Page 45 - 914INC - Q1 2016

p
The former Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers will become a mixed-use complex.
Industrial
HOT METER: 9
Westchester’s industrial segment continues to boom, according to Friedland. “It is extremely, extremely tight. Rentals have gone up, sales prices have gone up to record highs. It’s only getting higher because of limited inventory,” he explains. “Industrial property could go from $12 to $15 per square foot as rental and $125 to $175 per square foot for sale. These are prices we’ve never seen before.”
Mack-Cali, which owns a total of 4.2 million square feet of space in the county, has seen significant improvements and increasing rents in the flex/ industrial market. “We are 90-plus percent occupied in the flex portfolio and that’s truly become a landlord’s market in the last 12 to 24 months. I do not anticipate
MARKET SECTOR SNAPSHOT
Mixed Use
HOT METER: 9
Closely related to the retail sector is an- other bright spot in Westchester, says the Econocmic Development Office’s Mooney: combination residential/of- fice/retail development. “You have the approval of the Lennar development in White Plains, a $275 million project with 700 units geared toward empty nest- ers and young professionals. Ossining’s Harbor Square topped off in October. It has 188 waterfront units, a $65 million project. These downtown transit-oriented projects use a live-work-play model that touches so many different areas,” he says. “Transit-oriented properties are the ones people are migrating to,” says Mack- Cali’s Warner. “We have approximately 600,000 square feet of office space within a stone’s throw of the transit-oriented plan- ning area in White Plains, and we’re very excited about that.” One of the company’s major office complexes in the county is the Westchester Financial Center in White Plains (Mack-Cali owns two of the three buildings), which Warner says is slated for major capital improvements in 2016.
Transit-oriented projects and/ or studies are underway in Yonkers, White Plains, Harrison, New Rochelle,
Category
Warehouse/Industrial
Total Square Feet
22,916,015
Vacancy Rate (%)
9.5
Mount Vernon, Ossining, Tarrytown, Mamaroneck, and Peekskill, according to Mooney. One that broke ground just before year-end is Rivertowns Square in Dobbs Ferry, a 17-acre shopping/ living complex with a hotel, retail space, restaurants, and a multi-story apartment building.
“We’re big believers that mixed use is vital. We don’t want to live in silos anymore, where we live here, work there, and go shopping over there,” Leibler says. Simone Development is redeveloping the long-abandoned Boyce Thompson Institute in northwest Yonkers as an 85,000-square-foot mixed-use complex. “We’re going to have restaurants, retail, offices, and ambulatory healthcare,” Leibler explains. “Each of these things will support one another.”
Among the other mixed-use devel- opments that may impact the market in 2016 is Chappaqua Crossing, the 120- acre site formerly occupied by Reader’s Digest Association, where owners Summit/Greenfield are looking for re- tail and office tenants while building/ converting space into market-rate resi- dences and affordable housing. •
that changing. We are raising rates on that space,” Warner says. Most of the company’s 66 Westchester properties are combination office/other buildings
in commercial parks in Elmsford, Hawthorne, and Yonkers. “Flex space is everything under the sun,” he explains. “It’s office, tech, industrial, lab, biotech—just about anything can find a home here.”
The entire industrial segment (including space for warehousing and manufacturing) totals more than 23 million square feet in the county, with a vacancy rate of under 10 percent.
Dave Donelson lives and writes in West Harrison. He’s the author of numerous business books, including the Dynamic Manager Guides and Handbooks.
Q1 2016 www.westchestermagazine.com 43