Armonk Square adds to hamlet’s downtown mix
Since opening nearly 2½ years ago, the Armonk Square mixed-use development has augmented the North Castle hamlet”™s Main Street boutiques with its own unique blend of stores.
Now at full occupancy, the 53,000-square-foot, 3.43-acre development, anchored by a DeCicco”™s Family Markets grocery, features more than a dozen businesses and restaurants as well as 10 one-bedroom apartments in the Main Street corridor between Maple Avenue and Bedford Road. It is the brainchild of developers Alan Zaretsky and Dominick and John Dioguardi, who saw its first businesses open in June 2013.
Stores range from a Chase bank to a Tazza Cafe coffee shop to Bowls Handcrafted Salads & Soups to Lilies and Lace, a lingerie and swimwear store. Fortina, the trendy Italian restaurant specializing in pizzas, was among the first businesses to open. The square is composed of three main buildings: DeCicco”™s and Fortina, occupy the area closest to Maple Ave., and two buildings housing shops and apartments extend to adjacent Main Street.
On the recent Columbus Day holiday, the square was filled with shoppers of nearly all ages. Families sat and enjoyed frozen yogurt outside of Peachwave Frozen Yogurt, older gentlemen took in the warm weather on the circular set of benches flanking Main Street and adolescents with the day off from school were dropped off by parents to do their own exploring.
- Shoppers on Armonk Square”™s pedestrian walkway on Columbus Day. Opened in 2013, the mixed-use development now has more than a dozen stores and restaurants. Photo by Evan Fallor
The square”™s brick pedestrian walkway is lined with trees, potted plants and streetlights, inviting visitors to at least window shop for a few hundred yards.
Elizabeth Talbot, co-owner of Jagger and Jade, the children”™s clothing store at the Main St. edge of the square, said her business has been thriving with out-of-town residents since opening in January 2014. Despite the somewhat limited but free parking, first-timers always seem to come back, she said.
“I think it”™s accessible to everyone,” Talbot said. “Parking is parking, but I think people are genuinely happy to come experience all Armonk has to offer. You have all you could want here.”
Bedford resident Dan Giardina said the 15-minute drive to Armonk Square is well worth it. He does the bulk of his food shopping at DeCicco”™s and frequents Cleaning by Frederick”™s to have his suits and dress shirts pressed.
“I think it”™s pretty great,” said Giardina, 25. “We have some great new food and shops and it makes the town look much nicer.”
The shops and restaurants have helped Armonk give neighboring retail destinations like Mount Kisco, Greenwich, Stamford and White Plains some friendly competition. “Shop Local” banners hanging throughout Main Street encourage residents to not stray far.
Jonathan Gordon, president and CEO of Bronxville-based Admiral Real Estate Services Corp., said the arrival of a DeCicco”™s initially attracted more consumers, which in turn attracted more businesses to fill any remaining vacancies. The DeCicco”™s replaced a nearby A&P supermarket that closed its doors in February 2012. He said the commercial vacancy rates for the hamlet have dropped and remained relatively low since stores began filling the square in 2013.
“Armonk Square gave the Armonk shopper more reason to stay in town as opposed to going outside of Armonk,” he said. “Retail in Armonk prior to the square was ancillary, small boutique shops. Now, they”™re much more busy, mainstream businesses that are able to capitalize on the significant consumer dollars present in Armonk.”
The mixed-use development at times looked like it might never come to fruition. Plans for a major development sat in front of the North Castle Planning Board for more than 20 years, Town Planner Adam Kaufman said. Once plans were finally approved, construction took roughly a year, and it was about another year before the final retail space was leased in 2014. Kaufman said the 10 second-floor apartments on the property were completely rented even before construction began.
He called the square an “absolute success.”
“It was really an open field that the town had been trying to get a development into for decades,” Kaufman said. “We had a few failed development proposals that never got up off the ground and this represented a great opportunity to develop the core of the Armonk hamlet.”
Chappaqua Crossing, the long-anticipated mixed-use development, looks to build off this northern Westchester hamlet”™s success ”” but on a larger scale. Plans by Connecticut-based developer Summit Greenfield for the former Readers Digest Association headquarters include 120,000 square feet of retail space anchored by a 40,000-square-foot Whole Foods Market, similar to the DeCicco”™s-anchored Armonk Square.
Though not asked about the potential arrival a of similar nearby hub, Armonk Chamber of Commerce Vice President Christopher Carthy said he thought residents have everything they need right in their own backyard.
“It”™s doing very well. It”™s busy nearly every day,” Carthy said. “I think Armonk Square has enabled Armonk to become a one-stop destination for shopping and dining.”