A proposal to amend an approved site plan for a new warehouse is under review by the town of North Castle. The proposed structure would be built at 100 Business Park Drive in Armonk. It”™s an 11.27-acre parcel where there already is a two-story 62,782-square-foot office and light industrial building occupied by a number of tenants.
On May 24 of this year, the North Castle Planning Board had granted site plan, tree removal and wetland permit approvals for the construction of a single-story 74,850-square-foot warehouse at the site. The applicant now wants to amend the site plan to maintain the same size building footprint while adding a self-storage component.
The Planning Board declared itself to be lead agency for the review of the amended plan.
The applicant is WMG Acquisitions LLC, based in Coconut Grove, Florida. The property currently is owned by A&R Real Estate Holdings LLC.
According to Attorney Kory Salomone of the White Plains-based law firm Zarin & Steinmetz, the footprint of the proposed building will be 74,850 square feet, which is identical to the footprint of the previously approved warehouse building. The self-storage portion of the proposed building would be three stories and have a footprint of 30,900 square feet. The self-storage portion would have a total of 92,700 square feet inside. The warehouse portion of the building is proposed to be one story with a footprint of 43,950 square feet. It would include a 10,000-square-foot mezzanine for a total 53,950 interior square feet.
The Zoning Board of Appeals approved a variance for the previously approved site plan to allowt the building to be constructed 57 feet from the front property line instead of the required 100 feet. A 36,750-square-foot wetland mitigation area was proposed by the property owner and an easement agreement with the town of North Castle was entered into in order to provide North Castle with a 200-foot control radius for the existing water supply well, which is located across the street from the proposed southern driveway access.
Salomone said that it is anticipated that the hours of operation for the self-storage facility will be from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and that there would be one or two full-time employees. Salomone said the applicant estimates that on average there will be two to four users of the facility every four hours.
Salomone said that anticipated hours of operation of the warehouse would be the same as the self-storage facility, 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and there would be from 25 to 30 warehouse employees.
Salomone said that the required number of parking spaces for the new building is 277 and the applicant is proposing 220 spaces, requiring a variance of 57 spaces.
“We believe that the self-storage use will satisfy an unmet demand in the community,” Salomone said.
Anthony Scavo of WMG Acquisitions said even people who live in large houses such as are found in Armonk have a need for self-storage. He said his wife grew up in Armonk and they will be soon moving to the area. He said that there is not an abundance of self-storage facilities in the area.
“It”™s a useful thing to have. It”™s a very low-impact kind of resource for the neighborhood and most people barely visit the places they store in and they usually come once or twice a year,” Scavo said. “It”™s an interesting site. We”™re going to try to make it look as good as possible for a self-storage building. We”™re probably going to use Extra Space to manage it.”
Extra Space Storage is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It reports owning or operating more than 2,000 self-storage properties in 41 states and the District of Columbia, offering approximately 1,4 million individual storage units.
“They actually have very high hopes for the area and they”™re very bullish about the building of it,” Scavo said. “They think they”™re going to rent it up pretty fast and they”™re very happy about getting into this area.”
