The Town of New Castle worked for several years to create and adopt a Comprehensive Plan Update. Goals for the updated plan included preserving “the Town’s bucolic, residential character…while promoting new mixed-use development in the hamlets…and fostering thriving commercial and civic spaces.” To support these objectives, the Town engaged a planning team to help create a development driven form-based code that would best attract investment on its Main Street and support transit-oriented development in the commercial core.
RESGroup was the planning team’s real estate advisor, providing market reconnaisance to ensure the form-based code encouraged feasible development. Market Scans were completed to understand demand for rental apartments and for downtown retail. Real estate brokers, developers, and other local market participants provided feedback on existing and potential market conditions and helped estimate rents, vacancy, and absorption. Developer interviews also provided information on investment parameters and gauged potential interest in mixed-use development within Downtown Chappaqua. Using the real estate metrics identified in the Market Scan, a high-level feasiblilty test was perfomed for hypothetical development in the commercial core.
In addition to the Market Scans, RESGroup surveyed the surrounding competitive communites of Mt. Kisco, Armonk, Pleasantville, and Tarrytown to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and to understand how Downtown Chappaqua could increase its competitiveness with these locations. Factors including the mix of retail and residential uses; parking; and how transit nodes, entertainment, cultural/retail anchors, and public events can be used attract shoppers were considered, helping inform potential strategies to maximize Downtown Chappaqua’s retail market penetration. These findings helped ensure that the form-based code fostered hriving commercial and civic spaces.
