Part 2: Family-Supporting Jobs

More than two dozen New Rochelle residents expressed opposition to a proposed revision of New Rochelle’s downtown development plan at a  public hearing before the City Council on Tuesday, April 14 (video available here; hearing begins at 2:43:07).  No speaker expressed support for the revised plan.  Many expressed profound disappointment with the outcome of New Rochelle’s downtown development boom over the past ten years, suggesting that the project has served the needs of developers far more than the needs of New Rochelle residents.  

The original development plan, passed by the City Council in 2015, called for the construction of about 30 new buildings with 10,000 residential units.  To date some 5,000 units have been built, and another 5,000 have been approved and are “in the pipeline” to be completed in the next several years.  The vast majority of the units built and planned are luxury rentals with minimal affordable housing and, to date, no  ownership opportunities.  Only a tiny fraction of the workers employed in the construction have been union members.

The proposed revision, formally known as the Supplemental Draft Generic Environmental Impact Plan (SDGEIS), was presented to the Council by the city’s Department of Development in February and calls for the construction of 2,800 additional housing units.  The city says the plan is based on updates to theoretical development models and lessons learned from the experience of the past decade.  Yet the plan’s projections for jobs and job creation closely mirror the theoretical model used in 2015, and no lessons seem to have been learned about the importance of local hire and full-time family-supporting job creation.  The proposal also seems to contain few or no provisions for a substantial increase in affordable housing, increased parking, or improved quality of life.  Speakers at the hearings addressed all of these issues.

New Rochelle NAACP President Aisha Cook, Bruce Soloway  and Lourdes Font opened the hearing by reading a New RoAR News editorial into the record (2:45:32).  The editorial called for the council to “codify the expectations of the community as it relates to careers, local hires, green space, homeownership, and truly affordable rents. Unlike the previous administration, this council should move from simply hoping for the best from developers to demanding a return on the taxpayer’s investments.”

Lourdes Font, Bruce Soloway, and Aisha Cook read the New RoAR News editorial on redevelopment into the Council record

Over the next several days, New RoAR News will present the testimony of many of the speakers at the April 14 hearing on a number of topics:

• Part 1: Opportunity for community input
• Part 2: Family-supporting jobs (below)
• Part 3: Affordable Housing
• Part 4: Quality of Life

Commissioner of Development Adam Salgado told New RoAR News that the City is preparing a Final Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FSGEIS) that will provide written responses to the substantive environmental issues and concerns raised during the 66-day public comment period that opened on February 17, 2026, and closed on April 24, 2026, as well as  the public hearing held on April 14. The FSGEIS responses, which will include answers to some of the questions raised, will be reviewed and discussed by the City Council, and posted on the City’s website as soon as they are available, some time in June.  The Council is expected to vote on the amendment sometime thereafter.

Editors Note: Although the public hearing portion of this process has ended, please continue to reach out to your council member and the mayor to share your concerns and advocate for change.   At community events, political events, neighborhood association meetings, coffee and conversation or at fundraisers, continue to press our elected officials on their commitment to making substantial transformative changes to the DOZ amendment.  We know that developers and their consultants have a vision for our community and have been very effective in ensuring the DOZ process works for them.  Let’s make sure that it is the community’s voice, expectation and vision that is reflected going forward.  

Part 2: Family-Supporting Jobs

Speaking for the New Rochelle Alliance for Justice (NRAJ), an alliance of faith, community and labor groups organizing for equitable development in New Rochelle, Michael Yellin (2:53:38) said, “We appreciate your recognition of the need to make corrections to the city’s planning policies, which have put developer interests above all others since 2015. You have the opportunity [and]…the power to lift up resident interests and fulfill the promise of creating family-supporting union jobs and truly affordable housing through this redevelopment.”

Michael Yellin

“Regarding construction jobs,” Yellin continued, “the SDGEIS section [on] “Impacts of Construction and Annual Operations” projects the average annual wage for construction workers will be $101,230 [or] $48 an hour. Yet the data developers’ report to the city shows them paying New Rochelle residents only $20 to $25 an hour, or roughly $50,000 a year.  Those are poverty wages. 
Knowing that the $100,000 wage figure in the SDGEIS is off by half calls into question the other data in the construction section. This needs to be addressed. 
Right now, the [“Mitigation Measures” section of the SDGEIS] reads, “no mitigation proposed.’ Requiring project labor agreements on publicly subsidized developments and strengthening the economic opportunity and nondiscrimination policy to require apprenticeships, opportunities for New Rochelle residents can achieve $100,000+ wages. And we suggest this be included in the proposed mitigation measures.”

Dominick Cassanelli, Vice President of Teamsters Local 456 and Recording Secretary with the Westchester Putnam Building and Construction Trades Council (2:56:49) described development in New Rochelle as “simply not working for working people… We are seeing billions of dollars in development, but not enough of the jobs going to local residents. … So tonight we are calling on you, the city council, the mayor, to act.  Require project labor agreements on these projects, strengthen local hiring agreements, enforce real apprenticeship standards, hold developers accountable, and raise the bar on what qualifies as economic opportunity in the city. Because development should just not be about buildings, it should be about building careers.”

Dominick Cassanelli

Anthony Umbro, a 39-year member of International Union of Operating Engineers Local 137 (2:59:56), said, “It’s disheartening for me to live in New Rochelle and see all these projects going up. I work for a company that’s located in New Rochelle, Montesano Brothers. The job going up on North Avenue and Main Street, we got $80,000 worth of work to connect the sewer from the building into the sewer. … Out of a $40 or $50 million job, that’s the only job we get, $80,000!

Anthony Umbro

“I worked at the Remington Boys and Girls Club and the building they put up next to it. I can’t tell you how many people came in there looking for jobs. 
We’d send them into the office there. They’d tell us, ‘Oh, they gave us the runaround. They gave us a few numbers to call. 
 Nobody ever answered, nobody ever got back to us.’ You know, it’s horrible.

“My son’s friend is an apprentice in the Carpenters Union. He hasn’t worked in New Rochelle in the last four years. 
He’s got to go elsewhere because there are no opportunities for him here.  … You give these developers handouts, tax breaks. I’m the one that’s paying for all that.”

Jim Killoran, New Rochelle resident and Executive Director of the Fuller Center for Housing (3:06:28), said, “I remember during COVID, we had all those New Ro Strong signs. This means hiring local workers, experienced or trainees, to build New Rochelle. This means assuring higher wages and higher quality work, a majority of labor should be union labor. 
You should make it a requirement.”

Jim Killoran

New Rochelle resident Michael Umbro (3:18:45) told the City Council and City Manager, “You care about the builders. Think about the people that do the building. Unions build careers. Build up people, not just buildings.”

Michael Umbro

Glenwood Lake neighborhood resident Alison Rivers (3:34:50) said, “My husband is a member of Local 3, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. We are only able to live in New Rochelle because of his union job. … 
Developers and the city might think they’re saving money by hiring non-union contractors. But what you’re doing is hurting families’ livelihood. You’re hurting workers’ safety, and you’re hurting the future residents who are going to live in those buildings.”

Alison Rivers

Next: Part 3: Affordable Housing