Rye’s 40-plus-year wait for an updated comprehensive plan may soon be coming to an end.
The city council approved a resolution Wednesday to contract with AKRF Planning to create a new vision for the city’s future, modernizing a plan that’s been in place since 1985 — the second-oldest in Westchester County.
“Having an up-to-date plan that captures the vision for Rye going forward, and which recognizes both our legacy and needs of residents today, and in the future, is absolutely essential,” Mayor Josh Nathan said at Wednesday’s meeting.
AKRF proposed an 18-month timeline for a finalized plan, and Nathan said, “We’re going to work very hard to honor that clock.”
The White Plains-based development consulting firm has provided municipal planning services to over 25 New York communities, including Mamaroneck, Mount Kisco, New Rochelle, Yonkers, and Pelham. In 2025, AKRF completed a comprehensive plan for Mount Vernon, which previously had the county’s oldest plan, created in 1968.
“The world has changed, Rye has changed, and the people living here are very different,” Nathan said. “A good plan serves as a lens or strategy by which future councils, boards, and commissions can make important decisions for how best to serve our community, how to use our space, how to support preservation of our legacy, and how we can foster good progress for everyone.”
The firm’s proposal includes three main phases: visioning (six months), preliminary recommendations (eight months), and plan adoption (four months). A project website and other online engagement tools will be introduced at some point in the first two to three months of the visioning phase.
“Our approach will begin by taking a step back and asking the community, ‘What do you like about, or wish there was more of, in your community?’ And, ‘What do you wish there was less of in your community?’” AKRF said in its proposal. “Through these simple questions, asked in many different ways to many different people, our team will identify common themes, core principles and goals, and a common vision.”
Rye’s City Council had already designated $250,000 for the project, and CIty Manager Brian Shea is authorized to use funding from the Capex Reserve Fund for any excess payments. AKRF, which estimated a cost of $250,000 in its initial proposal from May 2025, adjusted the expected cost of completion to $285,000 in an updated proposal on Feb. 18 of this year.
The additional $35,000 accounts for AKRF’s use of the Land Use Law Center (LULC) at Pace University. The LULC and AKRF worked together to create Mamaroneck’s first comprehensive plan in 2022.
“The LULC at Pace University specializes in engaging developers, citizens, municipal staff, elected officials, and other community opinion leaders with diverse interests and running effective stakeholder engagement and collaborative processes to advance smart growth development approvals and zoning initiatives,” wrote AKRF Senior Vice President Peter Feroe.
Rye’s selection of AKRF is the latest step forward in a process that began in November 2024, when the city council heard a presentation from a professional planning firm about the benefits and process involved in creating a new plan. The council interviewed several planning firms in 2025 and early 2026 before awarding the bid to AKRF this week.
AKRF’s proposed budget assumes 15 committee meetings and four update presentations to the city council. During both the visioning phase and the initial recommendation phase, AKRF plans to hold seven stakeholder meetings and two community engagement sessions.
In AKRF’s proposal, Feroe said the firm will lead a team that includes OLIN Studio, urban designers who “believe in the power of the public realm, including the design of multi-functional public/private landscapes, vibrant urban spaces, and highly crafted civic parks,” along with Barton & Loguidice, which “provides comprehensive engineering services to support clients with water, sewer, flooding, and transportation infrastructure needs.”
Barton & Loguidice previously worked with Rye to provide court-ordered sewer system improvements and repairs in 2024.
“These are all folks who know each other and have worked together in the past … We are very, very excited to be working with AKRF, who’s done some great work for the city in the past,” Nathan said.
Founded in 1981, AKRF employs over 400 planners, engineers, scientists, and economists who provide expertise in planning and zoning, environmental assessments, transportation planning, air quality, noise and acoustic impact, economic analysis, natural and cultural resource analysis, stormwater management, and site and civil engineering.
“While our team brings plenty of technical expertise to the table, we believe that Rye’s Comprehensive Plan must be developed by, and for the community,” Feroe wrote. “Our role is to help facilitate, to guide, and to provide expertise to help address the topics that the Rye community wishes to address.”
