• Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Members
  • Sign in
Westfair Communications
  • HOME
    • WESTCHESTER
    • FAIRFIELD
  • E-EDITIONS
    • Business Journal
    • Podcasts
  • MEMBERS
  • BUSINESS LISTS
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Real Estate
    • Economic Development
    • Hudson Valley
    • Courts
    • Banking & Finance
    • Construction
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Food & Beverage
    • Government
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Nonprofits
    • Retail
    • Technology
    • Home & Design
    • Health & Fitness
    • Travel
    • Lifestyle
  • SMALL BUSINESS
    • Small Business
    • Food & Restaurants
  • EVENTS
    • 2025 40 Under Forty
    • 2025 Women Innovators
    • 2025 C-Suite Awards
    • 2025 Doctors of Distinction
    • 2025 Hispanic Business Leaders
    • Events Calendar
    • Past Events
      • 2025
        • 2025 Women in Power
        • 2025 Millennial & Gen Z
        • 2025 Real Estate
      • 2024
        • 2024 Doctors of Distinction
        • 2024 Women Innovators
        • 2024 40 Under 40
        • 2024 Real Estate
        • 2024 Women In Power
      • 2023
        • 2023 Women In Power
        • Milli + Genz
        • Women Innovators
        • Forty Under 40
        • Doctors of Distinction
        • Real Estate
      • 2022
        • 2022 Millennial + GenZ Awards
        • 2022 C-Suite Awards
        • 2022 Doctors of Distinction
        • 2022 THE FUTURE OF REAL ESTATE
        • 2022 FORTY UNDER 40
      • 2021
        • 2021 FORTY UNDER 40 VIRTUAL EVENT
        • 2021 TOP WEALTH ADVISORS Virtual Event
        • 2021 Milli + GenZ Awards
        • 2021 C-SUITE
        • 2021 DOCTORS OF DISTINCTION
  • GOOD THINGS
  • VIDEOS
    • Our Starting Lineup
    • News Videos
  • PARTNERS
  • ADVERTISE
  • SUBSCRIBEACT NOW
    • NEWSLETTERS
    • DIGITAL ACCESS
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
    • WESTCHESTER
    • FAIRFIELD
  • E-EDITIONS
    • Business Journal
    • Podcasts
  • MEMBERS
  • BUSINESS LISTS
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Real Estate
    • Economic Development
    • Hudson Valley
    • Courts
    • Banking & Finance
    • Construction
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Food & Beverage
    • Government
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Nonprofits
    • Retail
    • Technology
    • Home & Design
    • Health & Fitness
    • Travel
    • Lifestyle
  • SMALL BUSINESS
    • Small Business
    • Food & Restaurants
  • EVENTS
    • 2025 40 Under Forty
    • 2025 Women Innovators
    • 2025 C-Suite Awards
    • 2025 Doctors of Distinction
    • 2025 Hispanic Business Leaders
    • Events Calendar
    • Past Events
      • 2025
        • 2025 Women in Power
        • 2025 Millennial & Gen Z
        • 2025 Real Estate
      • 2024
        • 2024 Doctors of Distinction
        • 2024 Women Innovators
        • 2024 40 Under 40
        • 2024 Real Estate
        • 2024 Women In Power
      • 2023
        • 2023 Women In Power
        • Milli + Genz
        • Women Innovators
        • Forty Under 40
        • Doctors of Distinction
        • Real Estate
      • 2022
        • 2022 Millennial + GenZ Awards
        • 2022 C-Suite Awards
        • 2022 Doctors of Distinction
        • 2022 THE FUTURE OF REAL ESTATE
        • 2022 FORTY UNDER 40
      • 2021
        • 2021 FORTY UNDER 40 VIRTUAL EVENT
        • 2021 TOP WEALTH ADVISORS Virtual Event
        • 2021 Milli + GenZ Awards
        • 2021 C-SUITE
        • 2021 DOCTORS OF DISTINCTION
  • GOOD THINGS
  • VIDEOS
    • Our Starting Lineup
    • News Videos
  • PARTNERS
  • ADVERTISE
  • SUBSCRIBEACT NOW
    • NEWSLETTERS
    • DIGITAL ACCESS
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
Home Health Care

Landlords, brokers bullish on 2016 office market in Westchester

John Golden by John Golden
April 20, 2016
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedIn
Order your reprint PDF today
Print Full Article

A panel of commercial office brokers and landlords in Westchester might have helped promote good digestion in the audience at the recent BOMA Westchester State of the Market luncheon with its optimistic predictions for the county”™s several-years-stagnant office market in 2016.

“I think 2016 is going to be a turning point in the history of Westchester County,” said developer Robert P. Weisz, president and CEO of RPW Group Inc. in Rye Brook.

Weisz pointed to “a very dramatic turnaround” in the county”™s office market in the past six months. During that time, 10 percent of space in his four Class A buildings in White Plains, Rye Brook and Harrison was leased, a level of leasing activity not since seen since 2007, he said. That was before the credit market crisis, Great Recession and flood of company downsizings and closings darkened office spaces, slowed leasing volume and made for leaner income and darker humor among commercial brokers.

“We”™re seeing a lot of activity on the medical end,” Weisz told the yearly gathering of the county chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association at the Crowne Plaza in White Plains.

That expansion by major hospitals, physician groups and other health care-related businesses into underused office parks and new construction in Westchester brought Weisz in January a newly signed deal with Manhattan”™s Hospital for Special Surgery (see related story, page 5).

The world-renowned Upper East Side institution, the nation”™s perennially top-ranked hospital for orthopedics, has leased 50,000 square feet of space at 1133 Westchester Ave. in White Plains, a former IBM Corp. building renovated and converted by Weisz for multitenant use. Expected to open in the fourth quarter of 2017 following a build-out that hospital officials said will start in September, the facility will be the largest outpatient center in Hospital for Special Surgery”™s four-state specialty health care system.

“We think that 2016 is going to be a confirmation of what we”™ve seen in 2015,” Weisz said. He said he expects office vacancies in the county to drop to single-digit levels.

CBRE in its recent year-end report calculated the countywide office vacancy rate at 20 percent last year.

Weisz and other panelists said the county”™s economy and office-market rebound have been helped by an increase in workforce housing stock, both already on the rental market or slated for development, for employees of companies with offices here.

William V. Cuddy Jr., executive vice president at CBRE Group Inc. in Stamford, attributed the rise in needed housing to the ongoing public-private partnership of county and city governments with private developers. Those partnerships, he noted, are driving the planned redevelopment of the White Plains Transportation Center and downtown New Rochelle as well as the proposed $1.6-billion biotechnology center and life sciences campus, announced in January by County Executive Robert P. Astorino, that Greenwich developer John Fareri has been selected to build on the county”™s North 60 property next to Westchester Medical Center on the Grasslands Reservation in Valhalla.

The partnership between “an engaged county government” and private business “I think is a good reason for our optimism,” said Cuddy.

Weisz said the increased housing inventory will not only provide a supply “for companies who want to relocate here” but also generate additional tax revenue for municipalities. And the conversion of office buildings to residential use will have the added benefit of reducing the county’s office market inventory, he said.

John Barnes, senior vice president and managing director for the suburban division of Reckson, a division of SL Green Realty Corp., said his company at the office buildings it owns and manages is at last starting to see tenants “growing where they are” and signing lease renewals and expansions. Brokers in the last several years have described a dominant leasing trend in Westchester as “musical chairs,” with tenants shuffling from one office building to another within the county, relocations that do little to improve the market”™s vacancy and space absorption rates.

Barnes noted the expansion by the state”™s largest biotech company, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc., into 1 million square feet of space on the Landmark at Eastview campus in 2015 and Regeneron”™s purchase of undeveloped land there to allow for future growth. Yet “a lot of our existing product” in the county”™s 22 million-square-foot office market is not suited to accommodate the growth of the life science, biotech and health technology businesses transforming the commercial landscape here, Barnes said.

Weisz said that owners in the stagnant office market invested in their buildings “and most of our products have improved.” As a result, “Tenants are looking at Westchester now in ways that they weren”™t before.”

He predicted that office rents in 2016 will “dramatically increase.” Anticipating that rise, tenants are looking to lock in lower rates now, Weisz said.

“The suburbs are not dead,” said Thomas Sklow, vice president of development and leasing at Keystone Property Group. “People want us to believe it is, but they”™re not.”

Keystone, a Pennsylvania- based real estate company, in late 2014 entered the Westchester market with its purchases of Mack-Cali”™s Talleyrand Office Park in Tarrytown and Taxter Corporate Park in Elmsford. Sklow said Keystone at Taxter is embarked on an $8 million capital improvements project to make more publicly visible and more attractive to tenants a three-building, nearly 500,000-square-foot complex that he called “probably the best-kept secret in Westchester.”

Sklow said millennials are “the driving force” behind the continued vitality of suburbs. Millennials in their early 30s are getting married and having children and finding the costs of city living are prohibitive, he said.  “The reality is that people who live in the city are trying to get into Westchester,” he said.

Sklow and other panelists said the new Tappan Zee Bridge under construction also has an impact on the Westchester economy and real estate market.

“You really never build a $4 billion bridge where nothing happens,” said Sklow. “The bridge is a big dynamic. It”™s going to cause so much economic activity in this marketplace that I don”™t think many of us understand.”

This page is available to subscribers. Click here to sign in or get access.

Previous Post

Column: How to master online marketing in 2016

Next Post

State’s technical high school program feeds advanced manufacturing needs

John Golden

John Golden

As managing editor of the Business Journals, John Golden directs news coverage of Westchester and Fairfield counties and the Hudson Valley region. He was an award-winning upstate columnist and feature writer before joining the Business Journal in 2007. He is the author of “Northern Drift: Sketches on the New York Frontier,” a collection of his regional journalism.

Related Posts

Transforming communities for the 21st century
Business Journals

Transforming communities for the 21st century

May 16, 2025
FIRST AND ONLY HOSPITAL IN STATE TO RECEIVE CHAC CERTIFICATION
Business Journals

FIRST AND ONLY HOSPITAL IN STATE TO RECEIVE CHAC CERTIFICATION

May 16, 2025
Tom Cingari Jr.’s passion for produce
Agriculture

Tom Cingari Jr.’s passion for produce

May 16, 2025
Next Post

State's technical high school program feeds advanced manufacturing needs

Indian Point owner to federal court: have state back off

A-Game owners trade rat race for fun and games

A-Game owners trade rat race for fun and games

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our newsletter

Lifestyle

  • Exclusives
  • Good Things Happening
  • Food & Restaurants
  • Travel
  • Health & Fitness
  • Home & Design

World News

U.S. and world news for Dec. 4
World News

CNN WIRE — GOP hardliners defy party leaders and Trump as they vote to block agenda

by CNN Wire
May 16, 2025
0

By Sarah Ferris, Lauren Fox and Haley Talbot, CNN (CNN) — President Donald Trump’s agenda and "big beautiful" budget bill...

U.S. and world news for May 16

U.S. and world news for May 16

May 16, 2025
CNN WIRE — Justice Sotomayor plans to remain on Supreme Court: VIDEO

CNN WIRE — Takeaways from the Supreme Court arguments on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions

May 15, 2025
U.S. and world news for May 15

U.S. and world news for May 15

May 15, 2025
CNN WIRE — Lawyers cleared AG Bondi memo on legality of Trump accepting 747 from Qatar

CNN WIRE — Lawyers cleared AG Bondi memo on legality of Trump accepting 747 from Qatar

May 14, 2025
U.S. and world news for May 14

U.S. and world news for May 14

May 14, 2025
No Result
View All Result

Latest News

Transforming communities for the 21st century
Business Journals

Transforming communities for the 21st century

by Gary Larkin
May 16, 2025
0

Clay Fowler, chair and CEO of Spinnaker Real Estate, makes a point during Wednesday's Westfair Real Estate...

U.S. and world news for Dec. 4

CNN WIRE — GOP hardliners defy party leaders and Trump as they vote to block agenda

May 16, 2025
FIRST AND ONLY HOSPITAL IN STATE TO RECEIVE CHAC CERTIFICATION

FIRST AND ONLY HOSPITAL IN STATE TO RECEIVE CHAC CERTIFICATION

May 16, 2025
U.S. and world news for May 16

U.S. and world news for May 16

May 16, 2025
Tom Cingari Jr.’s passion for produce

Tom Cingari Jr.’s passion for produce

May 16, 2025
Logo Westfair Business Journal

Latest News

Transforming communities for the 21st century

CNN WIRE — GOP hardliners defy party leaders and Trump as they vote to block agenda

FIRST AND ONLY HOSPITAL IN STATE TO RECEIVE CHAC CERTIFICATION

  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
  • Sign in

Trending Westchester

Subscribe to our newsletter

© 2024 Westfair Business Publications. All rights reserved. Westfair Communications (Westfair), a privately held publishing firm based in Mount Kisco, N.Y., publishes the Westchester County Business Journal in New York state and the Fairfield County Business Journal in Connecticut.

No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
    • WESTCHESTER
    • FAIRFIELD
  • E-EDITIONS
    • Business Journal
    • Podcasts
  • MEMBERS
  • BUSINESS LISTS
  • INDUSTRIES
    • Real Estate
    • Economic Development
    • Hudson Valley
    • Courts
    • Banking & Finance
    • Construction
    • Economy
    • Education
    • Health Care
    • Food & Beverage
    • Government
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Nonprofits
    • Retail
    • Technology
    • Home & Design
    • Health & Fitness
    • Travel
    • Lifestyle
  • SMALL BUSINESS
    • Small Business
    • Food & Restaurants
  • EVENTS
    • 2025 40 Under Forty
    • 2025 Women Innovators
    • 2025 C-Suite Awards
    • 2025 Doctors of Distinction
    • 2025 Hispanic Business Leaders
    • Events Calendar
    • Past Events
      • 2025
      • 2024
      • 2023
      • 2022
      • 2021
  • GOOD THINGS
  • VIDEOS
    • Our Starting Lineup
    • News Videos
  • PARTNERS
  • ADVERTISE
  • SUBSCRIBE
    • NEWSLETTERS
    • DIGITAL ACCESS

© 2024 Westfair Business Journal. All rights reserved.

Notifications

  • My Account
  • Sign In
  • Subscribe
  • Sign Out