Milagros Lecuona

A member of our club since 1999, Milagros was elected in her first run for City office, and was sworn in as a member of the White Plains Common Council on January 7, 2008.

Lecuona Brings "Unique Talents"

By Rock Stamberg
Published: January 11, 2008 in the White Plains Times

After winning election to the Common Council in November, newly sworn-in Councilwoman Milagros Lecuona told White Plains residents, “I’m a fighter, I’m a hard worker, and I’m going to be there for you.” Lecuona aims to work according to her own credo, which she calls “D.D.E.E.,” an acronym for Development, Diversity, Environment and Education, “though not necessarily in that order,” she said in an interview after being sworn in on Jan. 7. “Right now I am busy getting familiar with all the issues…and I am planning to get more involved with the ones that are more related to my expertise.”

“The Renaissance of our downtown has dramatically changed the face of White Plains and has brought new challenges for the infrastructure and for the health and safety of the residents,” Lecuona said. “I want to work to stabilize our tax base, protect the character and safety of our neighborhoods, increase our affordable housing stock even more, acquire and preserve open space, develop a vibrant, pedestrian-friendly downtown and have an open government willing to work to achieve the best results for our residents.”

Trained as an architect in Spain (she holds a BA/MA from the School of Architecture of the University of Barcelona but is not a New York State-licensed architect), Lecuona is a project director for Peter Gisolfi Associates in Hastings-on-Hudson, where she manages large-scale building renovation and new construction projects, and she is president of Lecuona Associates. “I believe that in this particular historic moment for White Plains,” she said, “my architectural and urban planning experience, in combination with my own cultural background, will add unique talents to the ranks of the Common Council.”

“Technology is something that is really governing our lives,” Lecuona said, “and I want to make sure technology and green building design are part of our normal way of working in White Plains.” To make her point, at her initial Common Council session, Lecuona recused herself from voting on the proposed façade for the affordable/market-value housing planned for 240 Main St. because she hadn’t yet been brought up to speed on all the details her colleagues previously had. “The approval was for the design and the materials and I hadn’t yet seen the list of materials. Just because [the developer] is saying ‘It’s a glass building’ doesn’t mean they’re giving you all the information. There are hundreds of types of glass…and since part of this building will be [designated] for affordable housing and there have been issues with [estimated] monthly heating bills…in a glass building, that’s quite an issue,” she continued. “Cappelli and his lawyer said that they already know how to deal with [the] issue of lowering energy costs for affordable housing, but we haven’t seen it. I don’t know what kind of glass or other materials they’re [planning on] using. It’s one thing to approve a design; another is to approve a design and materials. I’ve been in the [architectural] business for more than 25 years and have had to present similar presentations to my [former] clients…when [I] presented designs, I presented a lot of boards with a lot of details. What was presented [at the Common Council session on Monday evening] was just one board with two images. I think it would have been quite rash of me to approve the exterior look of a building on the most important street of the city without having seen all the details.”

At A Glance: Milagros Lecuona

Lecuona was born in Spain and attended the German School in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. In 1970 she moved to Barcelona to attend the School of Architecture at the University of Barcelona and to become a team player for the Real Club de Tennis Barcelona. In 1978, she moved to Madrid, where she completed her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, majoring in Urban Planning at the School of Architecture at the University of Madrid. Lecuona moved to the U.S. in 1987 and has been a White Plains resident since 1989. She has two children, both of whom are White Plains High School graduates. She became a U.S. citizen in October 2005 and a Democratic district leader in 2006.