Tuckahoe ‘eyesore’ torn down, office building planned – The Journal News | LoHud.com

A vacant garage at 85 Yonkers Ave. in Tuckahoe was recently torn down and will be replaced with a three-story office building. Wochit

The site of a former service garage at 85 Yonkers Ave. in Tuckahoe is fenced off for construction of a two-story office building, June 2, 2017.(Photo: Dan Reiner/The Journal News)Buy Photo

TUCKAHOE - A long-standing vacant building at the edge of town was torn down last month, making way for a planned three-story office building along the Bronx River.

Village officials often heard complaints from residents, Village Manager David Burke said, about the former service garage at 85 Yonkers Ave., at the corner of Scarsdale Road near the Yonkers border.

"It was such an eyesore," saidMichael Cuozzo, owner of Tuck'd Away Bar & Grill, which faces the property fromacross the street.

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Cuozzo, a Yonkers resident, said the 1,000-square-foot former garagehad been vacant for at least20 years. He said the crumbling building had a negative impact on his business.

"You had people dining at my place and youd look outside and had that ugly building," he said. "It was not a great attraction."

In 2013, the village Planning Boardapproved a proposal by the property's owner, Mario Durante, to demolish the garage and replace it with an office building. However, Durante lost funding for the project and the plan fell through, according to Scarsdale-based architect Leonard Brandes.

Durante brought his proposal back to the Planning Board in 2015, and it was approved again in July of that year.

The three-story planned office building tentatively called the "Durante Building" on the 0.1-acre property that abuts the Bronx River would have 2,600 square feet of office space, with five ground-level parking spaces underneath the structure, Brandes said. Construction is expected to begin this summer, and no tenants have yet been signed, he said.

A preliminary drawing of the planned Durante Building at 85 Yonkers Ave. in Tuckahoe(Photo: Leonard Brandes Architect)

Cuozzo said the new building wouldgive the village a fresh look as drivers and pedestrians enter from Yonkers. He said it wouldfitwith the village's development plans, with a hotel and restaurant being built on Marbledale Road and moreapartments underway on Main Street.

"Tuckahoe is doing so much to increase everything in town, and thats the beginning of town," Cuozzo said of the Durante property. "Itll be something better to look at as youre coming into Tuckahoe."

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Tuckahoe 'eyesore' torn down, office building planned - The Journal News | LoHud.com