No Land Grab

WHITE PLAINS, April 27 - A state board on Wednesday approved the sale of the state-owned Ridge Hill property to a nonprofit corporation, after the corporation and the City of Yonkers bowed to public pressure and agreed to channel millions of dollars in revenue from development of the property to the city.

The administration of Mayor Philip A. Amicone had wanted to allow the corporation, the Ridge Hill Development Corporation, to control an estimated $6.2 million a year in sublease payments generated by a planned entertainment and housing complex, the Ridge Hill Village Center. But some residents and officials, including the state comptroller, Alan G. Hevesi, said the payments should be made to the public treasury, not to the corporation, a private nonprofit group free from government oversight. Some opponents of the original deal said the corporation was set up in a way that allowed friends of Yonkers politicians to control huge sums of money.

Under the terms of the new arrangement, all the rental payments from the developer of Ridge Hill Village Center, Forest City Ratner, will be made to the city, except for debt service payments and operating costs of the development corporation. The operating costs are capped at $1.2 million a year.

The vote on Wednesday by the state's Public Authorities Control Board permitted the sale of the 84-acre parcel along the New York State Thruway in northern Yonkers for $8.7 million to the development corporation, which will rent it to Forest City Ratner in turn.

The board has three voting members, one representing Gov. George E. Pataki, another representing the State Senate Republicans and the third representing the Assembly Democrats. Its votes must be unanimous, and the Democrats were balking at the original terms. The board was scheduled to vote last month, but the vote was postponed several times while the sides worked out a deal.

In a letter to Mayor Amicone, the general counsel for the Ridge Hill Development Corporation, which must approve the deal, said it would accept the board's new conditions.

The new financial arrangement does not prescribe how the city should use the revenue from the project, but many have pointed out the dire need for money for the city's flagging school system. Yonkers officials have promoted the Ridge Hill development as a way to create thousands of jobs and inject millions of dollars into their city. The rent payments of $6.2 million are to be made each year for more than 70 years.

Assemblymen Richard L. Brodsky, an outspoken critic of the mayor's original deal and a candidate for state attorney general, applauded the new arrangement. "The issue from the beginning was to stop the slush funds and essentially privately controlled sums of money that result from the sale of public assets," he said. "Public assets should be controlled by democratic institutions, not Soviet-style bureaucracies."

Mayor Amicone issued a written statement late Wednesday celebrating the sale, but criticizing Mr. Brodsky, among others, calling him a "grandstanding politician" who was trying to "sink this deal to jump start his stalled campaign."

Mr. Brodsky responded, "One of the reasons that the governance of the City of Yonkers is in collapse for the last several years is because its leadership refuses to recognize legitimate disagreements, and personalizes those disagreements."