North White Plains station getting $26.5M parking garage, Metro-North says

Metro-North is building a $26.5 million, 500-car garage at its North White Plains station to accommodate surging numbers of commuters, railroad officials announced Monday.

Prismatic Development Corp., the New Jersey company that built parking facilities at the new Yankee Stadium, has been chosen for the project, Metro-North President Howard Permut said Monday at the railroad's monthly Manhattan board meeting at the headquarters of parent agency Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

The contract with Prismatic, which will design and build the garage, is waiting for approval from MTA interim Executive Director Thomas Prendergast.

Once built, the four-story garage at the southeast corner of Bond Street and Haarlem Avenue will increase the total number of Metro-North parking spaces in North White Plains to 1,760, a net increase of 29 percent, according to railroad officials.

Prismatic beat out two contenders -- Halmar International and ECCO III Enterprises -- with a bid that came in about $700,000 less than ECCO, its next closest competitor, the MTA said.

"Prismatic not only offered the lowest price but also proposed viable design and construction concepts that were deemed to be well-engineered," Metro-North officials wrote in a monthly report distributed at the board meeting.

The project, which has been in the works since 2003, calls for demolishing a 109-space parking garage as well as smaller surface lots to make way for a 186,000-square-foot garage that would handle some of the 2,200 people who come through the Harlem Line station every day.

It will include spaces for bicycles and scooters as well as options to build 1,500 square feet of retail space, Metro-North officials said.

The top level will be constructed to allow for the future installation of a solar power-generating canopy. And it will have space for charging stations for six electric vehicles.

In addition to building the garage, Prismatic has agreed to several community improvements, including new streetlights and crosswalks.

The project is expected to be completed in 20 months and is being funded entirely by a federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant.

The Fairfield, N.J., company has built several New Jersey prisons and treatment facilities and has worked on major hospital renovations in the Garden State. It also built a new terminal at Newark Liberty International Airport for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.