Hotel developer’s exit halts Rivertowns Square construction
Though about 10 tenants are ready to lease retail space at Rivertowns Square in Dobbs Ferry at its scheduled opening next year, construction on the $150 million mixed-use development has come to a halt this summer after its hotel developer pulled out of the project.
Partners at Saber Dobbs Ferry LLC, the Armonk-based joint venture developing the $52 million commercial piece of the approximately 440,000-square-foot development, announced that XSS LLC, “due to timing issues,” terminated its contract to bring a hotel to Rivertowns Square ahead of the property”™s scheduled closing “in order to better manage the company”™s current projects.”
- A construction delay leaves a lone demolition crew on the job this month at the Rivertowns Square site in Dobbs Ferry. Photo by John Golden
Operating as XSS Hotels, the New Hampshire-based company planned to build a 138-room, 83,000-square-foot Hilton Garden Inn on Livingstone Avenue, which bisects the nearly 18-acre hillside site on the former Akzo Nobel Chemical Co. campus that adjoins Chauncey Square Shopping Center. The Westchester County Industrial Development Agency in December approved financial incentives for the hotel that included a $1.2 million sales tax exemption on construction purchases and a $200,000 mortgage recording tax exemption for XSS. The $17 million project was expected to create 165 construction jobs over one year and 50 full-time permanent hotel jobs.
“It”™s been a pleasure doing business in Westchester,” XXS Hotels principal Mark Stebbins said at the time of the county IDA”™s action last winter.
Though most of its developments have been in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, XXS Hotels has ventured into Westchester and the lower Hudson Valley market in recent years. The company opened a 150-room Hampton Inn & Suites in Yonkers in 2009 and a 129-room Residence Inn by Marriott in Orangeburg in Rockland County in 2013.
Stebbins was said to be vacationing this week and could not be reached to comment on his company”™s Rivertowns Square decision.
Westchester developer Martin Berger, a principal of Saber Real Estate Advisors in Armonk and Saber Dobbs Ferry, in the announcement said demolition work has been completed on the “shovel-ready” site, where some former Akzo Nobel buildings have been razed while a central research building on Livingstone Avenue has been gutted and left standing for redevelopment as retail space. The hotel will be built above the converted structure.
County IDA directors last year approved approximately $1.6 million in sales and mortgage recording tax exemptions for Saber Dobbs Ferry”™s piece of the development. The $52 million project is expected to create 475 construction jobs and 660 full-time and part-time jobs when completed.
“Construction on the site will be delayed while the search for a new hotel operator commences,” Berger said, “but we look forward to bringing in a hotel tenant that will match the luxury of Rivertowns Square and its residential, retail and dining offerings.” Those offerings include a 202-unit, approximately 277,000-square-foot luxury apartment building to be developed by Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co.
- Rivertowns Square is on the former Akzo Nobel Chemical Co. campus adjacent to Chauncey Square Shopping Center along the Saw Mill River Parkway in Dobbs Ferry. Photo by John Golden
The project”™s Westchester developer said 80 percent of Rivertowns Square is pre-leased. Confirmed tenants include Mrs. Green”™s Natural Market, which will open an 18,000-square-foot grocery store, Ulta Beauty, Chipotle, Buddha Asian Bistro, My Gym, The Learning Experience, New York Sports Clubs, Starbucks and GNC. The latter three businesses are current tenants at the Chauncey Square center.
Greenstone Realty in Manhattan is exclusive leasing agent for Rivertowns Square. Its developer said the site”™s exposure to visitors and residents from Westchester, Fairfield and Putnam counties on the Saw Mill River Parkway ”” where 60,000 cars pass by daily ”” “has been a key factor in attracting tenants to the development.”
Nick Vanella, executive vice president for real estate at The Learning Experience, a Florida-based operator of early childhood development and educational centers, in a press release called Rivertowns Square “a highly unique location situated at the area”™s epicenter of urban and suburban living. The high density, traffic count and demographic are parallel to our business objectives.”
Berger and partners are also looking to secure a new operator for an eight-screen, 1,350-seat movie theater complex approved by Dobbs Ferry village officials for the site.
Los Angeles-based Sundance Cinemas LLC in 2012 announced it would open its first East Coast location at Rivertowns Square. But the West Coast theater chain is no longer involved with the development “due to internal timing” within the company, said a spokesperson for Saber. Sundance has yet to expand to the East Coast.
Berger expects to announce the hotel operator and the movie theater tenant in a few weeks, according to a Rivertowns Square spokesperson.