It”™s getting so Dick Van Dyke would hardly recognize the place.
As part of New Rochelle Business Week, three developers gathered to speak about their respective projects in the city on Sept. 18.
“In the last five years, we have seen more development in the downtown than there has been in the history of the city,” said development Commissioner Craig King, who acted as moderator for the forum.
Joe Apicella, executive vice president of Cappelli Enterprises, said New Rochelle is strategically located, with access to Interstate 95 and to the Long Island Sound.
However, it”™s the intangibles that make New Rochelle appealing.
“We decide to go in places where we feel welcome and where there”™s a tremendous need,” Apicella said.
Apicella said Trump Tower, an existing Cappelli project, was able to capture the views by building high; there was $10 per square foot added as floors get higher.
“The views afforded us the opportunity to make a profit,” Apicella said.
Apicella said the Trump building has 60 percent to 70 percent of the units filled; he is optimistic that more will sell over the next two to three years as the housing market improves.
Apicella described New Rochelle as a “proactive city” with a cooperative administration.
LeCount Square downtown is a planned mixed-use 1.15-million-square-foot redevelopment of 200,000 square feet (at base) of retail, approximately 375,000 square feet of Class A office space and 200 units of rental/ for sale housing. There will also be a hotel.
The project is in the final environmental impact stage now.
Apicella said the company would be able to get financing for the $450 million project despite recent troubles on Wall Street. He said construction of LeCount Square will begin this spring.
Fred Harris, “a local boy who made it big and came back” according to King, has
observed development in New Rochelle for almost 50 years.
Harris, senior vice president of Avalon Bay rental communities, is “a great believer in high-density development around transportation, and New Rochelle is blessed with a major rail station.”
Harris said in the last 15 years New Rochelle has had great direction, with density and height development a success where appropriate.
“The biggest obstacle to development in New Rochelle is getting an appropriate return on investment,” Harris said.
It costs the same amount to develop in New Rochelle as Manhattan, but the rents are higher there, he said.
The two existing Avalon buildings have added 1,000 high-income households to downtown New Rochelle. Harris said the typical Avalon renter eats out six times the national average.
The Avalon buildings are essentially fully rented, with 95 percent of the units occupied.
Abe Naparstek is a director of development at Forrest City, the national real estate company that is constructing Echo Bay on the New Rochelle waterfront.
The project will add 600 luxury apartments, 100,000 square feet of small-shop retail, 62 waterfront town homes, 42 condominiums and a 15,000-square-foot community building to the New Rochelle waterfront. Five acres of open public space will also be added.
Naparstek said the company enters urban markets with significant population and job growth. He said the environmental review process makes it difficult to make a large deal, which is an advantage.
“We only go into markets with high barriers,” Naparstek said.
The reason for this is because it will be harder for competition to come in. Naparstek agreed with Harris that the hardest thing about a development deal is to get a significant return on investment.
Echo Bay is on city- owned property, and “I see it as much of the city”™s project as it is our project,” Naparstek said.
The project will be built on 26 acres on the Long Island Sound, which is “a rare thing, and it doesn”™t come by very often,” Naparstek said. The project will call for rebuilding a street network and remediation of industrial land.
“We think it is a phenomenal opportunity,” Naparstek said. “In the coming years it will be a different place than it is today.”
Construction for Echo Bay could begin at the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. The project is expected to be complete by 2015.
