An aging office building on the Route 119 commercial corridor in the town of Greenburgh could soon be taken down to make way for a fitness center.
During a recent town board work session, officials of Robert Martin Co. floated ideas for possible changes to the 4.2-acre property at 555 White Plains Road, a largely vacant five-story office building the development company acquired in May.
The Elmsford-based developer wants to raze the existing structure and construct a fitness center or health club on the property, along with a smaller two-story building that would be used for self-storage or warehouse space. Combined, the two buildings would include 115,000 square feet of space and 284 parking spaces.
“We have actual discussions ongoing with tenants that are interested in locating to this site,” said attorney Mark Weingarten, of DelBello Donnellan Weingarten Wise & Wiederkehr, the White Plains firm representing Robert Martin Co. “They think it”™s a good site.”
The property would likely need to be rezoned in order for the company’s plans to move forward.
Robert Martin in May purchased the 135,000-square-foot office building for $5.475 million from RNY Property Trust, an Australian REIT managed by an affiliate of RXR Realty, the building’s former manager. It was the most recent of four Westchester office buildings sold this year as RNY Property Trust disposes of its office-building assets in Westchester and Fairfield counties and suburban New Jersey.
Weingarten said that because of the dwindling market for office space, the building is no longer the best use for the property. “Unfortunately, it is mostly vacant, which is not unusual in the Westchester world these days,” he said
The building”™s only tenant is the Tappan Zee Constructors. The consortium plans to vacate its 35,000-square-foot space in 18 months to two years, following the completion of the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.
“Not only is it going to be vacant, it is obsolete,” Weingarten said of the building, built in 1971. “If you were going to try to keep this even if you had a tenant, there would be significant dollars that would have to be (invested) to renovate or rebuild that office building, so it just doesn’t have a whole lot of value.”
According to Weingarten, the property was previously assessed at $21 million before being reduced to $8 million following its sale.
Town officials seemed receptive to the developer”™s plans for a fitness center, noting that the area along the Route 119 corridor is underserved with health clubs. Officials were also pleased that a storage or warehouse space would not be a significant generator of traffic.
“If you have vacant buildings, that”™s not really good for the town,” Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner said. “If we could figure a way to revive some of the vacant office spaces, revitalize that corridor, that could long-term help make this whole section more viable from an economic standpoint and make it a more interesting and exciting place to go to.”
