Westchester County”™s retail sector, paced by several recent large store openings in White Plains, has been more active than most expected so far this year.
As construction at the $600 million Ridge Hill Village complex in Yonkers and the more than $250 million redevelopment of Cross County Shopping Center continues, retail brokers say activity in downtown White Plains is picking up and so is leasing interest on Central Avenue.
William Hesse, president of Hartsdale-based Aries, Deitch & Endelson, said the market is slowly getting better as tenants take advantage of low rents.
“If you drive up Central Avenue you are starting to see more and more fill-ins and all of a sudden in the last three or four months the ”˜moms and pops,”™ which are the bread and butter of our business, have started to come out of the woodwork,” Hesse said.
Asking rents are about 25 percent below average in most prime areas, he said, and national tenants, as well as smaller retail concerns are taking the bait. While he said that he was cautiously optimistic that retail activity will continue to strengthen later this year, he questioned how the rising cost of gasoline will affect retail sales in the future.
The city of White Plains received an economic boost recently when two major retailers opened stores in space formerly occupied by Fortunoff, which closed in 2009. Raymour & Flanigan and Dick”™s Sporting Goods opened locations at The Source at White Plains complex. For Raymour & Flanigan, the 56,000-square-foot location on the second floor is its 89th retail location. Dick”™s Sporting Goods cut the ribbon on its new store of about the same size, its 30th in New York State and 445th nationwide, on April 8. Other major retailers at the center include Morton”™s Steakhouse, Whole Foods, and The Cheesecake Factory.
Hesse reported that Ridge Hill officials have told him they are planning an October grand opening and expect 70 percent of the retail space to be open by March 2012. Major tenants that are signed at the development include anchors Whole Foods, Cinema De Lux, Lord & Taylor, Dick”™s Sporting Goods and REI. Other tenants of note are Brio Tuscan Grille, Elevation Burger, Delia”™s, L.L. Bean, Sephora, Orvis, Republic of Couture, Yard House, The Cheesecake Factory and Texas De Brazil.
The entrance of the Ridge Hill development to the Westchester retail scene could result in some improvements elsewhere. Hesse said the town of Greenburgh is studying ways to make Central Avenue stronger and more appealing.
Central Ave. in demand
Slowly but surely, store vacancies on Central Avenue are being leased up, Hesse said.
For example, the former Barnes & Noble store in Hartsdale has been leased by Harrows and the top floor of the Midway Shopping Center in Scarsdale above the ShopRite store has been leased by Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts, which brings that 325,000-square-foot center to nearly 100 percent leased.
The owner of the Pathmark store at the Dellwood Shopping Center in Hartsdale is close to signing a deal with a new supermarket operator, Hesse said.
In explaining how tight space availability on Central Avenue is becoming, Hesse said, “I had a demand for a 10,000-square-foot store (on Central Avenue) and there are no 10,000-square-foot stores available.”
Rick Stassa, executive vice president at NAI Friedland Realty of Yonkers, said that while some may point to vacancies on Central Avenue, many of those spaces are spoken for or are at least sparking some tenant interest.
His firm is currently reviewing four pending offers for the former 6,000-square-foot Charlie Brown”™s restaurant in Yonkers.
“The interest in that building is phenomenal and it just keeps coming,” he said. “I am supremely confident that we will get a better tenant than Charlie Brown”™s.”
His firm has signed a lease with a 10,000-square-foot supermarket on South Lexington Avenue in White Plains.
Stassa, who represented Raymour & Flanigan in its lease at The Source at White Plains, said there is a developer of a 410,000-square-foot entertainment complex that is looking for two 10,000-square-foot national restaurants to be part of the project. Stassa said that he is in discussions with the developer, but would not divulge where or when the project would be built.
When asked how the retail market is performing, Stassa said, “I am doing a lot of deals right now. I am doing more deals in terms of numbers than I ever have in 17 years in the business.”
Ready to build
Anthony “A.J.” Rotonde, the developer of the proposed Metropolitan Plaza project on Main Street in White Plains, said that he expected to submit plans to the city before the end of April for a six-story, 130-room business suites hotel that would go atop of retail space his firm would build at and adjacent to the former A&P site.
The retail component of the project was approved Jan. 4 by the city. The plan calls for 15,000 square feet of retail space at the former A&P store and approximately 18,000 square feet of space that would be added to adjoining Main Street buildings. The development would be connected to the City Center parking garage via a pedestrian walkway.
Rotonde said that the entire project would cost about $24 million to build. Demolition of the shuttered A&P location at 250 Main St. is expected to begin in a few weeks.
The firm has signed its first tenant, Planet Fitness, to a lease of approximately 15,000 square feet. The deal was brokered by NAI Friedland Realty.
The developer has already renovated a row of storefronts at 258-270 Main St. Anthony”™s Coal Fired Pizza and Pearl Yogurt opened locations in 2010.
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