Ground broken for Ridge Hill indoor skydiving center

A groundbreaking ceremony was held at Westchester’s Ridge Hill shopping center on Thursday morning for iFly, an indoor skydiving facility that simulates the conditions of a free fall.

IFly facilities use a fan-driven wind tunnel to simulate the effects of skydiving out of an airplane. On its website, the company says that both children and adults can participate.

Those who attended the groundbreaking ceremony included Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano; Yonkers City Council President Liam McLaughlin; councilmen John Lawkin, Christopher A. Johnson and Mike Breen; Councilwoman Corazon Pineda; and Kathryn Welch, executive vice president of Forest City Ratner Cos., which owns Ridge Hill.

Ridge Hill officials did not provide an estimated time for completion or when the facility would open.

IFly, an indoor skydiving company, began in 1998 as SkyVenture LLC before its rebranding in 2005. The location at Ridge Hill will be the company’s 37th. iFly also has locations in the U.S., Canada, Europe and Asia.

The Ridge Hill shopping center, on Ridge Hill Boulevard in Yonkers, features 160,000-square-feet of office space and approximately 110,000 square feet of medical space owned by Westmed Medical Group.