Dear Editor,
It’s been widely accepted for years that Katonah sorely needs new housing.
Our available housing stock is very limited and mostly out of reach for younger people, new families, older residents looking to downsize, and first responders, municipal employees and others on a tight budget. Accordingly, the strident opposition to the new development proposed at 150 Bedford Road by the Katonah Village Improvement Society (KVIS) is puzzling.
The building is undergoing a thorough and responsible review by Bedford’s planning board and will have only 13 apartments. It will be located along a commercial strip on a vacant lot next to a shuttered lawnmower store well outside of the Katonah Historic District. It will offer below-market apartments that will enable new people to move into the community, provide more customers for local stores, and increase town tax revenues.
It helps meet the housing goals outlined in Bedford’s Comprehensive Plan and is designed by a local architect with a decades-long track record of responsible community development projects. Its scale and look would be congruent with The Mark, the apartment building next door, which also faced opposition with claims that turned out to be unfounded once the building was completed.
Katonah cannot be overdeveloped; the permanent land-use restrictions around the reservoirs ensure that. KVIS should reject NIMBY-ism and recommit “to foster Katonah’s strong sense of community spirit” by putting out the welcome mat at 150 Bedford Road so new people can move into our wonderful neighborhood.
-Lloyd P. Trufelman, Katonah
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