If you're touring homes near the Foxwood condominiums on Manville Road right now, you're looking at more than the house in front of you. Behind that complex sits 20.5 acres of vacant and half-vacant office space, a 144,000-square-foot building that used to house Bank of New York, a smaller office building shared by Savin Engineering and Atlas Peak Physical Therapy, and a single vacant house on Carey Court. A national homebuilder wants to turn all of it into 102 townhomes. The Village of Pleasantville hasn't said yes yet. But the argument playing out at Village Hall isn't the one you'd expect, and it changes what this project actually means for anyone comparing Pleasantville to the villages around it.
What Lennar Actually Proposed
The developer is US Home, LLC, doing business as Lennar, the second-largest homebuilder in the country. Its plan requires the Village Board to rezone the Campus Drive parcels from Campus Office to a residential Planned Unit Development, the same zoning classification already used for the Toll Brothers townhomes on Washington Avenue next door. The Carey Court lot, currently zoned for a single home, would flip the other direction, from residential to Campus Office, so it can be folded into the same PUD.
Lennar first pitched the project to the Village Board in October 2025 as a straightforward run of three-bedroom townhomes. Planning Commission Chair Russ Klein didn't love the look of it. "I don't think the houses are in the character of Pleasantville, with lots of garage doors and cars parked in front," he told the board, according to The Examiner News. Commission member Henry Leyva put it more bluntly, calling the original layout "stacked housing spread out over a 20-acre parcel."
Three Prices On One Parcel
What changed the debate wasn't opposition to density. It was a question about who the density was actually for. By late May 2026, Lennar had revised its plan to add smaller units and senior-oriented layouts, and the pricing tiers that emerged tell you exactly what the village was pushing for.
| Unit Type | Approx. Count | Approx. Price | Intended Buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market-rate townhomes | Remaining units of 102 | Just over $1 million | Move-up buyers, full-size three-bedroom |
| "Naturally affordable" smaller units | 12 | Around $775,000 | Buyers priced out of standard new construction |
| Deed-restricted affordable units | 11 | Around $275,000 | Income-qualified buyers under village code |
| First-floor primary suite units | 53 of the 102 | Varies by tier above | Seniors hoping to age in place |
That last category is the tell. More than half the proposed units include a first-floor bedroom, built specifically so a longtime resident could downsize without a staircase and without leaving the village. That detail didn't happen by accident.
Why Trustees Pushed For Smaller, Not Bigger
The obvious assumption about a project like this is that more units, of any kind, loosen a tight market. Pleasantville's own elected officials didn't accept that assumption, and their pushback is the real story here.
At the February 2026 Village Board meeting where opposition first turned vocal, Trustee David Vinjamuri, who has pushed for affordable housing on the board, said the original unit mix missed the point entirely.
"We've heard from professional realtors that this development does not fit with the village. Our needs fall into the range of smaller units, downsizing units."
That's not a resident complaining about traffic. That's a sitting trustee telling a Fortune 500 homebuilder that the local real estate community is reading a different demand signal than the one in the developer's original pitch. Klein backed him up at the same meeting, citing the village's own 2017 Master Plan directly: a policy goal of supporting permanently affordable housing while protecting neighborhood character, and a documented gap in housing for seniors, empty nesters, and residents on fixed incomes, with no assisted living option in the village at all.
So the fight over Campus Drive was never really about whether 102 units is too many. It was about whether a national builder's default product, three-bedroom townhomes priced around $1 million, actually solves the problem Pleasantville has. By late May, Lennar answered that pressure with a revised plan adding the 53 first-floor suites and 12 smaller "naturally affordable" units. The debate over whether that revised mix goes far enough continued into a joint Village Board and Planning Commission work session in late June, where Leyva asked the developer directly: "Are we willing to go to satisfy the needs of our community?" Whether the final approved version keeps the current mix is still open.
The Traffic Problem Nobody's Fully Modeled Yet
Even trustees who support more housing stock have pushed back on the numbers behind the project. At the same February 2026 meeting where opposition first turned vocal, Trustee Paul Alvarez did the math out loud. "Having 100 more units, the majority with two cars, means adding at least 200 more vehicles," he said, adding that he didn't see deliveries and visitor parking reflected in Lennar's traffic study.
The geography makes this a real concern, not a talking point. The site sits near the intersection of Manville Road and Bedford Road, an unsignaled T where afternoon traffic already backs up as commuters head south from Chappaqua into the village. Planning Commission members raised the same bottleneck again in May, and Lennar's engineer, Diego Villareale of JMC, said the firm would take another look at the pattern. If you're weighing a home purchase anywhere along that corridor, the traffic study isn't finished, and neither is the debate about whether it's realistic.
What This Means If You're Comparing Pleasantville To Other Villages
Here's the part that actually matters for a buyer's decision, not just the village's zoning map. If you've been holding off on Pleasantville because you assumed a wave of new construction might eventually soften competition for single-family homes in the school district, this project doesn't support that bet, even in the best case for approval.
Look at what's actually being built. The $1 million-plus market-rate townhomes compete with move-up buyers looking at attached product, not families bidding on detached homes with yards. The deed-restricted units at roughly $275,000 serve income-qualified buyers under a separate track entirely. The senior-oriented first-floor units are aimed at residents who already own a Pleasantville house and want to stay in the village, not newcomers. None of those three buyer pools is the one competing for a four-bedroom colonial near the train station.
The precedent next door confirms it. Toll Brothers already built a comparable Planned Unit Development on Washington Avenue, and it didn't relieve pressure on the detached single-family market either, because it was never competing for the same buyer. One resident of that existing development, Antonio Gracia Jr., raised a related concern at the February meeting, asking whether the district was anywhere near capacity for more students. Mayor Peter Scherer's answer was that enrollment has actually declined over the past 15 years, even as Lennar's own projections put the new development's added students somewhere between roughly 40 and 52 children, a range that shifted as the unit mix changed. The village's growth and its school capacity aren't moving in the direction most people assume.
Where The Vote Actually Stands
As of this writing in September 2026, no vote has happened. Here's the sequence that got us here, and what's still ahead:
- October 2025: Lennar presents the original 102-unit plan to the Village Board.
- January and February 2026: Revised traffic, school, and infrastructure studies are presented; public opposition turns vocal at a Village Board meeting, with roughly 50 residents attending to speak against the plan.
- April 2026: The Planning Commission votes unanimously to let the Village Board serve as lead agency under the state environmental review process, a procedural step, not an approval.
- May 2026: Lennar revises the plan to add the 12 smaller units and 53 first-floor senior suites.
- June 2026: A joint Village Board and Planning Commission work session digs into the affordable housing and tax revenue tradeoffs directly.
- July 2026 and beyond: The Planning Commission continues reviewing the application, with a formal recommendation still pending before it goes back to the Village Board.
Mayor Scherer told The Examiner in late June that the board anticipates a vote "sometime in the fall," which means a decision could land at any point between now and the end of the year. If you're actively comparing homes in this part of the village, that timeline is worth tracking, not because the vote will move your closing date, but because it will settle exactly what kind of housing, and what kind of traffic, ends up behind Foxwood.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will this project change the assessed value of nearby homes right away? No. Rezoning and site plan approval are separate steps, and construction hasn't started. Any effect on nearby assessments would follow completed construction, not the vote itself.
What happens to the businesses currently on the site? Atlas Peak Physical Therapy, which co-founder Dr. Niko Athanasatos told the board handles about 1,000 visits a month, and Savin Engineering would need to relocate if the project is approved and the existing buildings are demolished.
Does the outcome affect Pleasantville School District enrollment planning? Lennar's projections estimate 40 to 52 additional school-age children, though district enrollment has trended down over the past 15 years according to Mayor Scherer, so any impact would need to be measured against that longer decline, not treated as a straightforward addition.
If you're weighing a move to Pleasantville, whether you're comparing what a downsizer's dollar buys against a neighboring village or trying to time a purchase around a project still working through public review, this is exactly the kind of local detail that doesn't show up on a listing sheet. Aurora Banaszek tracks these fights as they unfold because they shape what you're actually buying into, not just what's for sale today. Schedule a white-glove consultation to talk through what Campus Drive means for your specific search.
