- A rendering of the planned updates at Esplanade Luxury Senior Residences.
Representatives of the Esplanade Luxury Senior Residences apartment complex in downtown White Plains have presented the city Common Council a proposal to gut and remodel the aged structure for conversion to a mixed-use building with 212 rental units.
The project would displace 120 residents there.
The estimated $35 million project includes transitioning the independent senior living complex at 95 S. Broadway into apartments not restricted to seniors with 9,000 square feet of medical office space and 6,750 square feet of restaurant space.
At the Common Council”™s Dec. 7 meeting, attorney David S. Steinmetz, of Zarin & Steinmetz in White Plains, presented the renovation plans and a requested text amendment to the city zoning code on behalf of the Esplanade of White Plains Venture Partnership, the group of investors behind the project. The partnership includes the Scharf family, which owns and operates the Esplanade.
Architect John Sullivan, of Sullivan Architecture P.C., the firm designing the new Esplanade residence, presented additional details about the layout of the project to council members.
“We will gut this building internally to its skin,” he said. He added that the buildings are in “structurally terrific condition” but are not “in the best of condition as far as their environmental quality.”
Updating the exterior of the building will make it more sustainable, Sullivan said, while removing parts of the interior will decrease the square footage by 3,000 square feet, to 251,000 square feet, allowing it to be retrofitted for new residential units.
The Common Council referred the developers”™ requested zoning text change regarding minimum square footage for rental units in existing buildings to the city planning board, environmental officer and law department for their review.
With the proposed renovations, senior residents, who receive meals and housekeeping service at the Esplanade, will be required to find new residences.
For seniors who cannot find new housing before the project begins, the Esplanade is offering temporary space in its Lyon Place annex, which is connected to the main structure by a pedestrian bridge and now operates as a hotel. Renovations to the annex will not start until after the main building”™s construction is underway.
Two members of the Common Council, Nadine Hunt-Robinson and John Kirkpatrick, voiced concerns over the transition for the senior residents and their well-being in the process.
“It concerns me that although it”™s a very nice letter it never actually says you”™re not coming back,” Kirkpatrick said. “Try to get ahead of the wave on this because otherwise this potentially becomes very controversial.”
Steinmetz responded that the operators of the Esplanade are working closely with residents and their families to ensure they find new housing. “My client notified all of the residents and all of the residents”™ families that we were beginning this process so that that could happen openly and families could respond,” he said.
Hunt-Robinson suggested that for residents who might not have families or friends to help them move, a point person be hired to help them look for options and walk them through the process.
Steinmetz said he was not sure if the Esplanade already had a point person and said he would come back with an answer. He added that there are a number of social workers who are on staff at the residence.
Sullivan said an overhaul of the property is an opportunity to give the roughly 45-year-old building “a whole new life” ”“ more specifically, a third life.
In the 1970s, the 14-story building operated as the White Plains Hotel. In the late ”™90s, the Scharf family, which owns and operates four other Esplanade senior residences in New York City and Rockland County, converted the hotel rooms into apartments for seniors.
The Esplanade conversion could be part of a more sweeping overhaul of the South Broadway block, which includes the Westchester Pavilion mall at 60 S. Broadway.
Lennar Multifamily Communities, a national developer based in Herndon, Va., in July presented a site plan to the Common Council for a roughly $277 million mixed-use development on the site of the largely vacant mall owned by Urstadt-Biddle Properties Inc. The developer has proposed to raze the mall and erect two 24-story towers with 707 rental units and 95,000 square feet of commercial space.
The mixed-use project, still under review by the city, aims to facilitate more pedestrian traffic in the South Broadway area with wider sidewalks and a publicly accessible courtyard that would link the city”™s bustling Mamaroneck Avenue commercial corridor with its Bloomingdale Road shopping area.
