Pearl River's train station sits in the middle of downtown, a short walk from Central Avenue's restaurants and shops. Its closest neighbors on South Main Street and Jefferson Avenue are commercial lots. The developer now asking Orangetown to add an apartment overlay to that land described the area to the Town Board as "dotted with fallow and underutilized commercial lots."
That land is zoned CO, for Commercial Office. According to the Jefferson Arms petition filed with the Town Board's October 6 meeting packet, the CO district allows offices, banks and institutional uses by right. Senior citizen housing is allowed by special permit, and other residential uses aren't permitted at all. If you're comparing Rockland commuter towns and wondering why Pearl River has so few rentals or small condos within walking distance of the train, that zoning is the answer. The petition now before the Town Board shows how hard the rule is to change.
The overlay is written for a handful of lots
On October 6, 2026, the Orangetown Town Board took up two connected items. First, Jefferson Arms, LLC presented a multi-family rental project at South Main Street and Jefferson Avenue, beside the tracks. Second, the owner of 10 Jefferson Avenue petitioned the board to create a new "Development Enhancement Overlay Zone" that would allow apartments, with or without ground-floor retail, on CO land within 1,000 feet of a commuter rail station.
An overlay leaves the underlying zoning in place and adds options on top of it. As the Rockland County Business Journal explained it, the land would stay CO, and any project would still go through Orangetown's land use boards.
The draft standards, revised September 3, 2026 and filed with the board's meeting packet, are written narrowly.
- Where it applies: CO-zoned parcels within 1,000 feet of the Metro-North station
- Minimum lot: 1.0 acre at the time of adoption, which can combine more than one tax lot under common ownership
- Uses allowed by right: multi-family, or apartments with retail on the first floor
- Density: up to 65 units per acre
- Height: 3 stories or 45 feet, with below-grade parking not counted as a story
- Parking: 1 space per one-bedroom, 2 per unit with two or more bedrooms, and at least half the spaces inside the structure
- Setbacks: side and rear yards of zero where a lot backs onto the railroad right-of-way
The one-acre minimum does most of the limiting. The Business Journal reported that only a few CO parcels are larger than an acre. The developer's representative told the board that smaller parcels could be assembled to reach the threshold. Even if the overlay passes, it would open a small number of sites to apartments. It wouldn't rezone the area around the station.
What already exists near the station is small and full
When Orangetown approved a separate downtown project in December 2025, the Town Board described the rental housing already there. Dionne's Way, on and between Main and William Streets, has 16 rental units. Skyline Plaza, a former movie theater on Central Avenue, has about 14. The board's Local Law 13 of 2025 findings said both were believed to be fully occupied, and that both offer walking access to restaurants, shopping, rail and bus.
That's about 30 units between the two buildings the Town named. The same law rezoned 77 East Central Avenue and 80–84 East Washington Avenue to allow up to 20 more: age-restricted rental apartments for the 55-and-older active adult group, above ground-floor retail. The mix is 16 one-bedrooms and four two-bedrooms, each 750 to 1,000 square feet. That project still needs site plan approval from the Planning Board.
The Jefferson Arms proposal would be roughly three times the size of those two existing buildings combined. Pearl River's downtown rentals have been added a few units at a time, each through its own zoning approval, and the overlay petition asks for a much bigger step.
How the proposal shrank between May and October
The developer first brought the idea to the Town Board in May. In its May 27 roundup, the Rockland County Business Journal reported that the concept wasn't a formal application. Residents spoke on both sides, and the board's informal views were split. Supervisor Teresa Kenny saw the proposal positively, while several council members wanted more information or spoke against it. The Rockland County Times also described that first concept as early-stage and not mixed-use.
The developer came back in October with a smaller plan.
| May 2026 concept | October 2026 proposal | |
|---|---|---|
| Units | 109 | 88 |
| Height | 4 stories | 3 stories |
| Parking | 132 spaces | Below-grade, count not specified in reporting |
| Status | Informal, no petition filed | Third Amended Petition dated Oct. 1, 2026 |
The petition covers three CO-zoned lots at West Jefferson Avenue and South Main Street, totaling 1.388 acres. At the draft cap of 65 units per acre, 88 units is about as many as that land could hold. The density limit, the three-story height limit and the acreage together set the project's size.
The unit mix is the detail that matters most for someone comparing towns. It's 12 studios, 63 one-bedrooms, 12 two-bedrooms and one three-bedroom unit for a superintendent. The developer told the board the building would serve young professionals, commuters, downsizing seniors and local workers.
Why the county numbers make small units scarce
Pearl River-specific sales figures for this fall aren't available, so the closest current view is Rockland County as a whole. In Q3 2026, OneKey MLS's Rockland County report counted 676 closed sales: 508 single-family homes, 147 condos and 21 co-ops. About three of every four sales were single-family homes. The Q3 median was $800,000 for a single-family home and $516,500 for a condo, with a combined median of $761,750, 41 days on market and 3.7 months of inventory. For September 2026 alone, the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors puts Rockland's median sale price at $747,000.
The rental benchmarks look similar. Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress's Out of Reach 2026 report lists Rockland's HUD Fair Market Rent at $2,655 for a one-bedroom and $2,910 for a two-bedroom. It also estimates that a renter earning the county's average renter wage could afford $795 a month. Fair Market Rents are federal benchmarks, not asking rents for any particular building. Even so, the gap shows why advocates have pushed for more housing near transit. Alexandra Obremski of Pattern for Progress spoke in favor of the Jefferson Avenue proposal in May, the Business Journal reported, citing the housing crisis Rockland and other Hudson Valley counties face.
If you want to live near Pearl River's station, the options look like this right now:
- A single-family home near downtown, at prices tied to a county where single-family is most of what sells.
- A unit in one of the few existing downtown rental buildings, which the Town believed were full as of December 2025.
- Waiting on proposals that haven't been approved or built.
The overlay petition would add a fourth option, but not soon. Every step that remains is a discretionary decision.
The incentives on each side of the board's decision
Property taxes are part of the developer's case. According to the Business Journal's October report, the site's owner pays about $69,000 a year in taxes, and the owner's representative suggested that residential use would bring in tax revenue many times larger. The developer also told the board the project would bring more foot traffic to downtown businesses.
The board pushed back on the map itself. Members said a 1,000-foot radius from the station didn't make sense because it could split individual parcels, and suggested drawing the boundary along streets instead. Where that boundary falls would decide which lots near the station could ever hold apartments, so it may matter more than the unit count of any single building.
Where the petition goes from here
The Town Board made no decision on October 6. Here's what the agenda set in motion:
- The board declared its intent to serve as lead agency for the state environmental review (SEQRA), classified the action as "Unlisted," and circulated the petition to the Orangetown Planning Board, the Rockland County Department of Planning, Rockland County Highway and the New York State Department of Transportation.
- It sent the petition and a proposed local law to the Town Planning Board and asked for a response within 30 days.
- The Town Board's October 20 agenda included no public hearing on the overlay.
The Business Journal noted that zoning changes and overlays are at the board's discretion, and that it has no obligation to act on an application. Even if the board adopts the overlay, the Jefferson Arms building would still need site plan review before construction. The next things to watch for are the Planning Board's recommendation and a public hearing notice on a Town Board agenda.
If you're weighing a home near the Pearl River station and want to know how this petition could affect your plans, The Ramundo Team can go through the current options downtown with you and keep you posted on the petition as it moves through Orangetown's review. Schedule a Consultation, and we'll help you plan around what's open to you now.
