When the White Plains Common Council at its meeting the night of Dec. 1 approved creating a new Transit Development 2 (TD-2) zone to cover creation of a new mixed-use project on the site of the now closed Galleria Mall as well as the sale of the municipal garage at the location to the developer planning to construct the project. The TD-2 Zoning District would require any developer of the Galleria property to control at least 400,000 square feet of land. In order to  assemble the required square footage the developer would need to acquire the city’s Lexington-Grove East and West Garages, which many people know only as the Galleria Garage.
What would happen to the municipal garages in a redevelopment of the Galleria site has been under discussion for some time, and the city did receive state approval to sell the garage if it decided it was desirable to do so. The Common Council approved a sale of the garage property to Galleria City Holding Company LLC, the petitioner in the rezoning of the former Galleria Mall site and authorized the mayor to handle final details of a contract. The garage price would be $50 million, but it would not have to be paid all at once.
The sale arrangement would include a down payment of $5 million with $22,500,000 due at closing, minus the down payment. The closing involving transfer of title to the developer would take place about a month after there no longer can be litigation regarding site plan approval for development of the Galleria site. At that time, a three-year mortgage in the amount of $27,500,000 would be put in place.
The developer would be required to lease the Lexington-Grove West Garage to the city for a period of two years to operate as a public parking garage. That section of the Galleria Garage was closed by the city on Oct. 30 due to a need for structural repairs. The Lexington-Grove East Garage remains open.
The developer Galleria City Holding Company LLC is based in White Plains. Project sponsors are the LLC along with Louis Cappelli’s Cappelli Organization, Pacific Retail Capital Partners based in Los Angeles, SL Green Realty Corp. based in New York City, and Aareal Bank Group, which is based in Germany.
In June, modifications in the planned project were presented to the Common Council. These included a reduction in the number of apartments that would be built, dropping to 3,001 units from the 3,200 originally proposed. There would be a reduction in the amount of retail/commercial space from 228,940 square feet originally proposed to 96,780 square feet.
Two buildings with additional affordable apartments would be placed above new parking structures and also would be in the proximity of parks that would be used by residents as well as the public. Retail spaces would be on Main Street and wrap around to Court Street and Martine Avenue. There would be 3,140 parking spaces provided at the site.
The unit total and bedroom mix is anticipated to generate approximately 282 public school age children, which is a reduction from the 325 students originally projected. The gross square footage of residential space is being cut by 81,909 square feet to 3,306,229 square feet. Combined with the reduction of 132,160 square feet in retail space there would be a reduction in the total gross square footage to be built of 214,069 square feet.
Seven buildings are planned for the approximately $2.5 billion project. The maximum height of the buildings in the project would remain at 450 feet, or 41 stories. The open space to be provided would increase by 0.03-acre and total 5.91 acres.
