Two developers of health care facilities are moving forward with projects at White Plains sites where residential developments have either stalled or been abandoned in recent years.
In downtown White Plains, The Congress Cos. recently paid about $4.53 million for a vacant parking lot at the southeast corner of Church Street and Barker Avenue. The buyer, a family-owned construction and real estate development business with headquarters in Peabody, Mass., and a Long Island office at Lake Success, is seeking city approval to build a six-story, approximately 101,000-square-foot skilled nursing home.
Called the White Plains Institute of Rehabilitation and Healthcare, the facility would hold 180 beds for elderly patients and focus on short-term care. The developer in its site-plan application to the city said 177 workers will be employed there.
Congress Cos. CEO William A. Nicholson could not be reached for comment on details of the project.
The Massachusetts developer already operates three branded nursing facilities in the lower Hudson Valley region: Wingate at Beacon, a 180-bed facility; Wingate at Dutchess, a 160-bed facility in Fishkill, and Wingate at Ulster, a 120-bed facility in Highland.
The downtown nursing care center would rise where the previous property owner, an affiliate of ASB Capital Management L.L.C. in Bethesda, Md., planned to build Hamilton Condominiums, a 13-story, 86-unit residence. That project, whose cost was estimated at $27 million five years ago, was conceived in the city”™s boom years for downtown residential development and died in the prolonged downturn and freeze on construction financing.
Hospital building to get new life
At the city”™s former St. Agnes Hospital on North Street, a Long Island development company plans to rehabilitate the vacant 150,000-square-foot hospital building for a 148-bed assisted-living community for elderly residents.
The Engel Burman Group and its joint-venture partner in White Plains, North Street Community L.L.C., will acquire the four-acre hospital grounds from North Street Community in a deal expected to close by the end of this year.
The Garden City developer”™s project partner, North Street Community, is an affiliate of B&L Management Co., an apartment-building developer in New York City. The company paid $21.4 million for the 23-acre hospital property in 2004 and has reopened a renovated 72,000-square-foot building next to the main hospital as the Westchester Medical Pavilion, a medical office complex. The doctors”™ office building will continue to operate with the change of ownership.
But the poor housing and credit markets have held up the independent-living condominiums for persons 60 and older that North Street Community also planned to build on the property. White Plains Planning Commissioner Susan Habel said the developer is looking for a development partner for that project, which a North Street partner in 2009 estimated will cost $140 million to $150 million.
Steven Krieger, a partner at The Engel Burman Group, said the assisted living development is expected to open in the first quarter of 2012. The project will cost about $30 million. He declined to disclose the purchase price for the hospital building and acreage.
