IDA OKs tax breaks for shopping center, hotel in Yonkers

The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency board this month gave its backing and tax breaks that currently amount to $11.5 million to a redevelopment project at one of the nation”™s oldest shopping malls and to one of two hotels slated for construction this fall in the city.
Brook Shopping Centers L.L.C., owner of Cross County Center, the ”˜50s-era open-air shopping mall off Interstate 87 and the Cross County Parkway, received preliminary approval for a $6.6 million sales tax exemption and a $2.6 million mortgage recording tax exemption for the $174 million makeover that began in March at the 1-million-square-foot pedestrian mall. The IDA”™s proposed financial assistance, which also will include a negotiated multiyear PILOT agreement, or payment in lieu of property taxes, must first be presented at a public hearing.
Cross County”™s Manhattan-based owner and its new managing company, Macerich of California, plan to renovate the entire 71-acre shopping center and an eight-story office building and add about 254,000 square feet of space for retail and restaurant tenants. A five-level parking garage for about 1,700 vehicles and a 373-space parking deck will be built at the north end of the center.
John Genovese, senior vice president for development at Macerich, in April said more than $8 million will be spent on off-site traffic improvements, including a new exit ramp off the Cross County Parkway, to make the center more accessible and relieve shoppers”™ traffic congestion in the surrounding neighborhood. Genovese called the project “a dramatic transformation” of the Cross County Center, which opened in 1954.
Yonkers IDA Executive Director Ellen Lynch said 1,950 workers currently are employed at the center. The expanded and improved center is expected to add 275 jobs there. An estimated 800 construction workers will be employed during a construction period of two to three years, she said.
Brook Shopping Centers first applied to the city IDA for financial backing for the project in fall 2004. Since then the project”™s estimated costs have risen from $105 million to $174 million.
IDA officials also approved an estimated $2.3 million in sales, mortgage and property tax breaks for FSG Yonkers Hotel L.L.C., the Hilton Hotels developer of a 150-room Hampton Inn and Suites hotel at the Southern Westchester Executive Park.
Construction of the four-story hotel is expected to start in September, Lynch said. The $20 million project will create 90 construction jobs and 40 permanent jobs, she said.
Another hotel developer also expects a September groundbreaking at the executive park for an estimated $31 million project. True North Hotel Group, of Overland Park, Kan., last month was granted about $4.6 million in tax breaks by the Yonkers IDA for a 144-room Residence Inn by Marriott, an extended-stay hotel.
Lynch said the two hotels are “a good beginning” for Yonkers in its transformation into a “destination location” for shoppers and tourists.
“People need a place to stay,” she said. The city now has only two hotels, Lynch noted, a Royal Regency Hotel and a Ramada Inn, both on Tuckahoe Road.
“This is important for business travelers, number one,” she said of the hotel projects. “It”™s also important for the residents” of Yonkers, who can make use of hotel facilities and lodge visitors there.