New Rochelle Offers Downtown Core, Davids Island For Amazon Move

NEW ROCHELLE, NY — The City of New Rochelle is throwing its hat in the ring to try to woo online retailer Amazon to Westchester County. The city’s Development Commissioner Luiz Aragon said New Rochelle is offering the Seattle-based company access to the region without having to be located in New York City.

What the city is offering for Amazon to develop are the downtown core area and Davids Island, a 78-acre former U.S. Army base, the Journal News said. (For more information on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

Davids Island, which is about 3,000 feet from the shore, is being offered as a recreational option, not for offices.

New Rochelle created a task force to come up with development scenarios for the island in 2011.

The island was farmland until the Army established a post there in 1862. It was decommissioned as the Fort Slocum base in the 1960s.

New Rochelle bought the island in 1967 with thoughts of developing it. Con Edison bought the site for $3 million in 1968 and had planned to build a nuclear power plant, but the public objected and the company sold it back to New Rochelle for $1.

Proposals for development on the island over the years included a 175-unit luxury development by Xanadu Property Associates in the 1980s and two proposals in the 1990s by the Trump Organization.

In 2015, the New Rochelle City Council approved new zoning that provides a roadmap for investment to developers and property owners for the downtown core area.

It permits construction of up to 12 million square feet of new development, including 2.4 million square feet of prime office space, 1 million square feet of retail, more than 6,000 housing units and 1,200 hotel rooms.

The complete Journal News article can be found here.

Photo caption: Davids Island in background. Photo credit: Michael Woyton/Patch Staff.