Comings and goings
The following is a timeline of comings, and in recent years mostly goings, into and out of Westchester by notable employers:
1953
General Foods relocates its headquarters from New York City to White Plains, within the 623,700-square-foot campus now known as 333 Westchester Ave.
1954
Alexander Smith & Sons Carpet Co. bolts Yonkers for Mississippi and its lower taxes and cheaper labor costs. At its peak, Smith had more than 4,000 workers, 45 buildings and 800 looms.
1964
IBM Corp. moves its headquarters from New York City to Armonk.
1970
PepsiCo Inc. moves from New York City to the former Blind Brook Polo Club on Anderson Hill Road in Purchase.
1977
Texaco Inc. relocates its headquarters from New York City to 2000 Westchester Ave., a 107-acre campus in Harrison.
1977
Fleischmann”™s Standard Brands Co. closes its 65-acre yeast production plant in Peekskill.
1983
Eight years after buying Otis Elevator Co., United Technologies Corp. closes the company”™s Yonkers campus ”“ part of which is now iPark, whose tenants include Kawasaki Rail Car Inc., Aureon Laboratories and Mercy College.
1983
General Foods relocates its 2,000-person headquarters offices from White Plains some 5 miles east, to 800 Westchester Ave. in Rye Brook. The food giant was acquired in 1985 by Philip Morris.
1992
Nestle moves from Purchase to Glendale, Calif., just six years after building a new headquarters adjacent to 2000 Purchase St., which it built as its headquarters but never occupied and instead sold to IBM while staying at 120 Bloomingdale Road in White Plains.
1995
IBM Corp. announces it will retain its headquarters in Armonk after considering construction of a new building on the Greenwich side of its property. Gov. George E. Pataki joins IBM Chairman Lou Gerstner in dedicating the new headquarters in Armonk two years later.
1995
MasterCard Worldwide moves its headquarters from New York City to 2000 Purchase St. in Purchase, after acquiring the 472,600-square-foot building from IBM.
1996
General Motors Corp. closes its assembly plant in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow), idling some 2,000 workers.
1997
Tambrands vacates 777 Westchester Ave. in White Plains, consolidating its offices at the Cincinnati headquarters of Procter & Gamble after P&G acquired the tampon supplier for $1.85 billion.
2002
Chevron Corp. sells the former Texaco headquarters for $42 million to Morgan Stanley & Co. The financial firm built there a trading floor and moved in its individual investor and institutional securities groups.
2004
Altria Group Inc. sells its Rye Brook property for $36.5 million to Robert P. Weisz”™s RPW Group Inc., which converts the main 532,680-square-foot building into a multi-tenant office building, and leases the nearly 60,000-square-foot satellite building 760 Westchester Ave. to CPLPath Inc., which announced this month it will be acquired by Australian-owned Sonic Healthcare Ltd.
2005
Purdue Pharma announces plans to vacate its space in the Ardsley Park Science & Technology Center in Greenburgh and move out all 150 jobs based there, citing the need to slash costs after losing a federal lawsuit to protect its patent on the drug OxyContin. The company laid off 119 of the 150 employees and scattered the rest of its work force between Stamford, Conn., and facilities in the New Jersey communities of Totowa, Garret Mountain and Cranbury.
2007
Argent Mortgage Co. L.L.C. lays off hundreds of White Plains employees, after the subprime mortgage lending crisis chills the company”™s growth plans.
2007
Cara Therapeutics Inc. exits Tarrytown for Shelton, Conn., following a $4 million bioscience facilities loan from the quasi-public Connecticut Innovations.
2009
Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. announces it will relocate its headquarters and 800 jobs from White Plains to Stamford, Conn., in return for a $90 million package of state and local economic incentives.
2009
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. moves into new expanded headquarters within the office-lab campus The Landmark at Eastview, three years after agreeing to remain in the state in return for receiving $9 million in grants, and property and sales tax abatements. Late last year, the biotech company agreed to add 300 jobs at Landmark and an upstate facility in return for $3.6 million in grants and incentives.
2010
Cadent Energy Partners L.L.C. departs Rye Brook for the High Ridge Park Corporate Center in Stamford.