The last large piece of vacant land in the town of Greenburgh is on its way to being developed with commercial retail space, biomed and potentially even a hotel.
Eastview Holdings L.L.C. completed its environmental review under the state”™s environmental quality review act and will now formally request a zoning change for a 100-acre slice of the Landmark at Eastview property on Old Saw Mill River Road just north of Elmsford. Eastview is a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based LCOR Inc., which also built the Bank Street Commons in downtown White Plains and Terminal 4 at JFK Airport in Queens.
The property, which is partially zoned for office use and partially zoned for multifamily residences, will be converted to what is called an “economic development district” to allow for design flexibility.
The developer wants to build in two phases ”” one on the Route 9A side that would include a 110-room hotel, a bank and other retail, and a second on the back end of the property that would be a four-story, 128,000-square-foot medical research and development office and parking garage that would be linked to a biotech office campus that extends into the town of Mount Pleasant and is anchored by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. The property is adjacent to the Madison Square Garden-owned facility where the New York Knicks, New York Liberty and New York Rangers train.
Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, a Democrat, said after the Town Board completed its environmental assessment of the project this month that he was “thrilled” at the prospect that the property was to be developed.
“The new developments will help the town generate needed new sources of revenue ”” building permits and taxes ”” and will help make the Landmark campus even more attractive to potential tenants,” he said.
The town planning department said it couldn”™t offer an estimate of the revenues from building permit fees it would receive as a result of the development, but said the annual property tax bills would be anywhere between $2 million and $5.8 million.
Potential traffic impacts due to more development at the site were a concern for Joan A. Maybury, supervisor of the town of Mount Pleasant. Last year, Maybury said in an interview that Mount Pleasant hadn”™t been directly consulted by Greenburgh for the plans and she feared the site could be overbuilt. “I don”™t want 9A to turn into a corridor like Central Avenue and Yonkers,” she said.
Eastview Holdings conducted a traffic study in January of this year and submitted an updated study and supplemental review this past summer to Michael Maris, a Greenburgh traffic consultant. The developer has suggested a traffic light at the intersection of the loop road and Old Saw Mill River Road.
Greenburgh”™s town supervisor had previously hoped the development would ultimately mean reducing traffic in the vicinity by compelling the state to approve a long-discussed 9A bypass but Garrett Duquesne, the town”™s development commissioner, said that was off the table.
“That”™s not planned at this time,” he said. “The 9A bypass won”™t extend through this property in any way.”
With the SEQRA review completed, the developer is now expected to propose the language of a zoning code amendment. Following a review and approval of the zoning change, a development application could come as soon as 2015.
The Landmark at Eastview campus was for years operated by Union Carbide Corp., which declared bankruptcy and left in the 1980s. LCOR bought the property in 1999 with plans to build a biomed cluster on the land. It sold more than a 100-acre portion to BioMed Realty Trust Inc., a publicly traded real estate investment trust based in San Diego that develops, owns and operates office properties for the life sciences industry. BioMed Realty in 2007 built 360,000 square feet of office and lab space in three new buildings on the Greenburgh side of the campus.
Supervisor Feiner said the Landmark at Eastview property and biomed development Ardsley Park were helping to cement the town”™s reputation. “We are really they biomed capital of the Hudson Valley,” he said.
