The North Castle Town Board has granted a five-year extension of a special permit to the owners of the 35.97 acres at 113 King St. in Armonk, the former site of the MBIA corporate headquarters. The owners are Airport Campus I LLC, Airport Campus II LLC, Airport Campus III LLC, Airport Campus IV LLC and Airport Campus V LLC.
The special permit originally was granted to MBIA on March 24, 2004, so it could build an additional 165,000 square feet of office space, 53,000 square feet of additional amenity space and a 15,000-square-foot meeting house. MBIA moved out of the property in 2014 and in 2015 sold it for $23 million.
The original special permit approval was valid for 10 years. A five-year renewal was subsequently granted, extending the approval to March 24 of this year. At its March 13 meeting, the town board approved another five-year extension, while a newer application for development of the property continues to work its way through the review process. The applicant also is seeking an extension from the town”™s planning board of the site plan approval for the first proposal.
Last May, Airport Campus proposed adding multifamily residential to the location along with a hotel. In addition to new construction, some of the existing office space would be repurposed. The developer is pursuing a zoning petition which would open up the DOB-20A zoning district to hotel, residential, assisted living, senior-citizen housing and medical office uses.
Attorney Mark P. Miller of the Armonk law firm Veneziano & Associates was asked why they were needed a five-year extension of the original special permit rather than a shorter one while also pursuing another plan for the property.
“We are hoping to expeditiously process the other application, but it allows us as a fallback to have a preserved approval that we could market if that became necessary ”¦ it”™s just an issue of economy of scale in not having to burden your board and the planning board. The original approval was for 10 years, the subsequent approval was for five and we think five is an appropriate length of time now,” Miller said.
