Ground is officially broken at 1 Loehr Place, where Titan Real Estate and Yonkers officials on Tuesday, July 21 kicked off Park Square Yonkers, a seven-story, mixed-use complex set to bring roughly 340 apartments and about 20,000 square feet of street-level retail to the city. The roughly $185 million, 500,000-square-foot project is billed as a two-year build, with plans for about 420 covered parking spaces and a modest affordable set-aside. City leaders are pitching the development as the latest chapter in the long-running effort to transform the former Mulford Gardens site.
Project details and timeline
The building is planned for about 340 units, skewing toward studios and one-bedrooms, with an elevated landscaped courtyard and a package of resident amenities, according to Yonkers Times. Perkins Eastman is listed as the architect, and sponsors named Mitchell Del Gais and Doron Pergament as the project leads. Officials at the groundbreaking said construction should run for roughly 24 months and will be coordinated with a planned pre-K–8 Yonkers public school nearby so both pieces of the puzzle do not trip over each other.
Approvals and public financing
The plan secured Planned Urban Redevelopment and site-plan approvals and appears on the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency project list, which outlines its scope and schedule. Titan applied to the IDA for sales-tax and mortgage-recording tax exemptions along with a long-term PILOT. Westchester County records note that an application for a real-property tax exemption for 1 Loehr Place was forwarded to the county board for review. IDA filings put the site at about 3.88 acres, transferred to the city in 2019 after Mulford Gardens was demolished.
From Mulford Gardens to Park Square
The parcel sits within the old Mulford Gardens HOPE VI footprint and has stayed mostly quiet since the city took title. That history loomed over the July 21 ceremony, where elected officials and state lawmakers leaned hard on themes of jobs, housing and neighborhood reinvestment. Yonkers City Council President Lakisha Collins-Bellamy said the project could give former Mulford residents “a new home to come back to,” according to News 12 New York. Titan, for its part, pointed to community-accessible amenities and street-level retail that it says are meant to wake up a sleepy stretch.
Affordability questions ahead
City and developer statements put the affordable set-aside at roughly 10 percent of units, or around 34 apartments, a figure that housing advocates say will not keep pace with demand. Coverage of other Yonkers waterfront builds has raised similar alarms that 10 percent affordability is too thin a cushion against rising rents and displacement pressure, per Yonkers Times. Titan and city officials continue to argue that bringing in new housing, retail and a school to a long-stalled lot will generate construction work now and long-term economic activity later, even as the debate over how many affordable units are enough is far from settled.
