Month: March 2020

Yonkers Class A developers are not painting Domesday scenarios, because of the open-ended statewide construction halt ordered by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and are optimistic that the crisis will not last enough to destroy their projects and investments in the city of hills.

The shutdown to protect thousands of construction workers from contracting the coronavirus puts into limbo thousands of well apartments in Yonkers that are in different stages of construction.

Yes Yonkers developers are sweating out liquidity issues, but the projects in the city of hills are well financed giving owners enough capital for the short-term future of their downtown and waterfront projects..

No construction project is based on a perfect time frame.

Cushions are built into these Yonkers developments that have received assistance from the Yonkers industrial Development agency (YIDA), which is chaired by Mayor Mike Spano.

Last year Mayor Mike Soano and the YIDA brought in atleast a dozen projects representing a total private investment of $851 million. Among them:

• Extell Development’s Point Street Landing, a mixed-use project with 1,395 apartments and 48,280 square feet of retail space valued at $502 million.

• Rose Associates’ 57 Alexander Street, which will have 440 apartments.

• The $56.9 million Parkledge Apartments, which will have 311 units.

Some stymied projects are nearly finished like sawyer place, to others that are only approved like the new 400 unit Altman Lighting Apartment building.

Projects approved, underway or recently completed in the city are bringing 9,100 new residential units and 2.3 million square feet of commercial space.

they are creating an estimated 6,800 construction jobs and expected to create about 2,800 permanent jobs.

However, there are fears the pandemic could upend the Lionsgate project that is currently in the approvals process.

Elected officials are hoping the $100 million movie studio keeps moving forward.

Empire City Casino And Yonkers Racetrack are currently shut down, but the City Of Yonkers is confident that racino development will stay on track, as MGM moves towards a 2023 Full gaming and sports book licensees.

full gaming license leading to a sports betting license for Empire City could produce enormous financial benefits for the city.

Real Estate professionals seem to think that once the construction stoppage is lifted, Yonkers projects will quickly get back on track.

The financing is in place and this stoppage doesn’t destroy those contracts.

Currently any visible, ongoing work is to secure buildings to protect the public during the shutdown.

However, Westhab can continue with its Dayspring development now underway in the Nodine Hill section of the city, which will create 63 affordable apartments, because its 100-percent affordable — one of several exemptions to the stop-work rule.

The city’s Municipal Housing Authority’s $300 million three-year program to renovate more than 1,700 units of public housing can continue inspite of Cuomo’s construction ban.

Others exemptions are for “essential” work on schools, health care facilities and homeless shelters.

New York state also gave the Yonkers IDA authority to float bonds to help finance the building of schools.

More than $600 million is needed to build new schools.

In 2016, the city released a conceptual plan to rebuild its schools with a price tag of about $2 billion, but with the governor’s 15 Billion dollar budget crises it is doubtful that Yonkers will get the help that Buffalo got from New York State.

Buffalo rebuilt every school for $2 billion, and 90% of the funds came from Albany.

But there’s some confusion over whether the affordable-housing construction exemption applies to projects with a mix of market-rate and affordable units, especially in Yonkers where new buildings are required to be 10% affordable.

Yonkers developers are looking for guidance from Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office on this.

Small affordable housing rehabs in the city of hills are permitted by groups like Jim killoran’s Fuller Center

Some say Yonkers developers could face foreclosure efforts by lenders in the event of a prolonged pandemic, but most industry insiders think banks are not interested in taking over a half-built Hudson River residential project in middle of a pandemic.

The last fear is that Mayor Spano’s vision of Yonkers development projects moving inland as the waterfront area continues to be built up might be upended in an economic downturn caused by the Pandemic.

Chicken Island was purchased, by AMS Acquisitions LLC, with a plan of building four massive mixed use towers that would revitalize the Getty square area.

Some wonder if this is now possible get financing for a multi-tower project in the current environment.

But most agree that there’s is still a lot of potential in Yonkers and it can’t be stopped by the coronavirus epidemic.

Mike Spano, a Democrat, has been serving as mayor in Yonkers since 2012. He had been elected to the New York State Assembly in 1992.

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Major cuts are in store for the state budget as New York faces billions in lost revenue due to the coronavirus crisis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo says.

The governor is pushing the Legislature for the power to adjust the budget periodically throughout the fiscal year.

The state could be in for a $15 billion loss in revenue due to the pandemic.

The warning comes as Democratic lawmakers, led by Yonkers’ Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Bronx Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie spent the weekend video conferencing about the budget.

Governor Cuomo and his team cautioned that education funding, which makes up about a third of state spending annually, could be in for a hit and hinted that dramatic belt-tightening could be in store.

State budget director Robert Mujica saysNew York will likely be forced to borrow money to cover immediate costs.

Gov. Cuomo keepsy pitching the idea of allowing his administration the flexibility to amend state spending throughout the year.

Yonkers legislators understand the fiscal situation, but they don’t want to cede any more authority to the executive as he seeks to deeply cut Yonkers schools and city services.

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Governor Andrew Cuomo desires to cut spending in the state’s Medicaid program is being called out by Yonkers’ Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.

Yonkers, Westchester County and New York City hospitals already being asked to shoulder the heavy burden of the novel coronavirus pandemic and state lawmakers are fuming over proposed Medicaid cuts that could slash funds to hospitals in the midst of a pandemic.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo convened a commission of hospital official and health care union representatives to assess ways of slowing spending amid a multi-billion dollar budget gap in the program.

The commission ultimately recommended $400 million in hospital
spending savings.

Privately, one other Yonkers legislator told this reporter that the Cuomo cuts were “cruel and inhumane” given the growing coronavirus crisis.

This month, usually reserved for state budget talks in Albany, the coronavirus pandemic hit in the state.

Many Yonkers residents think that for Gov. Andrew Cuomo to even consider cuts in the midst of an unprecedented public health crisis is really unconscionable.

During a Spectrum News interview, Yonkers senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins said those proposals and the creation of the Medicaid commission “was from a different world.”

“Now we have to look at everything very, very closely,” she said.

Andrew Cuomo convened the so-called Medicaid Redesign Team to help the state find ways to scale back Medicaid spending and close a projected $4 billion budget gap.

But that was before New York became the center of the coronavirus epidemic.

The panel unveiled a blueprint last week that included cutting some $400 million to hospitals over the next year.

Governor Cuomo on Tuesday announced new projections will require as many as 140,000 hospital beds to meet the expected crush of patients.

The state has ordered St Joseph’s And St. John’s Hopitals hospitals to expand their capacity by at least 50 percent and the governor wants them to set the goal of doubling bed space.

The budget, meanwhile, is expected date in three days and it’s likely the Legislature and Governor will carry those hospital funding discussion to the March 31 due date.

The discussions may become heated as legislators seek out the press to to reach their constituents with a message that the issue is about saving lives at this point, not budget cutting efficiencies.

But, Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins has been repeatedly quoted as saying that she thinks a budget will be finalized by deadline the March 31st deadline.

The conventional wisdom is the Legislature will wrap up work on the budget — whatever shape that spending plan takes — and leave Albany for the rest of the year.

The session was scheduled to end in early June.

But the Yonkers majority leader did not rule out lawmakers coming back for a post-budget session.

Could lawmakers vote remotely?

It’s being looked at.

Lawmakers and the governor agree, though, that federal intervention will be needed, most likely billions of dollars in bailed out aid.

New York operates one of the costliest Medicaid programs in the country, and health care overall makes up the largest share of the state budget each year.

While the state was already dealing with a significant budget gap, new projections from Cuomo budget director Robert Mujica show the state facing a potential $15 billion shortfall due to the coronavirus’s crippling impact on the economy.

Governor Cuomo, meanwhile, has railed against a proposal inserted in a federal coronavirus relief bill that would prohibit cost shifting in the Medicaid program to local governments — a provision that would hamstring budget efforts.

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Some Yonkers food workers are elderly and have chronic health conditions say they’re being pushed to the limit. and say they need more in the way of protection.

The coronavirus pandemic, which has shut down Yonkers Public School until at least April and probably beyond.

The health emergency sent home 27,000 Yonkers students and has presented unprecedented challenges for school food workers in the city of hills

They who are still working full—time to churn out meals for needy families.

Off the record, CSEA 9169 workers say they are having to make a choice of getting paid or protecting their health.

Some have opted to stay home.

But School food workers, many of whom are elderly, have to pull from a limited pool of sick days if they want to stay home.

But the Public School food workers that are on the front lines of the Yonkers’ response to the sweeping pandemic have been getting tens of thousands of meals to children every weekday.

They work in crowded kitchens in old school buildings with little ventilation, and interact daily with families to whom they distribute the meals.

For now, CSEA 9169 Union President Lionel Turner’s members will continue hand out meals for the remainder of the school closure.

But the consolidation into a handful of feeding sites means that there is now even more crowding for the food workers.

The truth is that there’s no social distancing there,

However, Yonkers School Superintendent Edwin Quezada has ordered that every food distribution center be given directions on how to maintain social distancing protocols each staff member is required to wear gloves, and distribution site pick up areas are deep cleaned daily.

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A fourth precinct police source tells the Yonkers Free Press that crime dropped dramatically in the precinct and city after Governor Andrew Cuomo put the city and state on “pause”.

Yonkers crime is down compared to the same two week period last year according to a Yonkers Police Department insider.

That’s a dramatic reversal considering that many Yonkers residents were fearing that shootings and stabbings were on the way up in the city of hills during the first two months of this year.

But unofficially, all Yonkers crime categories saw a dramatic dip over the last week or so.

If a Yonkers criminal is listening to the advice to stay home and distance themselves from other people, then it becomes hard to rob them.

Perhaps the best advice is to visibly cough on your money if you are about to be mugged outside of a Getty Square cash machine.

However, one wonders if vehicle thefts will go up once Yonkers Hospitals are overwhelmed with deadly virus cases and Yonkersites, just want “to get the Hell out of Dodge.”

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The initial horse doping indictments came on March 9, other indictments trickled out even as the COVID-19 disaster commanded virtually the entire news cycle, everyday.

The stunning federal horse doping allegations are no less stunning because of the coronavirus outbreak.

The main indictments placed MGM’s Yonkers Raceway and its harness racing leading lights in its target.

The Yonkers horse racing community already was reeling from the deaths of three out of town horsemen from COVID-19.

Rene Allard, who at $5.8 million in purse winnings was third in the industry in North America last year, has been charged in a conspiracy involving longtime veterinarian Louis Grasso, who was indicted on Feb. 26 for allegedly misbranding drugs in interstate commerce.

Last fall, according to the indictment, veterinarian Louis Grasso and another alleged co-conspirator, Ross Cohen, discussed on a wiretap the fact that a number of Rene Allard’s horses had died.

There is a disturbing conversation where Ross Cohen, according to the indictment, asked veterinarian Louis Grasso, “What’s going on with the Allard death camp?”

Grasso then said “two or maybe three” horses have died from “amino acids” that caused “high fever, kidneys shut down.”

“One of them just died on the table, they just cut him open and poof it died,” Grasso is alleged to have said.

Cohen: “Holy f-ck f-ck did they do an autopsy.”

Grasso: “Their heart rate was like triple they were breathing real heavy their membranes were going f-cking purple.”

Rene Allard — second in earnings at Yonkers so far this year — also is alleged to have sent a text message to Grasso in October 2019 that read: “I will need 3 bottles of red acid to go to Canada Thursday.”

Red Acid was referring to an anti-inflammatory drug.

One of the indictments says that a barn raid on March 9 in Middletown, N.Y. — where Rene Allard stabled a number of horses — led to the discovery of multiple syringes and numerous bottles of mislabeled drugs.

The legal documents include the deposition of FBI agent Bruce Turpin.

Agent Turpin states that Rene Allard stabled at a training center run by Richard Banca in Middletown, NY and that his barn was raided.

There, the FBI found multiple empty syringes, the drug Glycopyrrolate, epinephrine and vials labeled “Thymosine Beta” and “for research purposes only.”

Also named is Donato Poliseno, owner of a veterinary supply business in Delaware who is alleged to have purchased and distributed PEDs from veterinarian Louis Grasso.

Trainers Thomas Guido III and Conor Flynn are alleged to have obtained the PEDs from veterinarian Louis Grasso as well.

Richard Banca, the leading trainer at Yonkers Raceway so far this year, was named in a separate indictment on similar charges and employed Flynn.

Richard Banca owns the Middletown, N.Y. facility that was raided, according to his indictment.

“Flynn has stated, in substance and in part, that Flynn administers horses owned, trained, or otherwise under Banca’ s control, with PEDs at Banca’s direction,” the indictment alleges.

Richard Banca first rose up to the top ranks at Yonkers in 2015, producing 174 winners — more than double his previous best — and another 200 in 2016 cheating hundreds of thousands of Yonkers Raceway bettors out of their hard earned cash over the years.

Rene Allard and Richard Banca were involved in a controversy at the Meadowlands Racetrack in 2017 and banned at that track, but allowed to race at the Yonkers Raceway.

Rene Allard had a horse racing at Woodbine test positive for codeine and morphine and was handed a one-year suspension and a $5,000 fine, but again he was allowed to race at the Yonkers Raceway.

Among the PEDs involved aside from “red acid”:

Erythropoietin, better known by brand name Epogen and nicknamed “epo” in the industry and designed to improve endurance.

A variety of “pain shots” or “joint blocks” designed to deaden a horse’s nerves, which can result in leg fractures that require a racehorse to be euthanized.

Bronchodilators, or “Bronk,” designed to increase a horse’s oxygen intake.

The New York Equine Drug Testing Programs Director Dr. George Maylin has also confirmed the presence IOX-2 is both a blood and gene doping agent that is the type of emerging small molecule synthetic doping agent in two standardbred horses racing at Yonkers Raceway.

IOX-2 is an HIF stabilizer that can trigger EPO like effects.

Previously, the New York State Gaming Commission immediately and indefinitely suspended the occupational license of owner-trainer Michael Temming.

Further, the ruling states, Michael Temming had purchased “a large quantity of iOX2.”

The latest federal indictments, if proven, echo the callousness for the welfare of racehorses.

In a January, 19, 2020 press release written by the Standardbred Owners Association of New York, Rene Allard discussed why he had been so successful.

“I have approximately 30 horses who are going to qualify between now and the middle of February. I’m very happy with the start of the year so far. During the Yonkers break, we kept them fit and trained and as soon as they opened, we were ready to go,” Rene Allard said.

But fortunately, the FBI stepped in protecting the horses and the hard earned cash of Yonkers Raceway bettors.

Harness trainer Rene Allard was not among the original list of 29 names of those who were indicted, by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

But Rene Allard, is second in the current trainer’s standings at Yonkers Raceway, behind only Richard Banca, was arrested quietly out of town days later, causing some racing insiders to think he is cooperating with federal authorities.

The Yonkers Raceway insiders say that there are more indictments to come.

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YONKERS, NY: A combination of reduced services, and people isolated at home amid the coronavirus outbreak has already made for a dangerous situation in the city of hills. with family shootings, stabbings and violence from domestic partners.

Abusers seek to isolate their partners from other people and the situation with coronavirus enhances their ability to do that.

Making the situation even more difficult is the outbreak has changed how many Yonkers mental health providers are operating.

Pretty much all preventive face-to-face assessments have been temporarily suspended, and all anger management training sessions scheduled through the month of April have been postponed.

All domestic violence shelters for Women and children in Westchester County are well over capacity.

The decreased capacity and the potential for increased need is rapidly causing a dangerous situation in the city of hills, as Governor Andrew Cuomo has put the city on “pause’.

Yonkers mental health groups have temporarily suspended all support groups and “programs that serve those not in immediate crisis, with staff working remotely.

Other agencies are also ending or limiting in-person services as the Yonkers Police Department and medical providers must work in a city where programs that provide domestic violence services have closed their offices.

Some Yonkers not for profit staff members say their offices are closed but will continue to offer 24/7 hotline services, crisis intervention, remote counseling emergency shelter referrals and children’s services.

New York’s statewide sexual assault crisis hotlines remain intact.

This is brand new for Yonkers social service workers.

They have never experienced something like this.

It’s not like we really have anything to compare it to or see what has worked best in the past.

Family violence victims and survivors can contact an advocate through the United Way’s 211 referral line.

But it is unclear if domestic violence victims who need to leave a desperate situation, even though shelters are at capacity, will get the help they need remotely form mental health providers working from their kitchen tables.

Soon Yonkers Police Offers will start hearing, “Oh no, I can’t leave, I have no place to go’ .

But it’s still unknown what impact the crisis will have on requests for mental health services from family violence victims who are housebound due to COVID-19 and facing challenges.

Anytime there’s widespread fear, anxiety or economic strain, domestic violence advocates prepare for increased calls.

If you are in immediate danger call the Yonkers Police Department at 911 and if you need other services call the United Way’s referal line at 211.

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