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April 2018
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Fresh Water Boats For Sale
Groundwork Yonkers in 2000 with the City as a co-partner.
Rick Magder was hired as the Executive Director and
started initial steps to bring to fruition the first project—
daylighting. He engaged Lee Weintraub’s CUNY design
program to provide a vision for what the river park would
look like. With vision in hand, Rick met with the City. At
that moment, the City’s focus was on a large development
project at “Chicken Island” (a parking lot also covering
another section of the Saw Mill River); they felt Larkin Plaza
daylighting was really a pipe dream (no pun intended!).
Groundwork, however, was not letting go of the idea. Bob
Walters, now a board member, insisted there needed to
be a river program. With funding from the State Hudson
River Estuary Program, Groundwork established the Saw
Mill River Coalition to work from Chappaqua to Yonkers.
The Coalition was led first by Carol Capobianco (now at
the Native Plant Center), and since 2004 has been led by
Ann-Marie Mitroff.
From 2004 through the groundbreaking in 2010, many
concurrent and separate steps and events have brought
about the evolution of the daylighting in Yonkers. Great
projects involve a lot of people and a lot of twists and turns.
Some, but not all, are described here:
A gathering of officials which brought then Gov. Pataki
to Yonkers where Scenic Hudson’s Steve Rosenberg,
Groundwork’s Rick Magder, and Philipse Manor Hall’s
Lucille Sciacca managed 2-3 minutes of conversation with
the Governor about the covered over Saw Mill River. He
was amazed that it had been buried.
Ned Sullivan of Scenic Hudson held follow up meetings with the
Governor’s office, as did Nick Spano,. Diligence paid off when
Governor Pataki earmarked a total of $33 million for daylighting.
Scenic Hudson also received funding for an initial feasibility
study for daylighting the Larkin Plaza site 2003-2004, and they
funded Groundwork to facilitate a set of citizen-engagement
workshops.
At a Saw Mill River Coalition meeting Scenic Hudson’s
landscape consultant, Ray Curren, proposed a different footprint
for the Chicken Island project, which would allow the daylighting
of the Saw Mill River at that site!
The developers of Chicken Island added another partner—
Streuver—with experience in river features. The project was
renamed River Park Center with the Saw Mill River as an
attribute. They began underground studies of the river all the
way to the Hudson. The City began purchasing property along
the site to be able to enhance the river. (now Phase 3)
With the Governor Patterson’s and Mayor Amicone’s support,
Groundwork’s grant-writing team, Rick and Ann-Marie, applied
for and received the rare EPA Targeted Watersheds grant which
allowed Ann-Marie, as River Program Director, to expand her
concentration on the daylighting, as well as begin Manhattan
College’s 3-year water quality study from top to bottom of the
watershed, to work with municipalities on water quality “hot
spots”, to support stormwater education, and continue the
annual Great Saw Mill River Clean-ups as well as Free-A-Tree
vine cutting, among other projects.
To keep up the momentum for the Larkin Plaza project,
Groundwork approached the Hudson River Foundation to fund
an in-depth community engagement project. The Chicken Island