr. Stern settled on a new design.
At 11,135 square feet, the home will be one of the largest in Riverdale, but, according to Mr. Greene, one of the smallest at Villanova Heights. He said a typical home on the site would be 11,000 to 13,000 square feet.
Mr. Stern's stately plan is reminiscent of some of the mogul's mansions in the Hamptons that made his reputation. It features a vast living room with a wraparound porch, a formal dining room adjoining a luxurious kitchen and family room, a library, six bedrooms - with a master suite as big as many apartments, seven bathrooms, an oversized office and staff quarters on three floors, plus a full basement with game room, exercise room and wine cellar, a four-car garage, an outdoor swimming pool and an interior elevator. The house sits on more than half an acre of land.
Villanova Heights has been the subject of fierce neighborhood battles for more than a decade. The Fieldston Property Owners Association would not allow Mr. Fitzgerald - a Fieldston resident - to route his construction vehicles through the community's private streets, then the City Council and the city Department of Environmental Protection derailed construction in 2000 because of concerns about drainage issues. A series of lawsuits ensued, with Mr. Fitzgerald taking both Community Board 8 and the Fieldston Property Owners Association to Federal Court. The cases were dismissed, but Mr. Fitzgerald didn't win the right to build on his property until 2004.
The flooding problems began soon thereafter. Both Mr. Newman and Mr. Hort's homes suffered "severe damage," according to both men.
Taming water issues
Mr. Fitzgerald built a series of drywells in 2006 to control water runoff. Engineer Joe Gordon, of Councilman Oliver Koppell's office, called the system "premier" at the time. But in April 2007, a colossal rainstorm overtook the drainage system and flooded neighboring homes once again. In June, Mr. Fitzgerald completed a 25-foothigh, 500-foot-long earth and stone wall, intended to redirect the flow of water away from his neighbors. Mr. Newman and Mr. Hort say so far, it seems to be working.
But Mr. Hort says he fears Mr. Fitzgerald's super-sized housing plan will "flounder and fail."
"What will happen [then]?" he asked. "Will he build condos, or an entertainment complex?"
Taking a philosophical tone, Mr. Newman says at this point, he just wants Mr. Fitzgerald to succeed.
"We don't need a scarred landscape, unfinished houses and abandonment," he said.
"The last thing I want to see is another Delafield Estate," he added, referring to a failed luxury townhouse development on West 246th Street near Independence Avenue, where weeds and shrubs have overtaken long-abandoned foundations.
