A towering plan for a struggling property

The owner of a largely vacant shopping center in downtown White Plains wants to demolish the building and replace it with high-rise residences as part of a four-building mixed-use development that would transform the city skyline while creating a more walkable business district.

Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc., the publicly traded real estate investment trust based in Greenwich, Conn., is seeking a zoning change for The Westchester Pavilion at 60 S. Broadway as a first step in its plans to redevelop the nearly 4-acre site as an 858,000-square-foot complex. It would be built around an inner plaza and pedestrian street linking East Post Road and South Broadway and the downtown Mamaroneck Avenue retail corridor with Hale Avenue and Maple Avenue and the growing Bloomingdale Road hub of retail stores and restaurants.

The developer has proposed to build a traffic circle at the East Post Road and South Broadway intersection to improve vehicular flow and pedestrian movement.

In place of the Connecticut landlord”™s tenant-depleted mall, the development would create a “24-hour community” of apartment dwellers, retail, restaurant, health club and spa customers, office workers and hotel guests.

Designed by Perkins Eastman Architects P.C, the project was laid out in concept plans presented this month to the White Plains Common Council. Willing L. Biddle, president and CEO of Urstadt Biddle Properties, said in the company submission that a formal site plan will be presented to city officials for review after “market opportunities are further explored.”

Biddle in an email to the Business Journal stressed that the company”™s application to the city was for a zone change ”“ from an enclosed mall to a central business district classification ”“ and not for “the actual development.”

The project as planned would require a special permit to exceed zoning height limits for the central business district. The developer has plans to build 550 market-rate apartments of 1,000 square feet each in 30-story, 335-foot and 315-foot towers on the north and west sides of the property. Two nine-story buildings also are planned.

The redevelopment would include a 180-room, 100,000-square-foot hotel that would generate an estimated $207,000 annually in hotel occupancy tax revenue for the city and White Plains School District, according to a fiscal impact analysis by Urbanomics, the developer”™s consultant.

A 54,000-square-foot health club on South Broadway also is planned, along with 15,000 square feet of office space and 139,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space that includes a 32,000-square-foot spa in one of the residential towers.

The complex when completed would employ an estimated 474 workers. Roughly 840 construction jobs would be created for each year of the building project, which is expected to take 18 months to two years.

Urbanomics calculated the redevelopment would generate approximately $10.6 million in annual municipal revenue from property taxes and hotel and sales taxes. One-time development fees would add an estimated $2.9 million to city coffers.

The sprawling complex would require approximately $5.3 million annually in total public expenditures, compared with $457,000 in yearly municipal expenses for the existing Westchester Pavilion.

Urstadt Biddle 10 years ago bought the 185,000-square-foot mall from the Wisconsin state investment board for $39.9 million. In the last few years it has lost several retailers, including anchor tenants Borders Books and Music and Toys “R” Us/Babies “R” Us, which this year relocated to nearby City Center. One of its few remaining tenants, Sports Authority, reportedly also plans to relocate in Westchester County. The Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors is headquartered on the building”™s top floor.

Founded in 1969, Urstadt Biddle Properties owns 20 shopping centers in Westchester and manages three more in the county. Focusing primarily on grocery-anchored open-air shopping centers, the company owns properties in five states, most of them in the metropolitan New York area, which total more than 5 million square feet of gross leasable area.