Restored River Keeps NY's Fourth-Largest City Afloat

Cities around the country have found creative means to stay buoyant during the Great Recession - from single-minded developer led initiatives to diversifying their economies by attracting medical and university facilities. For the city of Yonkers, focusing on reinvigorating the city's long-hidden natural resource has proven to be a successful approach. 

While development in the decade before the recession brought new construction, adaptive reuse, and public amenities to the city's Hudson River waterfront, with the daylighting of the Saw Mill River, the city's redevelopment efforts are being shifted downtown. Developers are now flocking to "A two-block section of the Saw Mill, a tributary of the Hudson River
buried under concrete for nearly a century, [that] has now been uncovered and
surrounded by benches in a parklike setting," writes Brenner. "When the next two phases of
the $48 million daylighting project are completed in about three years,
the river will meander through a six-block-long section of downtown
Yonkers for all to behold."

"At Scenic Hudson, a Poughkeepsie
environmental group that worked with Yonkers to undertake the
daylighting project, Ned Sullivan, its president, described the Saw Mill
River, which had become polluted before it was covered over, as 'no
longer a resource people want to hide.'"

"Not only is it a catalyst for revitalization of the downtown," he said,
"but now it will become the centerpiece of the city."