PepsiCo Inc. said it has yet to decide when it will begin work on an expansion of its Purchase headquarters campus, for which it won zoning approvals last month from the town/village of Harrison.
Harrison”™s Town Board has approved a master plan detailing the expansion, which the beverage and snack giant has projected will add 800 jobs during the next 10 years to the 1,600 now based at its campus on Anderson Hill Road. The expansion also includes construction of offices, a glass atrium connecting all seven existing buildings on the campus, and a new welcome center for visitors to the headquarters and the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens.
The timing of work for the first phase remains to be determined, PepsiCo spokesman Dave DeCecco said.
The expansion proposal or Project Renew Master Plan would increase the amount of developed space on the roughly 152-acre campus by more than 50 percent, from the current approximately 454,000 square feet to some 685,000 square feet.
“The Purchase building is more than 40 years old. As our business grows and changes, we need flexibility for our facilities to grow and change to meet the needs of our business and our people,” DeCecco said.
The master plan spells out three phases of development:
Phase I ”“ Build a three-story, 45,000-square-foot glass atrium and a 15,000-square-foot welcome center along Anderson Hill Road with gate access, to accommodate the sculpture gardens”™ nearly 150,000 annual visitors.
Phase II ”“ Construct two office additions totaling 80,000 square feet to the campus”™ easternmost building or Building 2, and the westernmost building or Building 6.
Phase III ”“ Build two additional buildings totaling about 90,000 square feet on the eastern portion of the campus between the proposed Building 2 extension and Blind Brook. The planning board granted only conceptual approval for this third and final phase, with site plans to be reviewed some time in the future by Harrison officials.
“The (Phase III) buildings, which would be consistent in height with existing buildings on campus, could be used for a cafeteria, health and physical fitness center for employees and other staff support services,” PepsiCo said in its final environmental impact statement, submitted by the White Plains planning firm Saccardi & Schiff Inc. “PepsiCo Project Renew has been designed to maintain the existing corporate setting while adequately accommodating PepsiCo”™s future operations.”
The FEIS was issued in June, months after a draft EIS projected at $200 million the construction cost of the projects. Speaking last week, DeCecco said the costs of phases I and II, and the number of jobs generated by each phase, remain to be determined.
The town board last month approved the expansion master plan by a 4-0 vote, with Councilman Fred Sciliano recusing himself because he is vice president with C.W. Brown Inc. The construction company lists PepsiCo among its “past and ongoing” clients on its website.
Frank S. McCullough Jr. of the White Plains law firm McCullough Goldberger & Staudt L.L.P. represented PepsiCo before the town board.
PepsiCo submitted the first version of its plan to Harrison officials in June 2009. Initially, PepsiCo sought to build 135,000 square feet in the two buildings comprising Phase II, as well as welcome center and visitor center space totaling 75,000 square feet.
But after a year of review by the town board and Harrison”™s Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals, the proposal was scaled back. The amount of new space in Phase II, for instance, shrunk to 90,000 square feet by the time the FEIS was released in June, then again to 80,000 square feet before the zoning change was approved.
The company eliminated original plans for pedestrian walkways connecting the Building 6 extension to parking areas to avoid encroaching on wetlands, and said it will reconfigure the walkway planned for the Building 2 extension so that it connects directly to the welcome center.
To allow for its phased expansion, PepsiCo needed approvals from the town/village for several zoning changes. One change rezones 18.3 acres of residential properties along Anderson Hill Road to special business on lots of at least 100 acres. Another change allows the Planning Board to hold onto, or “landbank,” undeveloped property for possible future use as parking.
During 2007-2008, PepsiCo said in its FEIS, the company paid a total of almost $2.3 million in taxes to the town/village, the Harrison Central School District and Westchester County: “Anticipated future tax revenue will be determined in conjunction with the Town of Harrison Tax Assessor as detailed building plans are developed.”
