Trammell Crow Residential (TCR) has partnered with Marcus Partners on the residential development Alexan Harrison that is under construction at 3 Westchester Park Drive in Harrison.
TCR is a unit of Crow Holdings, the national real estate investment and development firm that has about $22 billion in assets under management. It has 11 offices nationwide, including one in the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts, that is handling the Harrison development.
“Crow Holdings is really a family office based out of Dallas, Texas,” Andy Huntoon, TCR”™s northeast managing director told the Business Journal. “We”™ve got multiple development companies.”
The project at 3 Westchester Drive marks TCR’s entry into the Westchester market. It will have two buildings containing 450 units, approximately 6,000 square feet of retail space, a 10,000-square-foot clubhouse and resort-style pool area for each building, game rooms, libraries, courtyards, a wellness center, outdoor pizza ovens and grilling stations, spaces residents can use as offices and more.
An office building had been torn down to make way for the residential project in another reflection of a growing trend to repurpose office parks for various residential and retail uses.
“The repurposing of older office and retail spaces is vital to the continued success of these suburban areas,” Huntoon said. “People are changing how they work. Buildings that are older and functionally obsolete or are vacant should be repurposed. There is a housing shortage, and housing makes a great reuse of the land.”
Huntoon explained that TCR bought a former Sears store in a suburban mall on Boston”™s South Shore and tore down the vacant building in the first quarter of this year; construction of a 282-unit apartment development there is now underway.
He said the company also is working on repurposing a former University of Massachusetts campus in a suburb north of Boston.
Huntoon said that Trammell Crow made a decision in 2018 to enter the New York suburban market due to strong fundamentals including, solid demographics, plentiful employment, great transportation infrastructure and solid lifestyle amenities.
“We were lucky to be able to partner with Marcus Partners shortly thereafter. They had recently acquired this site and they were looking for a multifamily developer to come in and work on it with them,” Huntoon said. “It was kind of good timing, the right place at the right time on this one, but we had made a decision that this was a market we wanted to be in.”
Huntoon said that TCR staff members have been spending a lot of time in Westchester on the project.
“I think my car”™s on autopilot and knows how to get to Harrison at this point,” he remarked. “Real estate really is a hands-on, boots-on-the-ground endeavor, and we”™ve spent a significant amount of time down in the market. We”™ve got team members who are down there weekly if not daily now that we”™re in the construction phase.”
Huntoon said that TCR is looking for more sites in suburban New York City areas that would lend themselves to development.
“My view is that Westchester and Fairfield counties are ultimately going to be net beneficiaries in the fallout from Covid. They offer a great quality of life with relatively more space, a business-friendly climate and they”™ve got good access to trains and highways,” he said. “In the past 18 months we”™ve seen a resurgence of the suburbs nationally. I think it”™s a trend that is going to persist.”
Huntoon said that the two buildings at Alexan Harrison each have a theme, with one featuring a more urban ambience and the other offering a subtle country feeling. He said that the first units should be ready for occupancy in the late summer of 2023 and construction should be finished later in that year.
“We”™ve got two buildings with a central drive that runs between them. We”™re building 450 apartment homes but we”™ve really done a great job in scaling so that the buildings will look a lot smaller than they are,” Huntoon said. “We”™re building to LEED standards and we were very careful on design to maximize efficiency. We”™ve significantly expanded our outside green space and will offer a one-half-mile walking loop around our property.”
Units in the affordable housing category are included in the development, which will feature a mix of studios, one-bedroom, two-bedroom and three-bedroom apartments ranging from 507 square feet to 2,135 square feet. Huntoon said they wanted to include a mix of units that would meet different needs of different people. He said that there would be nine-foot ceilings, stainless-steel appliances, full-size washers and dryers and other high-end features.
“We”™re creating homes for the residents that come to live here,” Huntoon said. “In addition to having their apartment home that they will live in we think it”™s critical to create ”˜community.”™ No one wants to feel like they live in a hotel. We want them to feel like they”™re a member of the community. We”™re building great outside spaces and great inside spaces…to allow people to enjoy a high-quality lifestyle at the communities that we”™re delivering.”
