A 12-story residential tower is climbing skyward in downtown Port Chester at 146 Westchester Avenue, marking the tallest building ever approved in the village's history. The Magnolia, as the project is known, will bring 223 apartments, a rooftop deck, and ground-floor retail to a site bounded by Westchester Avenue, Pearl Street, and New Broad Street, just one block from the Port Chester Metro-North station.
New renderings of the project were revealed by New York YIMBY, showing a building designed by Sarrazin Architecture PLLC with rectangular massing wrapped in red and gray brick alongside light- and dark-gray metal paneling. The ground floor will feature floor-to-ceiling glass fronting a lobby and retail frontage, with varied fenestration patterns enclosing the upper floors. The site previously held a surface-level parking lot and two low-rise structures before construction began.
The Magnolia is being developed by Saxum Real Estate and St. Katherine Group, which formed a joint venture to bring the roughly 334,000-square-foot project to fruition. According to the New York Real Estate Journal, official groundbreaking took place on December 17, 2024, with general contracting led by KINGS Capital Construction and KL Masters Construction Company. The project is expected to be completed later in 2026 or in early 2027, per project expectations cited by New York YIMBY.
A Site With a Contaminated Past
Before it became a construction zone, the property at 146 Westchester Avenue carried a different legacy. The site was previously known as the Grand Union Hotel Bowling Alley and entered New York's Brownfield Cleanup Program due to volatile organic compound soil vapor contamination, according to a public notice from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. State officials determined the site required remediation to protect public health before residential redevelopment could move forward.
That environmental cleanup happened alongside a broader regulatory shift that made a project of this scale possible in the first place. In May 2020, Port Chester became only the second municipality in New York State to enact a village-wide form-based zoning code, replacing 1975 zoning rules under its “Plan the Port” initiative to encourage transit-oriented, mixed-use density, according to the Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast. The Village of Port Chester Industrial Development Agency also provided a 20-year tax abatement to support the project, and legal filings from Cuddy & Feder LLP confirm the firm represented the joint venture in securing site plan approval from the village's Planning Commission.
223 Units, With a Tenth Set Aside as Affordable
Once complete, The Magnolia will yield 223 residential units spanning studio- to two-bedroom layouts. A regulatory filing with the New York State Public Service Commission shows that 23 of those apartments, or roughly 10%, are designated as affordable housing, with the remaining 200 operated as market-rate rentals. Individual units will feature electric heating via packaged terminal air conditioner units and an automated power-line submetering system supplied by Quadlogic, the same filing shows.
The development's capital structure reaches beyond local tax incentives. Project filings and corporate disclosures reveal that Saxum Real Estate and St. Katherine Group structured the deal through an Opportunity Zone investment entity named Port Chester OZ Fund III Propco, LLC, to capitalize on federal tax incentives designed to stimulate long-term equity investment in economically distressed census tracts.
Amenities and a Growing Skyline
Residents will have access to a rooftop deck, a top-floor clubhouse, a fitness center, a yoga room, and a dog washing station, according to New York YIMBY's rendering reveal. The building will also include a parking garage with automated parking stackers and 4,763 square feet of ground-floor retail space, positioning The Magnolia near the Capitol Theatre in downtown Port Chester.
The tower is one piece of a larger wave reshaping the village's skyline. A market snapshot by RIPCO Real Estate shows The Magnolia is part of a broader transit-oriented building boom downtown, including the 203-unit Station Lofts at 67 New Broad Street and an approved 120-unit development at 250 Boston Post Road. Hoodline previously covered another tower breaking ground at 28 Pearl Street, a 140-unit project also rising in the same downtown corridor.
A Commuter's Calculus
Much of the appeal for future residents rests on the train tracks a block away. Port Chester's Metro-North station on the New Haven Line provides commuters with a 42-minute express ride to Grand Central Terminal and a 20-minute ride to Stamford, Connecticut, according to RIPCO's transit data — a dual-market draw for those working in either New York City or Fairfield County. That commuting convenience, layered atop the village's 2020 zoning overhaul and federal investment incentives, has turned the once-modest Sound Shore downtown into one of the region's more closely watched transit-oriented development markets.
