Susan Newman, working partner at Knickerbocker Lofts, outside the live-work condo complex in New Rochelle.
A former corporate yoga teacher, author and start-up magazine publisher, Kellye Davis feels “so inspired” by the condominium space she bought in New Rochelle a year ago. It is at Knickerbocker Lofts, a converted late 19th-century factory on Webster Avenue that first opened as Knickerbocker Press, the book-printing plant of G.P. Putnam”™s Sons, the eminent New York publishing house that is now an imprint of Penguin Group USA. The 21st-century writer-publisher feels at home and moved to work in the lofty space of exposed red brick walls and scarred hardwood floors where the books of writers such as Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe were printed and bound.
The 130,000-square-foot plant later was the home of American White Cross, a surgical supply company that outgrew the space by the 1990s and relocated to Connecticut. It was converted from industrial to rental space in 2000 by Urban Green Builders, a New York City-based restorer of historic properties. Knickerbocker Lofts was converted again into condos after Ginsburg Development Companies L.L.C. in Valhalla joined as a partner in the New Rochelle property in 2005. Susan Newman, Ginsburg”™s former director of condominium conversions and project development and principal of Newman Investment Trust in Hastings-on-Hudson, is the project”™s working partner.
The 45-unit Knickerbocker Lofts is one of the most recent live-work spaces to open in Westchester County. Its next-door neighbor, Media Loft, has offered residences and work space for artists and arts-related businesses at its Webster Avenue location since 1983. Peekskill Art Loft, a 28-unit co-operative apartment complex in that city”™s reviving downtown, was built in 2002 as an affordable haven for artists. In downtown Yonkers, The Lofts at Metro92”™s rental apartments in a converted trolley barn house a diverse mix of small businesses and working professionals in the arts.
The market for live-work space is strong in Westchester despite the economy, according to real estate brokers and developers. Its relative price and value could make it even more appealing to cost-saving small businesses riding out the recession, they said.
Davis, who is looking at additional space in her building for some operations of the lifestyles magazine she plans to launch, closed on her 1,500-square-foot loft a year ago. “I was waiting for the market to soften,” she said. “Unfortunately I feel sorry for the people who got in earlier.”
Knickerbocker partners opened their condo sales office in September 2007, just as the credit crunch started, said Susan Newman during a tour of the complex. “Of course we came into the market at the wrong time,” she said.
Yet since the condo conversion took effect in March 2008, there have been 21 closings and two more lofts are about to be sold. Less than a year after the start of sales, “We”™re about half-sold,” she said. The building”™s creatively working tenants include a sculptor, fabric and jewelry designers and a painter and photographer, Patrick Bancel, considered a master in trompe l”™oeil decorative painting. Newman borrows Bancel”™s large-canvas paintings and collages to hang in model units.
“This is the first time where I can work with so much space,” Bancel said, stopping work on a figure painting in his 1,800-square-foot loft with mezzanine that overlooks the Metro-North Railroad tracks. “It lets me change my style. I can work bigger.”
Prices of the lofts, which can be bought as is or renovated in one of two finishes, range from $275,000 to about $750,000, Newman said.
When pricing, “We probably had to make a 15- to 20-percent adjustment with deference to the market. But we did it in one fell swoop” at the start of sales, Newman said. The building has been successful “in what has been otherwise a ridiculously difficult market.”
At the New Rochelle realty office of Houlihan Lawrence Inc., “I am getting so much activity and so much interest” in Knickerbocker Lofts, said Deborah Fugazy, the broker who last fall began marketing the property in the economic slowdown. “First of all, the price point is really good. The million-dollar property is not doing good now.” Some investors are looking to buy live-work lofts there to possibly rent them, she said.
Located in an industrial area, “This is the dilemma of people who want to live in loft space,” said Newman. “They don”™t put these factories in the prettiest places. I think people have to make a jump to accept this location. For somebody looking at a variety of choices, the loft appeal is so extreme that they really get over that it doesn”™t have that neighborhood feel.”
For Robert Kovler, a former Brooklyn apartment-dweller who is renovating the Knickerbocker loft from which he runs his 8-year-old Animal Nutritional Products business, “I would never think about living here. The only thing I knew of New Rochelle was the Dick Van Dyke Show. I would never think of living in Westchester.” But having found the space from a newspaper ad, he found a distinct advantage to living there. “If I bought this loft in Manhattan, it probably would have cost $2.5 million for a space like this,” he said.
At The Lofts at Metro92 on Main Street in Yonkers, “The proximity to New York and relative price point has allowed us to remain occupied despite the slowdown in the economy,” said Kenneth Dearden, president for development at MetroPartners L.L.C., the joint-venture partnership that purchased the three-story former trolley barn in December 2007.
The 40-unit building at the corner of Main Street and Buena Vista Avenue, in which the partners invested $2 million to $3 million for renovations, now is 90 percent occupied. About a dozen tenants have their commercial offices or studios in apartments that typically are sized at about 1,500 square feet.
“We have a mix of tenants. The business tenants are extremely happy because it comes down to about $20 a square foot for office space,” Dearden said. With some units presenting panoramic views of the Hudson River, downtown Metro-North Railroad station and Yonkers streetscapes, “It”™s nonstandard space,” Dearden said. “You”™re not going to get this in most places, especially at this price.”
“It”™s a diverse community,” said Eric Wolff, chief operating officer of MetroPartners and a founding principal with Dearden in DW Capital Associates L.L.C. in Yonkers. “We have everything from software to musicians and artists, marketing, a public relations firm, computer technology.” A public adjuster and a tattoo artist also run their businesses there. Wolf said he has begun to see the building”™s “incubator effect” as the diverse businesses interact and consider how they might do projects together.
Robert Meyer, a long-established commercial and fine arts photographer, is “bicoastal” with a studio in Los Angeles and the 1,500-square-foot Yonkers loft into which he moved last July. Meyer said he did not want to keep a studio in New York City and saw an opportunity to work with corporations that have moved their headquarters to or opened offices in Westchester County, such as his client Fujifilm Corp.
“I fell in love with this building,” said Meyer, whose loft walls are a gallery for his photo series of Native American portraits and ceremonial dancers. “It has that artistic flavor right by the river. The rents are reasonable, especially compared to the city. I think it”™s a vibrant community because of the mixture of the artists and the work-live space.
“I don”™t know if the community is going to be able to support it,” he added, noting that restaurants in the downtown neighborhood might close as redevelopment continues to lag in Yonkers. “It”™s tough at this time to keep it rolling. You”™ve got to. You can”™t just let it stop.”
In the downturn, “I think there”™s an advantage to it,” Dearden said of live-work space. “You can hunker down. If you”™re struggling with your business, you can squeeze your business into one space. So I think live-work is strong right now. To the extent that you”™re an entrepreneur or small business, you can have it under one roof.”