The owner of a 6.23-acre commercial property at 130 Midland Ave. in Port Chester is seeking village approval to demolish the existing building and construct a new building that would be occupied by an outlet of the national Floor & Decor chain. In addition, the plan calls for a possible second retail space on the site that would be occupied by other businesses.
The entity 130 Midland Avenue Owner LLC has presented its application, including a number of engineering studies to Port Chester, where they are under review by the Planning Commission. The current one-story commercial building on the site was most recently used by Key Foods as a supermarket and also by several other retailers. It is described as being “functionally obsolete.” It would be demolished and replaced with an 80,000-square-foot building that would be rented by Floor & Decor. There would be a wholesale sales area of approximately 64,870 square feet, a stockroom of approximately 12,800 square feet and an office area of approximately 1,950 square feet.
An 8,500-square-foot commercial building would front on Midland Avenue and would be rented out. Attorney David Cooper of the White Plains-based law firm Zarin & Steinmetz said that the applicant did not yet have any tenants for the smaller building. He told the Planning Commission, “The applicant and its professional consultants have assumed for impact assessment purposes that the building would be utilized as a ”˜strip retail plaza”™ use. While the actual end use(s) may be less intense, the applicant believes using the ”˜strip retail plaza”™ use is appropriate because it allows your commission to conservatively assume higher vehicle trips and other planning metrics when quantifying potential impacts.”
The plan calls for providing 229 parking spaces for the Floor & Decor outlet and additional retail use in the future. The plan says an additional 33 spaces could be provided if necessary.
Cooper also told the commission that “there are similar uses along the Midland Avenue commercial corridor in this part of the village. This includes a specialty tile design and retail business, several strip retail centers and a Home Depot. Replacing the vacant Key Foods use with a Floor & Decor use would maintain this existing pattern of development in this neighborhood.”
Cooper pointed out that Midland Avenue has been identified as a commercial corridor in the village”™s new Form Based Code and named as being appropriate for wholesale sales uses.
Cooper pointed out that the plan includes widening the current driveway from 42 feet to 56 feet, which would increase safety for motorists.
“Changing the use of the site from a grocery store to wholesale sales would be a reduction in the intensity of use,” Cooper said. He also pointed out that the proposed Floor & Decor outlet would be a less intense use than a fully occupied as-of-right grocery store in terms of traffic, hours of operation, deliveries, noise and similar operational characteristics.
A history of the site was included in one of the studies the applicant submitted. It said that around the early 1900s, the site contained an industrial building housing a boiler room and power plant, which was later converted into an electrical substation. In the mid-1930s it was used as a repair and storage facility for the County Transportation System. In the 1950s, the building became a nut and bolt manufacturing facility. The building was demolished in the early 1970s and the building that is on the site today was erected in 1983.
Floor & Decor was founded in the year 2000 and is headquartered in Atlanta. As of March 31, it had 166 warehouse-format stores and five design studios in 34 states. The company offers a broad assortment of in-stock hard-surface flooring, including tile, wood, laminate, vinyl and natural stone along with decorative accessories, wall tile, installation materials and related merchandise.
Floor & Decor does not currently have a store in Westchester but does have locations on Long Island and in northern New Jersey. It has stores in Danbury and Fairfield in Connecticut.
Floor & Decor Holdings Inc. is a publicly traded company. According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, in 2021 the chain had sales of $3.4 billion and net income of $238.2 million. For the first quarter of 2022, the company reported sales of just over $1 billion, a 31.5% increase from the first quarter of 2021. Adjusted net income for the first quarter of 2022 was $71.6 million, a 1.5% decrease from $72.7 million in the first quarter of 2021.
