During its heyday in the 1980s, the Platinum Mile brimmed with major corporate tenants and packed-to-capacity suburban office complexes. New York Telephone, Hitachi and Texaco were some of the big name companies headquartered there. In 1984, corporations paid 60 percent of all property taxes in the town of Harrison.
Today, the stretch is a shell of its former self ”“ many corporate tenants have left or downsized. Texaco merged with Chevron and moved to San Francisco. New York Telephone became Verizon and downsized. Office vacancy rates are up and new tenants are hard to come by. Building owners continually seek to reduce their tax payments even while some of their properties fall into disrepair and obsolescence. Corporations now make up only 18 percent of the town”™s tax base.
Harrison Mayor Ron Belmont drives down Westchester Avenue regularly and sees “the buildings in mothballs and buildings being demolished.” By looking around, he said, it was obvious that it was time to take a new look at the corridor.
“The future of the town of Harrison is right there on Westchester Avenue,” he said. The town is now reimagining the Platinum Mile as a corridor of mixed-used developments and senior living residences.
Harrison has adopted a new master plan, a document that analyzes development trends and makes zoning recommendations to serve as a guidebook for future elected officials and planning departments. The marquee change recommended by the new plan is to rezone to mixed use a teardrop-shaped area along Westchester Avenue, bordered by Interstates 287 and 684, and the Hutchinson River Parkway.
Belmont said the goal is to diversify development and encourage the repurposing of existing buildings at a time when large one-tenant office buildings are no longer the norm. A mixed-used zone would open the door to construction of senior-living facilities, which Belmont said could keep empty nesters in town while not burdening the public school system or creating an influx of traffic. Special exception permits, as recommended by the master plan, would allow for retail uses and restaurants on the ground floor of developments with a maximum floor area of 25,000 square feet. It could mean creating a “self-contained village” in that area of the town, Belmont said.
The master plan also recommends studying potential ways to link the existing corporate campuses and facilities along Westchester Avenue. Currently, many of the office areas are segmented on the avenue, a thoroughfare with two lanes in each direction split down the middle by I-287. The town could encourage linking those properties when approving new permits and through other measures, officials say. Harrison will also look to open an emergency access road between Westchester Avenue and Manhattanville Road, a road that would be closed to public traffic to avoid pushing traffic from the Platinum Mile to the more residential area of Purchase, one of the town”™s three geographical areas.
The Harrison Town Board on Dec. 19 approved its new master plan, prepared by New York City-based BFJ Planning. The approval marked the end of a decade-long process that spanned parts of four mayoral administrations and was derailed and then reshaped by the real estate bubble bursting and subsequent economic crisis.
Steve Malfitano, a Republican, served as the town”™s mayor from 2002-07, then returned to elected office as a councilman in 2012. When his administration began the master plan update, prior to the worst of the recession, the Platinum Mile wasn”™t a focal point. But when he returned to office as a councilman, he and his colleagues realized the economy had changed.
“You want to foster the development of businesses in your corporate parks, but you don”™t want to be limiting,” he said. “There”™s a realization we have to do more, we have to address this or else our corporate parks are going to turn into ghost towns.”
Many of the recent success stories in the Platinum Mile and surrounding area have been repurposing or complete reconstruction projects. On Corporate Park Drive, one office building was repurposed as a Hyatt Extended Stay and the former Nokia building has been purchased as the new headquarters of HistoGenetics, a biotech company. The former Journal News headquarters was demolished and is now home to a Lifetime Fitness facility and Memorial-Sloan Kettering is building a cancer center at the former New York Telephone site.
Talks of updating the town”™s plan had begun even before Malfitano was elected mayor, but under his administration the town updated the plan chapters and gained steam in 2004 and 2005, when it had public consultations with representatives from all over the town and the Platinum Mile. By 2007, three public forums were held in town and plan approval seemed inevitable by year”™s end. Joan Walsh, a Democrat who was mayor from 2008 to 2011, shelved the plan draft amidst fiscal difficulties and differing views from Malfitano.
When Belmont came into office in 2012 with an all-GOP board, he resurrected the plan draft, made amendments and went through the public hearing process on the way to final approval.
Harrison, which was officially incorporated in 1778, didn”™t have its first master plan until 1956, a generation after the railroad came to town and the area transitioned from multi-acre rural estates to a more suburban setting. The Purchase area of the town had its own master plan in 1950, rightly predicting some of the larger estates would be subdivided in the future.
The town”™s 1972 master plan was perhaps its most pivotal, identifying the potential for commercial development and paving the way for the development of 256 acres for office use. In the 1980s and 1990s, many corporations abandoned their urban digs in New York City and elsewhere for suburban tranquility and readily available ”“ and affordable ”“ land. Harrison was an attractive destination for companies, due to its connectivity to the major highways and its proximity to New York City, White Plains and Connecticut”™s emerging Gold Coast. The county airport, which today flies more than 800,000 annually, was also an attractive amenity for corporate clients.
Between the 1972 and 1988 master plans, 4.5 million square feet of office space construction took place in the town. But, the economy changed even as Westchester”™s property taxes began to balloon in the last 15 years. Rents increased for tenants and many corporations reversed course and returned to Manhattan or White Plains, now a surging commercial and residential center next door to Harrison.
According to a CB Richard Ellis study on 2012 first quarter commercial rent, Harrison owners charged $26 per square foot on average, slightly lower than White Plains”™ $28 per square foot and significantly less than Greenwich and Stamford”™s $62 per square foot and $43 per square foot, respectively.
Any zoning changes recommended by the plan must still be done under the normal review process, which would include public hearings and a vote by the town board. But Malfitano said the blueprint laid out a future that was promising for businesses without being burdensome on residents. Many companies continue to commit to Harrison properties, including Morgan Stanley and PepsiCo Inc., which each employ more than 1,000 employees.
“I think we made a statement here that we”™re open for business,” he said. “We”™re a very pro-business board.”
