The owner of The Landmark at Eastview is seeking approvals from Mount Pleasant officials to build an additional 609,000 square feet of biotechnology space ”“ just a year after completing a smaller expansion on the Greenburgh side of the 140-acre laboratory/office campus.
BioMed Realty Trust Inc. is seeking site plan approvals for the expansion from the Mount Pleasant Planning Board, as well as zoning amendments. Representatives of BioMed appeared Sept. 20 before the planning board, a month after the plan was referred to it by the town board, following a presentation by the developer.
“We are just embarking on the review process,” Richard O”™Rourke of the White Plains law firm Keane & Beane P.C., which is representing BioMed, said on Sept. 22.
O”™Rourke said the zoning changes will “permit us to build what we believe today are state-of-the-art, proper 21st century life sciences laboratories and offices” by supplanting laws created nearly a half-century ago for the campus”™ original owner/occupant, industrial giant Union Carbide.
The changes, he said, would promote greater energy efficiency by allowing air systems, heat exchangers and other infrastructure to be built between each floor rather than massed on the buildings”™ roofs.
The expansion proposal comes about a year after BioMed completed a $145 million campus-within-a-campus on the Greenburgh side of Landmark at Eastview consisting of three buildings totaling 360,000 square feet. That space is entirely leased to a longtime tenant at the campus, Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.
O”™Rourke said he could not comment on whether Regeneron or any other potential tenants had committed to occupying all or part of the Mount Pleasant expansion space.
With last year”™s expansion, Landmark at Eastview grew to eight buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet ”“ much of it dating back to Union Carbide ”“ then repositioned into a multiple-tenant lab/office campus by subsequent owners starting in the 1980s. Current owner BioMed completed its purchase of the site in 2007.
