A Bronx cabinetmaker closed this month on the purchase of a vacant industrial landmark in Yonkers, as a flurry of pending and completed deals at year”™s end stirred Westchester”™s sluggish commercial real estate market from Central Avenue to the Platinum Mile office-park corridor in White Plains and Harrison.
Two relocation deals will bring an expanding biotechnology company from Ossining to a vacant office building in Harrison and send the county”™s largest law firm across I-287 from Harrison to White Plains.
Owners of Express Cabinets Inc. were due to close Dec. 15 on their $7.6-million purchase of the former Stewart EFI plant at 630 Central Ave. in Yonkers. The 201,000-square-foot plant, which sits on a 3.5-acre property, was vacated in 2008 when the manufacturer moved its precision metal-stamping operations to its newly expanded facility in El Paso, Texas.
Stewart EFI was the successor of Stewart Stamping, which had occupied the Yonkers plant since 1944. About 145 workers were employed there when the plant closed.
Owners of Express Cabinets plan to consolidate their current operations in the Bronx and Newark, N.J., at the Yonkers plant, said
William V. Cuddy Jr., executive vice president at CB Richard Ellis in Stamford, Conn.
Cuddy and Budd Wiesenberg, vice president at CBRE”™s Stamford office, brokered the sale for Stewart EFI.
The industrial property went back on the market early this year after an unnamed investor-developer backed out of a purchase contract. The new owner will create light-industry jobs in Yonkers.
Cuddy said Express Cabinets was started by the Mehmeta brothers, immigrants from Eastern Europe nearly 20 years ago who began making wooden kitchen cabinets for the apartment trade in New York City. The brothers could not be reached for comment at press time.
Biotech to buy Harrison property
Cuddy also brokered the pending sale of the former Malcolm Pirnie Inc. headquarters building at 104 Corporate Park Drive in Harrison. The vacant 118,000-square-foot office building has been on the market since 2009 after the downsized environmental consulting firm announced plans to relocate to Westchester One at 44 S. Broadway in downtown White Plains.
Histogenetics Inc., a biotech company that specializes in human leukocyte antigen typing services for hospitals and transplant centers doing blood stem-cell transplants, is due to close this month on its purchase of the building. The sale price was not available.
Histogenetics leases some 30,000 square feet of space at 300 Executive Blvd. in Ossining, where it employed about 70 workers as of last summer.
Soo Young Yang, the biotech company”™s chairman and founder, could not be reached to comment on the company”™s expansion plans in Harrison.
In White Plains, the sale of the former headquarters of Westchester Arc, the nonprofit agency serving people with developmental disabilities, is expected to close in January, Cuddy said.
The approximately 60,000-square-foot building at 121 Westmoreland Ave. has been largely vacant since Arc relocated its operations to its new Gleeson-Israel Gateway Center in Hawthorne in 2008.
 Cuddy said the buyer plans to redevelop the building as “folky, inexpensive” loft office space, “a slice of the market where there’s demand.”Â
Legal eagles take flight
In one of Westchester”™s largest office-lease deals of 2011, the county”™s largest law firm, Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman and Dicker L.L.P. will relocate in 2013 from the Gannett Office Park in Harrison to 1133 Westchester Ave. in White Plains.
The law firm, which employs more than 300 attorneys and staff in Westchester, signed a 15-year, 125,000-square-foot lease with RPW Group Inc., owner of the showcase 600,000-square-foot, 74-acre property on the Platinum Mile.
The firm will move into office space occupied since 2005 by Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc. Starwood is relocating its headquarters from 1111 Westchester Ave. and its adjacent White Plains operations to Harbor Square in Stamford, Conn., drawn in part by some $90 million in state incentives.
Though Wilson Elser”™s new lease begins in December 2013, it plans to move into the vacated space from 3 Gannett Drive as early as the summer of 2013.
Robert F. Roarke, Wilson Elser regional managing partner for the New York metro area and the firm”™s managing partner, said the firm will lower its rental costs with the move across Westchester Avenue. He said the firm, an office tenant in the county since 1990, now leases some 140,000 square feet of space.
“This is a very exciting time for us,” said Roarke. He called the firm”™s future home “a premier building set in an attractive and professional environment.”
Robert P. Weisz, CEO of RPW Group, called the deal “a testament to the quality of 1133 Westchester Ave. to have Westchester County”™s largest law firm choose it to be its home for the next 15 years.”
Wilson Elser will retain New York City architect John F. Borrelli to design its new space and oversee the build-out. Both the tenant and the landlord will contribute to renovation costs, Roarke said.
Weisz last month told Westchester County Industrial Development Agency officials he will use a $14-million building loan for improvements at 1133 Westchester to accommodate new tenants.
Howard E. Greenberg, president of Howard Properties Ltd. in White Plains and a broker for Wilson Elser in the deal, said the agreement is a groundbreaking development for the county”™s commercial real estate industry.
“Without a doubt, this is the most notable lease in Westchester County this year. It”™s certainly a long-term recommitment by Wilson Elser to the county,” Greenberg said. “Starwood is vacating 325,000 feet in a market that sees very few deals over 50,000 square feet and almost no deals over 100,000 square feet, especially in these recession years. To take 130,000 square feet off the market before Starwood has even vacated it is a pretty significant real estate transaction.”
Wilson Elser also was represented in the transaction by The John Buck Co., a Chicago-based corporate real estate adviser. RPW Group was represented by Glenn Walsh of Cushman and Wakefield Inc.
Also written by Patrick Gallagher
