Builder and developer Leonard Kohl cuts a familiar figure in the Hudson Valley, appearing before planning boards from Westchester to Orange counties for close to five decades. A new quarter-million-square-foot office park in Congers indicates the octogenarian is not through yet.
Before most of his younger competition was out of high school, Kohl was buying land and putting up office space, rental apartments and industrial buildings throughout the region.
Although Kohl maintained an office for more than four decades in Rockland County, each night he returned to his New Jersey home, the one he and his wife started out in as newlyweds.
When the time came for Kohl to start taking life a bit easier, he closed his offices in Rockland, continuing to work in a building he owned closer to his Teaneck home. As company chairman, Leonard Kohl has kept Kohl Partners bustling, recently building 176 rental apartments on Yonkers”™ Main Street and renovating the old trolley barn near its waterfront, converting it into 30 studios and stores.
Kohl, along with his team, is again returning to the Rockland landscape, putting up a 250,000-square-foot office park ”“ Kohl Industrial Park ”“ on a 15-acre parcel purchased in Clarkstown”™s village of Congers. While he”™ll leave the everyday managing of the business to confidante and company President Allan Litt, Kohl will bring the  company”™s presence back to where the boy from the Bronx first made a name for himself ”“ and to where he expects the legacy he built will continue to garner respect among Hudson Valley”™s movers and shakers.
Kohl Industrial Park”™s price is not something Kohl wanted to disclose: “Let”™s just say I have spent millions in purchasing the land and building  the new office/industrial complex ”“ that”™s close enough.”
Kohl Partners”™ offices will take approximately 9,000 square feet in the first of the three buildings going up on the site. His office will be in the largest building, 160,000 square feet. Another 30,000-square-foot building will be completed by June, and the last  in the trilogy will be a 60,000-square-foot building scheduled to be completed by fall.
He”™s already got tenants lined up and waiting to move in: Wynstarr, Casabella, NAEVA Geophysics, Stoffel Seals Corp. and All Points Moving and Storage. “And more to come,” said Kohl confidently. “We are already negotiating with tenants who like what we have to offer. We have a terrific location, right on Route 303, and have the flex space to allow us to build to suit for our tenants.”
Empire Zone status and water and sewer infrastructure already in place made the shovel-ready site a perfect fit for Kohl”™s company.
“The town of Clarkstown didn”™t do any special favors for me,” said Kohl, “but they do know how to get things done. They were thorough and very straightforward, ready to bring a solid business name to the community. The town”™s Supervisor Alex Gromack came to the meetings as a resident who wanted to see business come to Rockland and  to support our project and the benefits we were bringing in terms of jobs that will be created. We are bringing a valuable asset to the county and are going to make it pay for Rockland.
“Make no mistake ”“ we are going to create new jobs in the community,” said Kohl, “and that is the biggest benefit of all. That is our promise and our duty, and one we fully intend to keep; we have already gotten tenants lined up who are going to be able to bring more jobs in, and more tenants getting ready to come on board. We”™re thrilled there is bus service that stops right at the front of our new corporate park on Route 303, so people can use public transportation to get to work.”
Kohl recalled his long history of building and the purchase of several parcels of land he bought, all leading to Stewart Airport, which he envisioned becoming the state”™s fourth regional airport ”“ more than 40 years ago. “I bought land that was well located; the only time I got stymied was when I started to build. But in those days, with land at less than $2,000 an acre, it was indeed a bargain and money well spent. Most of the projects we built along those corridors are still thriving.”
Litt runs the daily operations for Kohl, a baton he is happy to pass to a person he has worked with and trusts. While Litt will be relocating closer to the new Rockland office, Kohl will commute a few days a week from his home of 56 years in Teaneck. “My wife refuses to leave the house we lived in together all our lives,” said Kohl. “That”™s fine with me. When it comes to that, she”™s the boss. Â I have a driver, and I can sit back and read and look through my paperwork. No, I don”™t have a computer or a Blackberry, and at this stage of my life, I don”™t need them. I”™ve managed this far along the path without them and don”™t intend to start now.” Kohl still goes to town board meetings occasionally, “just to remind people I”™m still alive,” he chuckled.Â
Litt says Kohl Industrial Park will be a gem in the county”™s commercial lineup, formally opening its corporate doors on Thursday, March 12. He bristles when he hears people say banks are shirking from lending. “They certainly aren”™t,” declared Litt, who credited Provident Bank in Montebello and M&T Bank in Tarrytown for arranging the financing for Rockland”™s newest corporate park.
