At a time when IBM”™s kingdom was the Hudson Valley, the jewel in its crown was the IBM Conference Center in the hamlet of Palisades.
Set on 106 pastoral acres on the border between the Rockland County town of Orangetown and New Jersey, IBM welcomed visitors from around the world to the first-class facility.
As Big Blue scaled back its presence in New York, its iconic meeting space went on the market and was subsequently bought in 2015 by Hainan Airlines for $59.6 million.
Renamed the HNA Palisades Premier Conference Center, it faced some difficulty marketing the location as a destination. Internal issues between the airline and the Peoples”™ Republic of China were further compromised by the 2020 pandemic, forcing the airline to put the conference center back on the market.
By August 2020, the town of Orangetown, working with Hainan, hired engineering firm AKRF and land use/real estate attorneys Zarin & Steinmetz to market the property.
In October 2020, Orangetown unanimously passed a resolution that instructed both firms to circulate a Request for Expression of Interest (RFEI). That resolution contained a caveat: if HNA Conference Center”™s owner declined to cooperate with the sale of the property in accordance with the development process outlined within the RFEI, Orangetown could exercise condemnation proceedings against the property under New York state law.
Town Supervisor Teresa Kenny has reported the owner is working with the town to market the property, currently zoned office/professional. The conference center paid an average of $1.2 million a year in school and property taxes for Orangetown, something the municipality is loath to lose if the property were to be bought by a nontaxable entity.
Like other towns in Rockland, Orangetown is striving to retain the quiet character of its suburban community and keep essential ratables on the rolls.
To date, three buyers have come forward to stake a claim: The partnership of Douglas Elliman Real Estate, Sunia Homes and New Valley Realty proposes to update the existing 450,000-square-foot structure, dedicating the space to “forward-thinking entrepreneurs in pursuit of environmentally friendly innovation,” while including between 40 and 60 townhomes to the property to be built in two phases.
Cook Fox Architects and its partner, Atlas Capital Group, presented its plan to nearly double the size of the existing building by adding 500,000 square feet of movie/television production space on two existing parking lots. The team also plans to add either single-family homes or a combination of townhomes and/or apartments to the site.
The third proposal comes from William “Billy” Procida, president of Procida Funding Associates, who previously attempted to buy the property but was outbid by Hainan Airlines.
Procida”™s vision is a complete upgrade to the existing conference center and has assembled a team he calls “as local as it gets,”™ composed of Dolce Hotels & Resorts, which had managed the conference center for both IBM and HNA; Wyndham Hotels & Resorts; Toll Brothers; Woodmont Properties (currently building nearly 400 market-rate apartments along the Route 17 corridor in the town of Ramapo); and ENV Architects.
Procida, an Orangetown resident, signed a 20-year agreement with the Palisades Park Commission in 2016 to restore and operate its shuttered pool facility in Tallman Mountain State Park, a short distance from HNA Palisades Conference Center on Route 9W.
After trucking in enough sand to create 6,000 square feet of beach and spending over $750,000 in renovations, he reopened the dormant recreation facility as the Tallman Pool & Beach Club.
