Assisted Living Projects Get County’s Green Light

 

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.