A hedge fund manager, Peter Boodell commutes from the Ludlow neighborhood of Yonkers to Manhattan and the firm he founded three years ago. The 42-year-old managing partner at Boodell & Co., though, made time in a busy schedule to play a part in the redevelopment of Yonkers as a member of the Saw Mill River Daylighting Coalition.
That project to uncover the Hudson tributary in its course through downtown Yonkers has sparked an alliance of developers active in the city and a new effort to further build a business community already emerging along the city”™s downtown waterfront.
Boodell recently was joined by Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano and business owners in announcing the launch of YONY Initiative Inc., a privately funded nonprofit founded by Boodell. Its goal is to accelerate the growth of a creative and technology business corridor from Yonkers to the Rivertowns.
On Dec. 12, YONY and co-host Sarah Lawrence College will present the first YONY Rivertowns Creative Meet-up, a monthly event at the Yonkers Riverfront Library. Organizers said the networking event is for “those who are passionate about tech, biotech, green tech, new media, social marketing, digital design, e-publishing, startups, finance, economic development, urban planning, architecture, public policy, advocacy, writing, the commercial and fine arts, and the full array of knowledge industries that are being transformed by technological innovation.”
Boodell said he sees a competitive advantage for Yonkers in its “gritty, urban atmosphere” that attracts creative businesses and creative residents like many of his neighbors. “It”™s not a suburban office park,” he said of a downtown business district that includes i.park Hudson, the former Otis Elevator factory. Its owner, National Resources Inc. of Greenwich, Conn., is among the downtown residential and commercial developers that Boodell said are interested in the YONY initiative.
In November, that business corridor was boosted by the arrival of Mindspark Interactive Network Inc., a software applications developer that relocated 160 employees from downtown White Plains to a 40,000-square-foot space at 29 Wells Ave., the main former factory building at i.park Hudson. The company”™s business neighbor is Kawasaki Rail Cars Inc.
Boodell said Mindspark spent $8 million to build out vacant industrial space as a sleekly modern office that retains and displays structural elements and architectural features from its industrial past. “That gritty urban feel is what we”™re trying to build upon,” he said.
Just west of the i.park Hudson complex, another Yonkers landmark, the former City Jail, is expected to be a fixture in the creative arts community with its pending purchase by Manhattan art collector and dealer Daniel Wolf and his wife, the architect Maya Lin. City officials said the couple plans to create a performance and exhibit space in the architecturally distinctive building and eventually add two floors for artist studios and residences.
Boodell said his plans for YONY include working with community colleges and SUNY officials to bring a satellite technology training campus to the Yonkers business corridor. With training, “We would provide a path to jobs” and thus curb the flight of tech-savvy students to Brooklyn, he said.
Boodell said YONY also will start an angel venture capital funding group to invest in startup companies that want to be in downtown Yonkers. That funding group could be started next year. “We”™ll be looking to connect with IBM and others who do lots of entrepreneurial things within their businesses as well as other entrepreneurs,” he said.
YONY”™s keynote speaker at its first creative meetup will be Tony Schwartz, founding president and CEO of The Energy Company, an innovative, 10-year-old business consulting company whose clients have included Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Nokia and Toyota. In September 2012, Schwartz, an author and professional speaker and former long-time journalist in New York, moved his 30-employee company”™s headquarters to the former Herald Statesman building, an Art Deco landmark opposite the city”™s new Van der Donck Park at Larkin Plaza.
Schwartz signed a 10-year lease with his i.park Hudson landlord. “I love the idea of being part of a community that is developing,” he said. “I like the idea of being a pioneer.”
In Yonkers, “They”™re very smart to think of turning it into a tech hub, with a blend of arts,” Schwartz said. “Startups are being priced out of Manhattan, but also out of even Brooklyn.” A native of Manhattan, “I”™ve been waiting my whole life to see Yonkers come into its own, and this is that opportunity, certainly.”
“We haven”™t quite had a flood of new companies arriving here, but the arrival of Mindspark is clearly another turning point, a tipping point,” Schwartz said.
