PEEKSKILL – In a downtown show where pianos were once ready for Stephen Sondheim, Fleetwood Mac and Hall and Oates, will homemade pizza and other takeaways soon be ready?
Last month, the Planning Commission approved a plan for the pizza restaurant to take away Luv Slice, which would only use one component of the former Ford Piano area in building 15. S. Division St. Le, with its exclusive piano keys displayed in the most sensitive areas. Escaparate, it’s downtown.
Since then, Ford Piano has moved, with an showroom on Yorktown’s Jefferson Valley Mall and a shop in the peekskill neighborhood, long-time owner John P said. Ford Jr. , who sold the space on South Division Street.
The takeaway would use 1,250 square feet in a multi-thousand square foot construction that is now owned by 15 South Division Street Partners. Takeaway would be in the right corner of space, if you look from the street. The signage will be reviewed through the City’s Council for the Preservation of Historic Monuments. Planners do not expect any main settings in the display.
But Louis Lanza, a restaurate restorer concerned about the proposal that played a key role in the revitalization of Peekskill, said via email that the proposed takeaway place “waiting to see what’s going on with this existing environment. “
The area has been vacant since Ford Piano left about two years ago, architect Joseph Thompson, representing the applicant, told plan commissioners. He said the proposal “would continue to build in (the) community of places to eat downtown. ” Think of other areas of the building, he said there is still nothing concrete to indicate that eating places or retail uses are possibilities.
“I think we would preferably like to do anything that involves the urban landscape and creates an activity in the urban landscape to help the city center,” he said.
In discussing the plan, some commissioners expressed concern about whether drivers can avoid going to look for food where parking is allowed. “For this to work, it depends on police prevention,” commission chairman Jeffrey Stern said.
In its approval, the Commission established conditions, adding the presence of symptoms that obviously indicated fines for parking or inactivity, which would be allowed on South Division Street. The load would be down the back alley of Brown Street. There would also be bike racks for audiences and employees.
Commissioner Chris Gomez said, “Frankly, I’m a little excited to see something there. “He said many other people would walk and bike to the site.
For decades, the area was home to Ford Piano, a family business circle with a lineage dating back to the 1890s. It was this time that Ford’s grandfather, Janos Fekete, a Hungarian cabinet manufacturer who came to the United States, began working in the New York piano industry, according to Ford Piano’s website.
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“Business booming in New York with more than two hundred piano factories (such as Steinway
In the 1950s, Fekete’s son John replaced the family circle’s surname to Ford, and generations of members of the family circle sued the company. He moved to the Division Street location in Peekskill in the 1980s.
They now occupy 4,000 square feet at Jefferson Valley Mall.
Ford’s son, John P. Ford Jr. , the current owner who worked on pianos for decades, and the next perpetuates the trade.
“It’s too much structure for us and we had to reduce the size, what we did, and we’re very satisfied now,” Ford said. “I enjoyed my stay at Peekskill, it was very nice. “
Ford said his son participates in the fourth generation.
“So it’s all right, we keep supplying the piano owners,” Ford said. “We are rebuilding, completing and tuning and virtually everything related to a piano, we do.
Michael McKinney covers North Westchester. Visit offres. lohud. com to request a subscription.