Rendering of the Rockwell on North Avenue (click to enlarge)
If you’ve been on North Avenue lately, you can’t have missed the construction underway between Iona and City Hall. An entire block has been cleared to make way for the “Rockwell,” a new luxury apartment building with ground-floor retail. (11 of the 114 apartments will be affordable.) Today, we formally celebrated the ground-breaking.
The Rockwell isn’t the biggest or the tallest of the many developments underway in New Rochelle, but for the thousands of people who travel on North Avenue every day or live nearby, it may be the most visible, and it will certainly have a dramatic positive impact on the health, appearance, and vitality of the entire North Avenue corridor.
This particular project has also had an interesting effect on public psychology, at least anecdotally. Since construction of the Rockwell began, I’ve noticed a big increase in the number of people who say to me something like “boy, things are really starting to happen.”
They are right. Things are happening. Our development plans have made the leap from theory to practice. About twenty projects approved. About ten already under construction. The rest expected to begin construction soon. For those of us who believe in the upside potential of economic development and have worked hard for this moment, it is exciting and gratifying.
So I am very pleased to congratulate to the real estate team at YoungCraft, especially New Rochelle’s own Bob Young, for the persistence and vision that have made this development possible. And I look forward to the completion of a truly transformative project.