Comprehensive Plan (2016)

BFJ Planning was retained by the Village of Pleasantville to update its Master Plan, with a primary focus on the Central Business District. The Village was interested in building on the economic development potential of key downtown assets such as its Metro-North train station, the Jacob Burns Film Center and municipally owned land, while preserving Pleasantville’s small-scale character and quality of life.

The Plan was prepared in close cooperation with the Village Board, who took an active role in drafting the Plan’s content and recommendations, and also incorporated an interactive public outreach process. Key recommendations included downtown zoning revisions and intersection improvements to enhance walkability and create new public open space.

Zoning Code Revisions (2017 and 2021) 

As a follow-up to the Master Plan work, BFJ prepared a series of zoning code revisions focused on the downtown area. The revisions provided greater flexibility in developing multifamily housing in the Central Business District, including a package of zoning incentives to facilitate mixed-use, transit-oriented development, as well as changes to required parking. In 2021, in response to concerns about the scale of new residential devleopment, BFJ prepared revisions to the Village’s single-family zoning districts to incorporate floor area ratio (FAR) provisions. All of these zoning efforts also included environmental review to ensure compliance with SEQR regulations. 

Transit-Oriented Development Review (2018-2020) 

BFJ reviewed the first development project to use the new downtown zoning development incentives, a proposed 110,000-square-foot mixed-use building fronting Memorial Plaza, across from the train station. The project, under construction as of 2021, includes 79 apartment units and ground-floor retail space over three stories of structured parking. It will also incorporate a public linear park connecting Memorial Plaza with a Village-owned parking lot to the rear of the building, and improvements to the street serving the lot and the proposed building, to re-establish a street grid and enhance circulation. The building’s parking garage will provide for a shared parking supply that can accommodate local merchants and employees as well as rail commuters.

Downtown Parking Study (2019 and 2021) 

The Village retained BFJ to study options to mitigate the loss of public parking spaces resulting from the redesign of Memorial Plaza. Work included a parking occupancy survey of all downtown on- and off-street parking and a review of possibilities for expanding capacity through reconfiguration of spaces, permitting changes, and parking management strategies. BFJ recommended a permit pricing strategy to shift parking demand to high-occupancy areas to areas with more vacancies, as well as improvements the parking payment and enforcement system and better dissemination of parking information.