What once was a warehouse at the tail end of an old airport is now an athletic endeavor of professional caliber.
Al Maiolo, president of hardware and chemical supplier for commercial and military aircraft Aero Hardware & Parts Co., just inked a deal with Xtra Effort Performance Training Facility for 16,000 square feet of available space at its 130 Business Park Drive warehouse and office building in Armonk.
“We put a program together and it wasn”™t just about batting cages and turf,” said Drew Marino, Xtra Effort”™s president, whose background includes coaching stints with the New York Mets and the Hudson Valley Renegades. “We wanted to take it from Point A to Point B with recruiting services and education and bring in position-specific experts (like Dana Cavalea, strength and conditioning coach for the New York Yankees).”
Marino and his business partners spent about $700,000 to turn the warehouse space into a high-tech training ground for student athletes. The facility is equipped with a PX2 Baseball Simulator and a ProMirror Video Training System.
Marino said he and Director of Operations Craig Scialdone looked for years to find the right spot in Westchester County to open the facility.
“There really was no place for us to put a portable dome up, so the next best thing is ”“ you have to look at the demographics. ”¦ Do they have an affordable rent or lease or a building to purchase to do this,” Marino said.
Location, location, location
The Armonk site”™s proximity to Interstate 684 and Route 22 ”“ with a sizeable amount of land and adequate parking at the tail end of Westchester Business Park ”“ made it a natural choice for Marino and Scialdone. In their eyes it was about “community and accessibility.”
Landlord Maiolo, who each year chairs the Guiding Eyes for the Blind Golf Classic hosted by Giants quarterback Eli Manning, saw the draw of Xtra Effort and came on board as an investor.
“I built this building in 1989 and moved (from New Rochelle) in December of 1990,” Maiolo said. “The space they took was once filled with TSA (Transportation Security Administration) air marshals and we built a lot of space for them. They were moved to LaGuardia Airport and we had the space open for awhile and then we leased it to a company that was going to build a spa, but unfortunately it didn”™t work out for him and it was empty for about a year.”
Maiolo said the struggle to fill the space was indicative of the “real estate industry as a whole.”
“Office space is down as a whole,” he said.
Growth of an office park
Lashins Development Corp. began developing Westchester Business Park in the early 1970s at the site of the old Armonk Airport, which closed between 1965 and 1966.
“Since that time, a number of companies have located here and we built a number of multitenant buildings,” said Ed Lashins, principal of Lashins Development Corp.
A road was put down to connect the landlocked parcel on which 130 Business Park Drive sits today with the rest of the property, Lashins said.
Lashins Development built buildings 80, 84 and 111 Business Park Drive and owned the land where there is now a La Quinta Inn and Suites, Cine Magnetics Inc. and The Gym, a 44,000-square-foot health and fitness club that filled warehouse space at 99 Business Park Drive.
“Basically what you do see is amenities popping up to service the office tenants,” Lashins said. “The Gym that is here goes way beyond that. It services office tenants but it also services the communities at large.”
Commercial broker William Cuddy, senior vice president at C.B. Richard Ellis in Stamford, Conn., said owners must consider adaptive reuse of office properties to fill vacant space in the “dysfunctional” Westchester market.
“If you look at where some of the value creation has been, it”™s in readapting these assets” for medical and sports-related club uses, Cuddy said.
John Golden contributed to this report.
