Wither the Hebrew Home

The outcome of the tug of war between the Hebrew Home at Riverdale and its neighbors in the Riverdale Community Coalition (RCC) is momentous. Not just for the Home, which is betting its future on a whole new configuration of services and living arrangements at its newly enlarged site on Palisade Avenue near West 261st Street. Not just for the neighbors who fear they will have to live with the noise and dust of construction, increased traffic on their narrow country lanes and a newly urbanized landscape, but for everyone within the boundaries of Community Board 8.

That’s because the community spoke loudly during a city charter-mandated rezoning process begun less than 10 years ago. The board recommended down-zoning several areas of the community to thwart what it saw as overdevelopment and the City Planning Commission obliged them with tighter regulations. The property south of the Home was designated as an R1-1 zone, suitable for single-family homes. How it is developed could be a harbinger of what can happen on other sensitive sites throughout the area.

Nearby neighbors grew nervous as soon as the Home announced it had purchased 14 acres next door to its campus from the Passionist Fathers. And they became inflamed when the Home made its first presentation to the community board last January. It showed architects’ renderings and models of a building complex that appeared greatly out of scale with its surroundings and representatives of the Home even told the board they were seriously considering an application to change the zoning of the site from R 1-1 to R-4. 

The good will and trust the Home had built up with decades of carefully nurtured relations with its namesake community were shattered.

But then, perhaps later than it should have, the Home began a remarkable process of inclusion, inviting all who were interested to attend a pair of charettes, meetings at which its architects, zoning lawyers and administrators listened carefully to concerns about the shear size of the project, traffic during and after construction, sight lines to the Palisades from the homes along Sigma Place and the Skyview apartments, protection of trees and natural features, open space and river access.

At first the ill will was so strong that some criticized the Riverdale Nature Preservancy for its involvement in arranging the charettes, but its officers should be praised for fostering the dialogue. 

And the RCC informally headed by Jennifer Klein, deserves praise, too, for the way it has patiently and thoughtfully negotiated with the Home in the months since the plan was announced.

Without fanfare, a small committee of RCC members met throughout the summer with Dan Reingold, the Home’s executive director, Richard Rosen, the architect in charge of the project for Perkins Eastman and Michael Bialek, the owner’s representative. The Press’ publisher Richard Stein, who lives near the site, was one of the negotiators.

Though cordial, the discussions were sometimes tense, but with each meeting the Home softened its stance, first agreeing not to push for a zoning change and offering to create a generous park, accessible to the public, with access to the river and the Greenway; then agreeing to move a greater portion of new construction to its already urbanized north campus. The Home even did a study of a so-called villa plan that would have broken up the mass of residences into a series of smaller buildings, but it covered too much of the land. 

So much trust had been built back that the Home agreed to postpone presenting its latest plans to the community board until now while it worked to incorporate the committee’s suggestions. 

In August, amid flurries of e-mails and a meeting to keep neighbors informed, the small committee made a major concession. It offered a greatly scaled back counter plan. Mr. Reingold professed to be aghast at how few units the committee was willing to countenance, but for the first time — with the backing of many of its constituents — it had shown that it was willing to accept development along the lines the Home had proposed. 

In its most recent report to the community board on Monday night, the Home acknowledged that it had learned much and improved its plan as a result of the dialogue and it conceded that it could live with fewer than the 300 new units it has asked for. For its part, the RCC knows that it will have to live with more than the 85 new units in its proposal. 

The seeds of a fair compromise have been planted, one that can yield substantial benefits for both Home and community and point the way for future developers. 

But many details still need to be worked out. 

Mr. Reingold is worried about conceding too much of the size of his project before the City Planning Commission, the City Council and the Mayor whittle away at it and cut it further down to size, but if the Home can agree with its neighbors on the scope, it will have a powerful ally instead of a determined adversary as it goes forward.