Access Road at Grand Prix Site Hits Speed Bump

Plans for a new access road at Diamond Properties’ sprawling complex off North Bedford Road hit a speed bump this week.

The site—home to Grand Prix New York, Saw Mill Club East, Westchester Mixed Martial Arts & Fitness and other attractions, including an outdoor soccer field—has two other access points. Only one, however, a sloping two-way, two-lane drive known as Ice House Road, serves Route 117 traffic, at times creating peak-hour backups.

As a result, discussion of a second access point, at the property’s southern—soccer-field—end was embraced at an initial presentation of plans to the Mt. Kisco planning board in January, when the vice chairman, Anthony Sturniolo, presided. But at a review of plans Tuesday, Chairman Joseph Cosentino was less enthusiastic.

“Lots of luck,” he abruptly told property owner Jim Diamond and his architect, Michael Gallin. “You’re going to need it. . . . I just think it’s going to be tough, the ingress and egress."

Pointing to Diamond's plans, Cosentino spelled out some concerns. “You have a [traffic] light over here,” he said, indicating Ice House Road's intersection with Route 117. “You’re not going to have one there [at the proposed new access]. “If you’re going to the Saw Mill [River Parkway], which exit do you think they’re going to use?”

While the new access would likely see a “substantial number” of right turns, Gallin said, it would “absolutely not” permit left turns.

Still, Cosentino said of the road’s exit/entrance role, “We’re going to need to talk about that. This is just conceptual, just something we need to talk about, that’s all. I’m not going to say . . . we love it right now.”

But Sturniolo, the board vice chair, said the proposed road “makes a helluva lot of sense.” Repeating a January observation, he called it part of the village’s parallel-access concept for the area.

Board member Ralph Vigliotti agreed, saying a second road would “help move traffic out.” He urged, however, that “it be treated like a road . . . not as a driveway” and that “we take a very close look at that.” Vigliotti also renewed his call for efforts to prevent parking along the access route.

Gallin said having an additional roadway “would be tremendously helpful” for traffic flow at “certain peak times, like when Saw Mill Club exits.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Cosentino ultimately allowed. “My own opinion, looking at it for the first time, I can’t commit myself.”