 
A Long Island family of real estate investors and developers hopes to break ground this year on a 115-unit assisted-living facility that will be the first of its kind in Scarsdale. A few miles away, another Long Island developer plans a similar project in White Plains.
The Westchester County Industrial Development Agency last week gave a boost to the Saxon Woods Road project, first proposed more than a decade ago, with its preliminary approval of $40 million in tax-exempt bonding and $1.6 million in sales and mortgage tax exemptions for the project. The project applicant, Renamba L.L.C., is an affiliate of KARP L.L.C., a private, family owned real estate development company in Manhasset.
KARP President and CEO Amba P. Sharma has partnered on Long Island with another prospective developer of assisted-living units in Westchester, The Engel Burman Group of Garden City, to develop The Bristal at North Hills, a 150-unit luxury assisted-living development. The Sharma company and Engel Burman also plan to redevelop a former EconoLodge in Poughkeepsie as a 130-unit assisted-living facility for elderly residents.
While KARP focuses on its Scarsdale project, The Engel Burman Group this year formed a joint-venture partnership with North Street Community L.L.C. to redevelop the 150,000-square-foot, former St. Agnes Hospital building in White Plains as an assisted-living community. North Street Community in 2004 paid $21.4 million for the 23-acre hospital campus, where it has spent about $4 million to renovate a medical office building and also plans to build up to 335 condominiums for persons 60 and older in four buildings in a club setting.
The county IDA last week gave its preliminary backing for the approximately $34.4 million assisted-living project at 305 North St. proposed by the partnership, EBC White Plains L.L.C. The IDA approved $32.5 million in tax-exempt bonding and about $1.5 million in sales and mortgage tax exemptions.
The White Plains project is expected to employ 65 full-time and part-time workers on a $2 million annual payroll. Construction of the assisted-living facility will create an estimated 150 jobs.
In Scarsdale, the assisted-living development at 25 Saxon Woods Road “is going to be wholly done as a family endeavor,” said Poonam Sharma, vice president at KARP L.L.C. “This is sort of a labor of love thing.”
Her father, Amba Sharma, an Indian immigrant and mechanical engineer who also owns a successful mechanical contracting business in Manhasset, acquired the 7-acre residential parcel in 1998. Last fall, he at last gained village zoning board approval for a special-use zoning change to allow construction of the three-story, approximately 130,000-square-foot assisted-living facility, the Ambassador at Scarsdale. The property straddles Scarsdale and the city of White Plains.
“There is no elderly housing of this kind in Scarsdale,” Poonam Sharma said. “It will be the first and only, probably ever, of its kind.
“Ideally we would like to break ground by the end of the year.”
An estimated 185 workers will be employed during a construction period of 12 to 18 months.
The assisted-living facility will employ 49 to 60 full-time and part-time workers on an annual payroll of about $2.2 million.
Sharma said the IDA”™s action last week “gives us a level of assurance that Westchester County is fully behind the project” while the developer seeks a financing package. The company”™s feasibility and market study for the project shows demand is strong and growing for assisted-living residences here, she said.
“And the timeline is right” with the project not expected to open until 2012 at the earliest. In the depressed housing market, “If we were opening today, it would not be good timing,” she said.
