Landmark does double-time as office space and sledders delight

High on a hill overlooking the Hudson River in Irvington, family owners and a cold-calling real estate broker have teamed to turn a landmark estate into a unique and fully occupied modern office campus.

A 45,882-square-foot complex on 10 rolling acres on North Broadway, Winterly Corporate Campus is not the typical Westchester County office park. Its hilltop centerpiece, the three-story, 32,892-square-foot 90 N. Broadway, is a rebuilt and expanded Colonial-style home. The estate”™s handsome carriage house at 94 N. Broadway, built of hand-cut stone, is now the 4,200-square-foot headquarters of an investment firm where traders work at computers below exposed roof beams in a former hay loft. The three-story, 9,000-square-foot 106 N. Broadway is a brick, veranda-wrapped Victorian-style house with views of the river and the nearby Tappan Zee Bridge. The estate”™s cut-stone pump house has a working well beneath the floor of what is now the kitchen of a terrace cafÃ© staffed by a local caterer.

The office park retains the name, Winterly, given the property by its original owner, New York City real estate businessman William B. May. On a country ride up Broadway from their home in Manhattan, the Mays ”“ listed with their “Winterly” address in the New York Social Blue Book between the world wars ”“ were attracted to the place by the steep hill that made good sledding for their children. Finding it “one of the best places to go sleigh riding,” the family built a white-columned house there in the early 1920s, said Gerry Carrafiello, a limited partner in the property”™s owning company, Carrafiello Family Properties, and president of Carrafiello Diehl and Associates Inc., a marketing and advertising agency headquartered in the park.

The May family lost the property in the Depression, he said. Carrafiello”™s parents, Claire and the late Louis Carrafiello, bought the former estate and the adjoining 106 N. Broadway property in 1977.

They dismantled the hilltop house and rebuilt it for use as a commercial building while retaining its Colonial exterior.

“For about 25 years, we really hadn”™t done any major upgrades from the original. It fared pretty well,” he said.

Tenancy, however, languished over the years. Occupancy was about 65 percent when the family owners realized about five years ago that renovations were needed “in order to be able to attract the kind of market tenants that other buildings were getting in the west of the county,” Carrafiello said.

The partners have invested a “couple million dollars” in improvements in recent years, he said. Yet several real estate brokers were not keen on the property and its prospects.

“We weren”™t the cookie-cutter building,” Carrafiello said. “We offer a different kind of feel. For one reason or another, it didn”™t fit their model. There were other Realtors that came through, they were discouraging us in talking about this property as if it were going to be a generator” of income. For brokers in the thriving Westchester office market, “There were easier deals for them to write.”
Then along came Brian J. Carcaterra, managing director in the Greenwich, Conn., office of Newmark Knight Frank. Looking for office space for his accountant, who was working from the basement of his Irvington home, Carcaterra came calling at Winterly. The broker realized the undervalued park had the best of two Westchester worlds. He asked to market it.

“It has all of the charm and the character of a beautiful estate and yet it has all of the conveniences of modern technology,” Carcaterra said. “In today”™s marketplace, it would be tough to duplicate this model.”

In January 2007, the owner engaged Carcaterra and his team at Newmark Knight Frank ”“ including director Michael J. McCall and associate Jamie R. Coffin ”“ to assist in repositioning the property and manage leasing. As part of their marketing campaign, the realty team suggested renaming the office campus Winterly in keeping with its history. Detailed information on the newly branded campus was distributed in a leasing memorandum to area brokers and others. The Newmark Knight Frank team also worked with the owners to continue office space upgrades and refurbish common areas, and added a dining amenity for tenants with catering from a nearby restaurant.

“My team and I pounded the pavement, worked some deals and it”™s been a good run,” Carcaterra said. By February, the campus was fully leased, with three lease renewals and new direct leases signed by SG Investors at the former carriage house and another financial services firm, Propact L.L.C., which opened a 3,000-square-foot Westchester office at 106 N. Broadway. Prestige Brands is anchor tenant at 90 N. Broadway, the publicly traded company”™s headquarters.

In the county”™s western submarket, average rents for office space range from $25 to $30 per square foot, Carcaterra said. Before the branding and marketing program, tenants at Winterly were paying rents about 30 percent below prevailing rates for similar properties in the submarket. Now, however, the office park “outperforms most all of the competition in its submarket and overall, achieves rental rates comparable to the best product in all of Westchester County,” the broker said.

“One is the location,” said Carrafiello of the property”™s success, “and the other is that these buildings have no significant loss factor” in rented space that cannot be used. “Our 4,000 feet is a real 4,000 square feet. That one factor goes a real long way in negotiating in the marketplace. It”™s our hidden asset.”

One enduring asset at Winterly is more visible: that sledding hill out front.

In Irvington, “We certainly continue to be the place where kids sleigh-ride,” Carrafiello said. “We have the best hill.” During business hours, “We have to look the other way.”