Yonkers Greenway gets $3.5M, inches closer to reality. What to know about the project

A long-awaited greenway along defunct rail lines in Yonkers moved closer to becoming a reality this week with $3.5 million in federal funding.

Two New York Democrats, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, announced the Yonkers Greenway made it into the latest Congressional funding bills associated with Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and related agencies earlier this summer.

The $14 million Greenway project, which already has about half of its funds accounted, would better connect Yonkers neighborhoods to New York City with greenspace for areas that experience hotter temperatures due to less tree shade and more concrete, roadways and industry that trap heat.

Known as "heat island" effect, it disparately affects Black and Latino communities such as those in Southwest Yonkers, and rising global temperatures put more people at risk, as USA TODAY Network reported in “Perilous Course,” a 2022 series examining the effects of climate change across the East Coast, which Schumer cited for federal funding.

“Infrastructure should connect, not divide our communities, and investment like the Yonkers Greenway are how we build a better more equitable future for all,” Schumer said in a statement.

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How did the Yonkers Greenway project come about?

In January, Schumer and Bowman advocated for the greenway at a playground that once was Lowerre Station, one of four stops in Yonkers that took residents to New York City as part of the New York and Putnam Railroad, or Old Put, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the mid-20th century, many of these neighborhoods experienced the discriminatory process of redlining, whereby federal lending programs rated these areas as riskier investments based on how many Black people, other people of color or immigrants lived in the neighborhood.

The Old Put ended service decades ago, with its path creating blight in large swaths of Southwest Yonkers that saw disinvestment as whiter, wealthier communities blossomed in suburban areas of Yonkers, and Westchester County more broadly, with the advent of parkways for cars. Lowerre Station became a dumping site. More recently, after the new playground opened in 2019, residents complained of hotter temperatures, which sometimes makes it unusable for children.

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“Redlining has harmed our Black and Latino communities in Yonkers for decades,” Bowman, of Yonkers, said in a statement. “From cutting off marginalized neighborhoods from economic opportunity and transportation options, to denying them sufficient tree cover and parkland, we have separated the city based on race and class and perpetuated the inequitable access to healthy green infrastructure.”

The 3.1-mile greenway along the Old Put — from Yonkers’ Getty Square to Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx — can connect residents to more parks, bus lines, commercial areas and the 1 train subway that runs to lower Manhattan.

Is the Greenway project fully funded?

Not yet.

Officials sought $5.5 million from the $1.5 trillion federal infrastructure law, though they ended up with $3.5 million in House and Senate appropriations bills, which must now be conferenced into one bill. From there, funding would come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Fund in Congress’ final spending bill for the year, Schumer’s office said.

Yonkers already has around $7 million for the project, city spokesperson Christina Gilmartin said. Along with $3.5 million, the city would need an additional $3.5 million, likely from grants or city funds.

What's next?

The greenway project is expected to finish in 2026, Gilmartin said.

The funding announcement comes as Yonkers published its climate action plan in June. The plan charts the city’s course to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and breaks down its plan to better prepare for ongoing effects of climate change, including hotter temperatures and more severe flooding. Officials hope the greenway helps address those issues in the coming decades.

“Yonkers Greenway can become the most transformative urban revitalization project in decades,” Mayor Mike Spano said in a statement. “Together we are reimagining a more equitable and sustainable future for Yonkers.”

Eduardo Cuevas covers race and justice for the USA TODAY Network of New York. He can be reached at EMCuevas1@gannett.com and followed on Twitter @eduardomcuevas.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers Greenway project gets $3.5M. What to know