Building for a new era

“This is sort of like going back to the ”˜80s,” said Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino, speaking at a ceremony under a tent against a backdrop of hardhat workers, dump trucks and backhoes spread over a broad expanse of recently excavated ground in Purchase. Along the county”™s Interstate-287 office-park corridor, “We”™re actually building another office building,” he said.

Not since the late 1980s has Westchester seen a work in progress like the one started this summer in the Harrison Executive Park by Bronx-based Simone Healthcare Development Group and Greenwich-based Fareri Associates L.P. The development partners, led by Joseph Simone, president of Simone Development Cos., and John J. Fareri, president of Fareri Associates, have teamed to build a four-story, 85,000 square-foot, single-tenant office building at 3030 Westchester Ave. Real estate professionals here say it will be the first class-A office building to rise in Westchester in 25 years.

John Fareri, left, president of Fareri Associates, with his wife and executive assistant Brenda Fareri, and Joseph Simone, president of Simone Development Cos.

But the large corporations whose leasing needs drove the county”™s office-park construction boom in the ”˜70s and ”˜80s are being replaced by a new breed of tenant: medical practices and other health care providers. Westmed Medical Group, the physician-owned multispecialty group practice headquartered in Purchase, will open its fifth full-service medical center at 3030 Westchester Ave. and occupy the entire building.

It will be the fourth building in the 13-acre, 160,000-square-foot office park owned by Simone Development. Fareri said 70 percent of office space in the park will have medical uses when the building opens in January 2015, up from 50 percent currently.

With the addition of Westmed, the campus will formally be renamed the Harrison Executive Medical Park, said Fareri”™s project partner Simone. “3030 Westchester Avenue will be the most advanced medical office building in Westchester and perhaps the entire Hudson Valley,” he said.

Dr. Simeon A. Schwartz, founding president and CEO of Westmed, said 60 to 70 physicians will work in the new facility, and 40 to 50 of them “will be new to Westmed.” Westmed will have about 300 physicians in its group practice when the Harrison facility is completed, he said.

Schwartz described the Westmed health care delivery model as a “one-stop shopping medical experience” where patients can get radiology services, clinical lab tests and referrals to on-site specialists “all under one roof.”

“It”™s about moving from hospital- and doctor-centric care to patient-centric care,” Schwartz said. “Patients want convenience today. They deserve convenience.”

For 20 years, Simone Healthcare Development Group has been partnering with health care providers on projects to create turnkey outpatient facilities, Simone said. Its properties include Montefiore Medical Park and Hutchinson Metro Center in the Bronx, where Simone in 2011 relocated his companies”™ headquarters from New Rochelle.

Simone said his company has plans for other medical office projects in Westchester, although he would not disclose details at this time. “Our goal is to be the premier investment-development company for outpatient facilities in the New York metropolitan tristate area,” he said.

“The old model of the community hospital, which dates back to the 1940s, is no longer

viable,” Simone told an audience of elected officials and private-sector business leaders gathered for the groundbreaking ceremony. What”™s needed is outpatient care with multiple medical services at one location, he said.

“The medical world has not been technically ready for outpatient facilities,” Simone said later. “Now they realize they have to do that, have all their ”˜ologies under one roof. That”™s efficiency and that”™s the new patient experience and that”™s what they”™re looking for.”

In the new health care model, “These facilities act as feeders for the hospital,” said Simone. “The hospitals actually need these facilities to feed themselves”¦Economics are driving all this.”

Simone said he advises medical tenants leasing turnkey space from his company: “Just bring your white coats and stethoscopes, and we”™re ready to go.”

Project at a Glance