Medical college acquires prime office space

New York Medical College has acquired a vacant 248,000-square-foot office building at 19 Skyline Drive in Hawthorne from Mack-Cali Realty Corp.

The approximately $17.5 million purchase gives the college upgraded space and allows more flexible planning for its growing enterprise, New York Medical College officials said in an annoucement.

Officials at Mack-Cali”™s New Jersey headquarters said the sale adds capital for the company”™s move into the multifamily residential market.

Dr. Alan Kadish, president of New York Medical College and the Touro College and University System, said the addition of “prime real estate” to the college “will open up a wealth of opportunities for new programs we are developing, as well as easing the crowded conditions currently experienced in some of the older buildings on campus.”

The five-story, class A building sits on a 12-acre property that adjoins the Valhalla campus. It includes a 115-seat auditorium and conference room, a fitness center, a cafeteria with a café annex and 80-seat outdoor dining plaza and a 720-space parking lot. College officials said the property soon will be connected by a paved roadway and sidewalk to Sunshine Cottage Road on the campus. .

The medical college expects to renovate the vacant building this summer and to begin moving faculty and staff there in September.

Mitchell E. Hersh, president and CEO of Mack-Cali, in a press release said the Skyline Drive sale “continues our strategy of recycling our capital out of non-core office assets to fuel our diversification into multifamily.”

The real estate investment trust”™s portfolio of 279 properties in the Northeast largely consists of office and office/flex properties that total approximately 31.3 million square feet of space. It owns nine multifamily rental properties with about 3,300 apartments.