From Yonkers, NY soon to be New York States third largest city after Buffalo
and Albany, NY displacing Rochester, NY

The Journal News Friday, March 24, 2000

Tara Circle offers Yonkers triple benefit

     Yonkers City Council approval of leasing historic Alder Manor on the
former Elizabeth Seton College Campus to Tara Circle, the Irish cultural
group, promises a triple benefit to the city.
     It adds another institution to the cultural mosaic that already calls
Yonkers home and restores the Irish-American presence that existed years ago
in the former Irish Center further south on North Broadway.
     Revenue from Tara Circle will help recoup some of the $3.75 million the
city paid to buy part of the Seton campus in 1995. The city bought the
property to convert a former college building into an elementary school,
saving the cost of building a new school.
     Tara Circle takes a magnificent but municipally useless white elephant
off the city's hands. Tara Circle has pledged to restore the manor, a
decaying 88-year-old 43-room mansion that is on the Federal Register of
Historic Buildings.
     Tara Circle will pay the city $100,000 a year for the three-year lease,
with an option to buy for $1.2 million.
     Tara Circle had proposed buying Alder Manor outright in 1997, but the
group's finances were depleted by a five-year court battle with Briarcliff
Manor, where the group wanted to locate before becoming interested in the
Yonkers site.
     An umbrella group for 180 Irish-American organizations, Tara Circle was
founded in 1992 and offers programs on Irish culture, history, language, and
arts.
     The city had no plans for Alder Manor when the former Seton property was
purchased, and the manor came with it. Now there are plans, and a potentially
fruitful future.

Copywrite The Journal News

Postscript: Interestingly enough last year if my memory serves me Margaret
Thatcher was given an honorary doctorate at nearby Manhattanville College.
They say the announcement helped solve the "student apathy" problem on campus.

George J. Myers, Jr.
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