$400M-$500M redevelopment of Renaissance Hotel proposed

A proposal has been made to redevelop the former Renaissance Westchester Hotel at 80 West Red Oak Lane in Harrison into a mixed-use community that would have the potential of creating up to 760 residential rental units along with about 2,500 square feet of retail space and cultural facilities that would be available to the general public.

The project is known as Renaissance Harrison and would be developed by the firms Rose Equities and Garden Communities. The principals of the two firms have known each other for decades and jointly developed properties with almost 5,000 residential units.

Rose Equities was founded by brothers Jack and Leonard Glickman, and traces its roots to 1949 when their parents purchased a property in New Jersey. In 1981, the firm moved to California, where it today has offices in Beverly Hills and Irvine.

Garden Communities is a privately held company based in Short Hills, N. J., with more than 60 years of residential and commercial development experience. Garden Communities owns and manages more than 50,000 apartments and more than 25 million square feet of retail, office and hotel space.

Rose Equities and Garden Communities currently are building The Residences at Main, a 260-unit apartment community in Trumbull, Connecticut.

“Harrison”™s Comprehensive Plan has called for the reimaging of what”™s known as the Teardrop Neighborhood. They did some of the heavy lifting already,” Leonard Glickman, principal of Rose Equities, told the Business Journals. “Lifetime came in, Wegmans came in, Toll Brothers has opened their 450-unit Carraway project and Trammel Crow is building their 450 units on Westchester Avenue. We look at this 28-acre site as really the crown jewel of the Teardrop Neighborhood. It is in fact a neighborhood; it is an evolving work-play environment.”

Attorney Seth Mandelbaum of the White Plains-based law firm McCullough, Goldberger & Staudt LLP said that a marketing study shows a strong demand for the proposed luxury rental units at the location. He said that neighbors of the project are already welcoming it, with Wegmans and USTA, the immediate neighboring properties, as well as the Building and Realty Institute strongly supporting the project. The builders had a Zoom meeting with parents of children who attend The Windward School at 40 West Red Oak Lane and have been working closely with the headmaster of the school.

Glickman said that Renaissance Harrison would be designed to be pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly and there would be a cut-through route to the neighboring Wegmans.

“The proposed 28-acre community will be unlike any other development in Westchester. It will adhere to 21st-century standards of walking and biking, sustainability, and respect for the property”™s outstanding natural landscape,” Glickman said. “We call ourselves owner-builders rather than developers. Nothing wrong with being developer, but we”™re owner-builders, private, we use no third-party equity, all private, all family money.”

Glickman estimated that the Renaissance Harrison project would cost between $400 and $500 million. He said there have been several informal meetings with Harrison officials to discuss concepts for the project”™s scope and design. Glickman expressed a hope that shovels could be in the ground in 2024.

Glickman told the Business Journals that the apartments themselves would be larger than those typically found in new Westchester buildings. He also said that Rose Equities and Garden Communities intend to be long-term owners.

“Because we”™re long-term generational owners, we build always larger units than the market,” Glickman said. “If the market”™s 800 square feet, we build 1,000 square feet. It”™s a quality of life issue, it”™s also a competitive advantage issue, and so we seek what”™s the best, not what”™s the most units.”

Glickman said that they plan to include 5% of the units as affordable workforce housing even though Harrison does not have an affordable housing requirement.

At its Sept. 14 meeting, the Harrison Planning Board unanimously voted to declare its intent to serve as the Lead Agency for the environmental review of the Renaissance Harrison application.

Renaissance Harrison is being proposed for construction in two phases. There would be residential areas known as the North Quad and South Quad. In addition, there would be two large gathering spaces to be known as the Commons and the Mansion. There also would be two sets of triplex villas. The developers say the most that would be built in each phase would be 380 residential units in a mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom luxury apartment homes.

Proposed amenities include indoor and outdoor swimming pools, fitness centers, tennis courts, fire pits and an outdoor amphitheater. Glickman said that community groups would be welcome to stage events at the amphitheater.

“Our plan will be very sustainable in landscaping, construction, design, and all of it will have sustainability as an underpinning,” Glickman said.

“Quality of life is our priority, and we are emphasizing this ideal with large living spaces. We envision amenities that will thrill the spirit and soothe the soul. Our idea is to deliver an unprecedented residential lifestyle that reflects the surrounding communities”™ tastes and expectations,” said Scott Loventhal of Garden Communities.

The plan includes the preservation and renovation of the 30-room, 1905 Normandy-style mansion on the property that was at one time the country estate of architect John Merven Carrere. Among the best-known projects by Carrere is the New York Public Library in Manhattan.

The firms Perkins Eastman, Moore Ruble Yudell, Sasaki and Studio Valerius have been brought in to design the project.

Rose Equities and Garden Communities estimate the project will generate approximately $30 million in annual tax revenue for the Town of Harrison and the Harrison Central School District.

“Renaissance Harrison makes sense for the Teardrop Neighborhood,” said Glickman.

In reporting last September on the permanent closing of the Renaissance Westchester Hotel, the Business Journals pointed out that the property formerly had been was a Stouffer”™s Inn. On Dec. 4, 1980, a fire broke out in the third-floor meeting room portion of the hotel. Corporate breakfast meetings were underway at the time. Twenty-six people died, including employees of Arrow Electronics of Greenwich, Connecticut, and Nestle, which owned the Stouffer Corp. The fire did not spread to the room area of the hotel. A busboy was convicted of arson and murder but the conviction was reversed on appeal and the busboy was freed.

Stouffer split into food and hotel companies. In 1996, Nestle sold the Stouffer Hotel Co. to Renaissance Hotels and Resorts. In March 1997, Marriott International announced it had completed its $1 billion acquisition of Renaissance.