New Rochelle, New York, is redesigning its 19th-century train station as part of an ambitious downtown revitalization plan. The New York City suburb, with a growing population of some 86,000 people in 2025, wants to use the $125 million project to reconnect the train station to its downtown area, improve access for pedestrians and complement transit-oriented development, said New Rochelle Development Commissioner Adam Salgado.
Many Amtrak trains heading from New York City to Boston make this station their first stop. Metro-North commuter trains from New Rochelle reach Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan in less than 40 minutes, and countywide bus routes also serve the station.
The construction of Interstate 95 and Memorial Highway in the 1950s essentially walled off the station to pedestrians and erected a barrier between the station and other areas of the city, Salgado explained. “What we're contemplating now is reimagining that connection from the train station to the rest of the city and vice versa,” he said.
Design work started about a year ago, Salgado said. “We expect the first shovel in the ground to be in 2026,” he said. The design includes an accessible green plaza and improvements that will separate bike lanes, pedestrian lanes and vehicle lanes, he said. The city has applied for a $32.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to support the project, Salgado said. It is also working with Toll Brothers in a public-private partnership to build a new 28-story, mixed-use residential and commercial building adjacent to the station.
In total, 11,000 new housing units have been approved for construction in the community. That includes 6,200 units either built or under construction, Salgado said, with 20% designated as affordable housing. Asked about the risk of gentrification displacing current residents, Salgado said there were “very few residents in the downtown proper.” He added that unlike in many communities, rents have remained stable. “So we think the additional supply coming online in places like New Rochelle is actually having downward pressure on the cost of housing here,” he said.
Preparing for an influx of train commuters
Revitalizing the train station will help prepare it for additional use expected from the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s plan to route some Metro-North New Haven Line trains to Penn Station along the existing Amtrak line through the Bronx.
Called Penn Station Access, the project could almost double the number of passengers using the station each day, Salgado said. It will also allow medical and support staff who work at related hospital campuses in New Rochelle and the Bronx to more easily move back and forth, and perhaps choose to live in New Rochelle. “We think it opens up a whole new resident base to New Rochelle,” he said.
The train station redevelopment also complements another major project in the Lincoln Avenue neighborhood of the city. Its goal is to reconnect a historically Black neighborhood that was severed by construction of the Memorial Highway in 1958. The project will transform a six-lane road into a local street and linear park. Pedestrian crossings and bike lanes will help connect the neighborhood to the train station, downtown and library.
Salgado said the “LINC” project will help spur economic development in the neighborhood. A goal of the project is to help African American residents “achieve intergenerational wealth through affordable homeownership opportunities, as well as business entrepreneurship programs to stimulate the creation of Black-owned businesses in the area,” he said.
Since 2015, New Rochelle has attracted over $2 billion in privately-funded development. “We had a declining downtown, and over the years, no one really knew what to do,” Salgado said. “The answer really was, let's unlock the market.” The city created a flexible analytical framework to expedite approvals for development projects, he said. “That's been the big feature of our downtown development and what's made us so successful,” Salgado said.
