It is not only the city”™s oppressive heat and humidity that have made a hellish summer for Nick Sprayregen and the family-owned business he heads in Manhattan.
At Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage, a 30-year history in the Manhattanville neighborhood on the west side of Harlem is coming to an end that will reduce the company”™s presence there to rubble. Tuck-It-Away is the last business standing on a massive demolition site of several acres between Broadway and the Hudson River, where Columbia University has begun an approximately $6.3 billion campus expansion.
Sprayregen, a major landlord in downtown Yonkers and managing member of Rising Development-Yonkers L.L.C., led the West Harlem opposition to the Columbia project in a David-vs.-Goliath battle that pitted local businesses and residents against their university neighbor ”“ the city”™s seventh largest employer ”“ and the state”™s Empire State Development Corp. By 2008, as other property owners accepted Columbia”™s purchase offers, Sprayregen alone was waging “a crusade” in state courts to prevent the state from condemning four Tuck-It-Away buildings ”“ about 350,000 square feet of commercial space ”“ and forcing the company”™s relocation.
In 2010, the New York Court of Appeals reversed a lower court”™s ruling and allowed the state to use eminent domain for the private redevelopment project. Columbia”™s victory was sealed when the U.S. Supreme Court later that year refused to hear an appeal brought by Sprayregen”™s attorney. Sprayregen said his legal expenses in the six-year-long fight amounted to $1.5 million.
Another court battle looms, as Tuck-It-Away”™s owners will seek a higher compensation price for their condemned properties than the fair-market value appraised and paid out by the state. Sprayregen said that legal wrangling could take another three to five years.
Earlier this month, the storage company vacated the first of its four buildings that will be taken by the state. The company”™s headquarters at 3261 Broadway must be vacated by mid-October.
Sprayregen said the company in the last six months bought two buildings in the Bronx where it will transfer the storage of its 1,600 tenants in West Harlem. About 60 percent of those tenants have been retained in the relocation, he said.
“After eight years of fighting the state and Columbia, we”™re at the bitter end,” Sprayregen said in the air-conditioned refuge of his office without windows in a red-brick warehouse at Broadway and 131st Street. “We now have our marching orders and we”™re going to do what we”™ve got to do.”
“It”™s very time-consuming. Just trying to transfer what we have is very, very hard.”
In the hellish summer, though, Sprayregen still has made time for his development company”™s Yonkers investments. Rising Development since 2006 has spent about $30 million to acquire numerous commercial and residential properties that cover more than three acres in the heart of the city”™s targeted redevelopment area.
At City Hall, Sprayregen”™s serial acquisitions in the Larkin Plaza area at times gave rise to concerns in the mayor”™s office that he was land-banking parcels for future sale and would not actively develop them. Sprayregen has consistently assured Yonkers officials and the public that Rising Development is there for the long term and planned to redevelop its main assemblage on Larkin Plaza once the city completed its Saw Mill River daylighting project.
The new Larkin park beside the newly uncovered Saw Mill “will be the catalyst for more and more going on” in development, he said.
With that project completed this summer, Sprayregen has stepped from the sidelines with plans for two projects, the first of which could begin in 2013. But public grant money will be needed to make it financially viable, he said.
On Mill Street, a narrow one-block cul-de-sac behind Main Street and Warburton Avenue that city officials want to redevelop as a public courtyard beside what would be the next uncovered section of the Saw Mill River, Sprayregen plans a $22 million rehabilitation of five properties. The centerpiece is 2 Mill St., a former warehouse that the developer plans to convert to 40 work-live lofts for artists and entrepreneurs and 20,000 square feet of retail space.
“I would love to create on Mill Street a destination place that would contain music and other arts,” he said.
“It”™s very exciting, but on the other hand, the reality is just like any proposed economic development today, you have to make the project work from a financial perspective.” With construction costs in Yonkers matching New York City”™s, but rents that are significantly lower, the Mill Street project “is economically not feasible” without a government grant, he said.
Rising Development recently applied for a $4 million state grant for the project. “If we get that grant, we are committed to moving full steam ahead,” he said.
Sprayregen also recently appeared before the Yonkers Planning Board with plans for an approximately $150 million mixed-use project overlooking Larkin Plaza and designed by Perkins Eastman, the renowned New York City architectural firm. The project would include a 250-foot-high, 22-story tower with luxury apartments, 80,000 square feet of office space and 40,000 square feet of retail and restaurant space. The developer said medical-type uses are planned for the low-rise office space. He also wants to create a restaurant row across from Larkin Plaza.
“We”™re optimistic and desirous to move forward with this. In the end, even with approval (from the city), the economics have to make sense,” he said.
Sprayregen said he has had “only positive interaction” with the city Planning Department and the office of first-year Mayor Mike Spano. He said he also has good relations with Scenic Hudson and other environmental groups that strongly supported the Saw Mill River project.
With the public-private partnership forged in Yonkers, “This is a situation that”™s rarely achieved in the realm of public policy and private development, where everything is aligned to make this a success,” Sprayregen said.
With the city”™s daylighting project completed, he and other private developers “need to do our part now to make the transformation complete. We”™re moving into a very important period of time when we”™re trying to continue this transformation rather than have it stop with the uncovering of the Saw Mill River.”
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