Condos rise in Yonkers
On a ridge muddied and gouged by construction equipment above the Thruway, condo developers are readying for buyers to emerge from the cocoon of the old economy and alight in Yonkers, where a suburban model of New Urbanism is rising.
Sales are expected to open this month at Monarch at Ridge Hill, a planned $240-million, 500-unit luxury condominium complex on the western edge of the 1.3-million-square-foot commercial “village” recently renamed Westchester”™s Ridge Hill by its Brooklyn-based developer, Forest City Ratner Cos. Like its neighboring retail stores and offices, the first of four Monarch towers planned for the 81-acre site, a 13-story, 167-unit glass-sheathed building, is expected to open for occupants by spring 2011.
Monarch developer David Marom said the tower”™s construction, on which 75 to 110 workers are employed, has been paced so as to open in concert with Ridge Hill”™s retail tenants, which include Whole Foods, Apple, L.L. Bean and Cinema DeLux. “We feel like if we open, the whole center should be open at one time,” he said.
Marom in the 1980s founded The Horizon Group, a real estate development and investment company with several residential and commercial projects on Long Island and more recently in New Jersey and New York City. Since 1992, Marom, a native of Tel Aviv, Israel, has partnered on his projects with fellow Israelis in two companies, Izaki Group Investment (IGI), the lead investor in a mix of real estate projects totaling more than 60 million square feet primarily in the U.S. and Europe, and Azorim, a publicly traded construction company and one of the largest in Israel.
At Ridge Hill, where Horizon”™s 12-employee operations now are based, Marom shares temporary makeshift offices overlooking the Monarch construction pad with a development partner, IGI”™s Eldad Blaustein. The space later will be leased to WESTMED Medical Group for the approximately 83,000-square-foot office the physician-owned practice will open in Yonkers.
In Forest Hills, Queens, Horizon”™s Novo 64, a condo development completed 18 month ago, is 85 percent occupied, Marom said. “We sell very well right now,” he said. “The main reason is the first-time buyers,” who in the last four months pushed to sign contracts in Queens before the federal stimulus tax credit for home buyers expired, he said.
The Monarch team hopes first-time home buyers will be drawn too to Ridge Hill, where one-bedroom condos are priced from the mid-$200,000s to mid-$400,000s and two-bedroom units will sell from $400,000 to the high $700,000s. Monarch condo sales will be exclusively brokered by Houlihan Lawrence Project Marketing in Rye.
Jill Gardner, operations director for the Houlihan Lawrence marketing team, said current Yonkers homeowners also are expected to move to Ridge Hill, whose self-sufficient, pedestrian-centered community design, complete with a “town square,” is an example of a lifestyle Blaustein called the New Urbanism. As part of that “green” urbanism, Monarch residents will have free shuttle service to the Metro-North Railroad station in Bronxville, Marom said.
Though the Monarch sales office has not yet formally opened, “There”™s tremendous interest,” said Gardner. “Over 1,000 people have come to sign” the project”™s preferred-buyer list “and are clamoring for more information and can”™t wait for sales to start,” she said. “People are calling me and telling me they”™re already clearing out their houses” ahead of their anticipated move to Ridge Hill.
The economic downturn and recession forced the condo developer to change plans for the site. Marom, who agreed to join Forest City Ratner in the project in 2006 and began site work in October 2007, had planned to build all four mid-rise towers and 500 units at the same time. Instead, a second tower will not be built until the first building is 65 percent to 70 percent occupied, he said. The entire project will be completed in four phases.
Marom and Blaustein said they expect 2010 to be the year the real estate market and economy bottom out and recovery begins, with lenders loosening credit for home buyers in time for the Monarch”™s 2011 opening. “We definitely feel the shift in the market” already, Blaustein said. “We see greater response, more traffic and more interest” from prospective condo owners who are more serious and “realistic” about buying in the post-boom market, he said
“We feel the demand will be there,” said Marom, “because there”™s not too much new product in the market nowadays.”