1,195-home project will transform town

Tuxedo - It's now official: The largest development in Orange County's history is coming to its least-populous town.

The Tuxedo Town Board wrapped up 15 years of review - including months and months of last-minute haggling - Monday night by granting three necessary approvals to Tuxedo Reserve, a 1,195-home project that will take shape inside hundreds of acres of woods at the southern tip of Orange County.

The board voted 4-1 on each of the proposals, with Councilman Kevin Didriksen as the sole opposing vote each time.

The decisions ended an unusually protracted review and set the stage for change in a town of 3,300 that has averted it for decades, even as the population has climbed and new homes and shops covered the landscape in towns further north.

The prospect of change brought varied reactions yesterday in downtown Tuxedo, a tiny commercial strip on busy Route 17 that itself appears to have been frozen in time.

Fred Hartmann, who for 19 years has lived in Tuxedo Park, the old, gated community of manor homes for which Tuxedo is perhaps best known, shook his head when asked about Tuxedo Reserve, saying he fears it will only drive up his taxes.

"New development always means more taxes, no matter what the politicians say," Hartmann said, waiting for a bus in front of the quaint Tudor building that passes for retail space outside posh Tuxedo Park.

Residents of that well-heeled village have generated much of the recent opposition to Tuxedo Reserve, leading a citizens group called TARGET that has peppered the town and developer with a host of concerns in recent months as the board has crept closer to approval.

But one Tuxedo Park resident who voiced support yesterday was Peter Arrighetti, a former town councilman and town Planning Board member.

"I think it's about time it was approved," Arrighetti said of the project. "I think that the town needs some growth and this is at least planned growth."

He argued that no one knows what the tax impact will be and that developing the vast tract under one plan was much better than it being built up in piecemeal fashion by multiple developers, as happens so often in surrounding towns.

The developer - Manhattan-based The Related Companies - has negotiated a number of concessions with the town to offset some of the strain the new homes will place on existing services and to help Tuxedo revive its stagnant downtown.

Those agreements include donating 40 acres for a new school, giving away or placing conservation easements on another 1,800 acres and offering $2 million in grants and $4 million in loans for improvements in the business district.

Glen Vetromile, a Related Companies senior vice president who has worked on the project for eight years, breathed a sigh of relief yesterday.

"It's been an enormous task," he said. "But I do believe what's been approved is a fair balance of what the town wants and our own goals."

Having won Town Board approval, the developer must now work out building details with the Planning Board. Vetromile said yesterday that he plans to file designs for first of three construction phases by spring and break ground for that phase in the second half of 2005.

The whole project - which also includes 196,100 square feet of light-industrial and office space - is expected to take at least 12 years to complete once the first roads and water and sewer pipes are installed, he said.

Under current prices, homes will range in size and price from two-bedroom condominiums costing in the high $300,000s to manor houses of 4,000 square feet or larger that would cost more than $1 million, he said.

Tracy Oslacky, a mother of three who grew up in Tuxedo and now lives in town with her own family, confessed to mixed feelings about the coming development as she left the stone post office with a bundle of mail in her arms.

She worries about the increased traffic, the need for more schools and the prospect of higher taxes. But she hopes that more people in Tuxedo will mean more businesses, especially ones catering to children.

"This is all original," she said, looking around at what she said were same buildings that were there when she grew up. "I think it would be great if they had more businesses here."