WPCNR SOUTHEND TIMES. By John F. Bailey. Septermber 22, 2005:  A resident of 23 Rosedale Avenue who lives in a 200 year old farmhouse on the corner of Saxon Woods Road, said today to the CitizeNetReporter that the field worker with Maser Consulting he spoke to  last week said definitely the study he was working on with his crew was for the widening of Saxon Wood Road from Mamaroneck Avenue to the Scarsdale line.

Neil Waldman in a telephone interview with CNR, said the crewman told him the study was commissioned from his company  by the City of White Plains because city surveyors were overworked with surveying other city projects.

Waldman said the crew was there before he and his family left on vacation three weeks ago and were still working up until the beginning of  this week, when he encountered the Maser field worker “in his backyard” on the corner of Saxon Woods Road and Rosedale Avenue.

Waldman reports the field worker told him “They (Maser Consulting) were hired to draw up a plan for widening of Saxon Woods Road and Rosedale Avenue, taking 10 feet on the East Side and 10 to 15 feet on the West side of Saxon Woods Road from White Plains to Scarsdale. He said the city had to figure how much property they would have to take, and what payments to homeowners were involved.”

Waldman said the field worker said, “before they started work they needed a preliminary survey of both sides.”

Waldman said, to his knowledge the city had allocated funds to repave Saxon Woods Road in 2008-2009, but was puzzled by the survey: “It doesn’t make sense. You don’t have to survey how to widen the road if you’re just repaving it.”

Mr. Waldman was very concerned about even speculative plans for widening Saxon Woods Road or his street, Rosedale Avenue, because of the granite nature of the terrain. He said that in the construction of the medical building on the corner of Mamaroneck Avenue and Rosedale Avenue, blasting to clear the site had cracked the swimming pool of the house next door to the medical building site. 

Waldman added that, in his opinion, widening of Saxon Woods Road to the extent being surveyed by reported city specifications  would require extensive blasting that would be dangerous to the structural intergrity of the homes in the neighborhood.

Waldman said the field worker was very politically sensitive reassuring Mr. Waldman, “telling me not to be concerned. This project may not happen.”

According to a high level source within the White Plains Department of Public Works, speaking to WPCNR Wednesday evening,  there is “no plan to widen Saxon Woods Road. This is the kind of routine survey we always do at the start of a project. It is just going to be repaved.”

WPCNR observes that Saxon Woods Road is used as a "cut through" by southbound afternoon rush hour traffic on the Hutchinson River Parkway seeking to avoid the perennial jam at the Mamaroneck Ave-Hutch interchange. Observers say the southbound motorists exit at North Street, turn onto Rosedale, follow it cross to Saxon Woods Road, and make a right and follow Saxon Woods Road to Old Mamaroneck Road  to get back on the Hutch southbound below the Saxon Woods Golf Course--  or they make right and follow Saxon Woods Road into Scarsdale, to connect with Post Road Southbound or to the Bronx River Parkway.