Developer eyes Mount Kisco for $26M project
A Fairfield County-based company that owns and operates six assisted living and memory care services for the elderly in Connecticut plans to expand into the Westchester County market starting with a proposed $26 million project in Mount Kisco.
Maplewood Senior Living L.L.C. of Westport is seeking to build at least 90 senior assisted living units on a 5.7-acre parcel owned by Radio City Ventures L.L.C. The property on Morgan Drive, off Radio Circle Drive, has been vacant for 29 years. The area had been zoned as an industrial park and demand for uses in manufacturing, research and development and warehousing facilities has declined over time, Charles Martabano, Maplewood”™s attorney, stated in a Jan. 14 letter to Mayor Michael J. Cindrich.
The developer discussed the project at a Jan. 22 meeting of the Mount Kisco Village Board of Trustees. If the application is approved, Maplewood could be the first provider of assisted senior living care in Mount Kisco.
“For the last couple of years, we”™ve been trying to get into the Westchester County market,” Maplewood CEO Gregory Smith said. “Westchester is adjacent to Fairfield, where a lot of our existing projects are. From a growth perspective, this has been a normal transition, and we were even looking in Mount Kisco at another site earlier. We went through the majority of the exercise of figuring out if the Mount Kisco market was viable. It proved to be so, but the real estate portion didn”™t come to fruition.”
Smith said that village of Mount Kisco officials were adamant about finding the right location for the project.
“The first meeting we had with the Mount Kisco village board a year and a half ago, we left a good impression, and they pursued us,” Smith said. “To get seven or eight board members to drive over from Mount Kisco to Connecticut and have lunch with us was a very positive thing. They spent a decent amount of time with us and saw the quality of services we provided in our senior living facilities. They felt we would be the right fit for the village and were excited about the prospect of us coming to Mount Kisco.”
In Connecticut, Maplewood operates facilities in Darien, Danbury, Bethel, East Norwalk, Newtown and Orange.
“We provide three programs on different levels of care needed: early dementia, full Alzheimer”™s and traditional assisted living,” Smith said. “We have all three in every one of our locations. This gives the elderly the ability to age in place by providing a continuum of care in our facility.”
Tom Gaston, executive vice president of acquisitions and development for Maplewood Senior Living, and attorney Martabano attended the last village board meeting and answered a range of questions the village board raised about the project.
“There was discussion about parking requirements ”“ whether it would have surface parking or garage parking, which requires creating an elevated structure,” said James Palmer, Mount Kisco village manager. “They also discussed the need to fix the existing site, which is a designated brownfield. An application was submitted to work with the Department of Environmental Conservation and have the site contamination remediated.”
Smith said the site used to be a water sewage treatment facility. It is currently zoned a research and development district.
Although the village board didn”™t take action at the last meeting, Palmer said the board was expected to vote on whether to refer Maplewood”™s application to the planning board at the next meeting.
But the Maplewood project is not alone in the Mount Kisco market. Just nearby, another developer, The Hearth at Mount Kisco, has proposed building a 129-unit senior assisted living facility on Kisco Avenue. The application awaits site plan approval from the village planning board, Palmer said.
Despite the potential competition, Smith said he welcomes it.
“We”™ve done market studies and gone through the premarket approval process,” Smith said. “There”™s certainly enough demand in the Westchester and Mount Kisco market to support our project and another project. There”™s enough for everyone to go around.”
He added that market research shows the demand for assisted senior living care is especially unmet in southern and central Westchester, where Smith said Maplewood plans to develop about six to eight projects in the next three to five years. Maplewood is currently pursuing two or three more senior assisted living projects in Manhattan.