Spotlight on Westchester

SPOTLIGHT ON

WESTCHESTER

25 North Lexington, White Plains – Cappelli’s LRC Construction is serving as C.M. for this Greystar project that recently broke ground.

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elcome to your new home in Westchester County—a place that truly fits every need and desire. Westchester is strategically located just outside of New York City, but life here isn’t just about our big neighbor to the south. Our County is a wonderful place to visit and an even better place to live, with more than one million people who collectively call Westchester home. We are both a picturesque, green County, boasting beautiful views, parks and landscapes, and a vibrant County with bustling downtowns and business districts.

We are home to a distinct and diverse corporate roster, which has allowed us to preserve our strong economy. From IBM, the first great multinational corporation, to financial services companies like Mastercard, to consumer products from PepsiCo, to the biotech and health care boom fostered by companies like Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Acorda Therapeutics. Westchester has it all.

We have faced the most challenging of times throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and still managed to come out on top, relying on our fiercely talented workforce to bring us back to solid ground. The pandemic has motivated us to look for new ways to improve life for our residents and our business community. We strive to be flexible, to grow and change with the times, and help our startups and small and mid-sized companies succeed.

Our office of Economic Development has introduced a host of new programs to help our businesses thrive, and we are constantly working to coordinate better between our chambers of commerce in all the municipalities throughout Westchester, so they can learn from each other and ultimately share one larger spotlight.

Our economy has no doubt been shaken, but we are resilient and we are finally turning the corner on the pandemic. As we continue to navigate through, I hope you’ll come explore and experience all that Westchester has to offer. We’re glad you’re here.

George Latimer Westchester County Executive

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

Westchester is thinking small (businesses) and building back big as it reopens

New Rochelle Skyline at Sunset - Photo by Jorge Ventura

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estchester is “bouncing back” from the pandemic, County Executive George Latimer says.

“We’re excited that businesses are reopening and the business community is meeting in person again,” say Bridget Gibbons, director of economic development and executive director of the county’s Industrial Development Agency. “There’s nothing like the collaboration that comes from in-person being together, and everybody feels energized about that.”

While hospitality and tourism, among other areas, were badly hurt by the pandemic, Westchester County benefited from the exodus of young families from New York City two years ago.

“We have a well-educated and highly motivated population,” Latimer says.

New York City has “an energy and excitement you can’t replicate anyplace else,” and if that’s important to an individual’s lifestyle or business, then “Westchester is arguably the best commute,” the county executive says.

“The people who came here looked at Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut, but saw the lifestyle advantages here,” Latimer says.

Now the challenge for the county is focusing on economic development—attracting new companies and connecting them with an ideal workforce. Just before the pandemic, biotech had been a major focus for the county, which had set aside 60 acres in Valhalla for a biotech center.

Progress is still on the horizon, Latimer says, but the county is adapting to the new reality.

“Decisions that companies made got put on hold until the economy stabilizes, but we’re putting things back on track,” the county executive says. New York Medical College, Regeneron and Westchester Medical Center Tertiary Care deepened their commitment in the past two years, which was crucial, he says.

“Now in the short term we may have to be dealing with small entrepreneurial entities in the biotech field,” Latimer says of the planned growth. “We’re still feeling our way through things, but we have to be practical—things are going to take longer than we thought and be harder than we thought. But we are still moving in the direction we identified.”

Latimer says “small is the new big” is an approach Westchester is taking across all fields, pointing to the Launch 1000 program.

Launch 1000, as befits a pandemic project, is a fully remote program that matches entrepreneurs with coaches and mentors, Gibbons says.

Last year 218 people coming out of the program launched businesses. An additional 500 people signed up for a new round,

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including 80 who signed on for a new dual language cohort with bilingual coaches to encourage participation from Spanishlanguage speakers.

“This program has been really impactful,” the economic development director says.

The county also offers small grants from $20,000 to $40,000 and helps people seeking federal grant money and other federal support, but it also strives to connect people in the county, Latimer says. The money is not meant to be a game-changer, he explains.

“It’s not, ‘We’re going to give you the working capital you need to launch,’ but [rather] ‘We are going to give you things you need to make a go of it,’” he says. “Help someone create a business, then maybe hire a person and then five more.”

While businesses are being slowed by supply-chain disruptions in the county and the nation, Gibbons says, the bigger issue has nothing to do with materials.

“Every business is having trouble hiring people, from hospitality to professional services to advanced manufacturing,” she says. “If you’re a restaurant and you don’t have enough people serving and busing and dishwashing, it affects your ability to execute, and we’re seeing that in every corner of the business community. There are 9,000 open positions in health care and hospitals here.”

While Gibbons can grant extension to projects, she’s helpless when it comes to a global issue such as the supply chain. But the county is mobilizing on the hiring front to help both employers and employees. It’s brought in the Westchester County Association to build a workforce development training program to nurture a health care talent pipeline. It’s training 100 workers to become nursing assistants, medical assistants and medical administrative assistants.

“We’re really optimistic about this as a starting point,” the economic development director says.

The county has partnered with Westchester Community College on an entry-level certificate program for advanced manufacturing.

Upon completion, participants will be certified production technicians.

“Those skills are also transferable to any number of businesses, so they are credentials that will get people launched into a wellpaying career,” Gibbons says.

With people coming together again, Gibbons says, the county has found success by going old school: setting up job fairs for health care, the hospitality sector, transportation, and advanced manufacturing.

“Bring your résumé and get interviewed on the spot,” she says, explaining that each fair has brought in from 20 to 30 employers

and hundreds of job seekers. One company at a construction career fair, she notes, hired 25 people in one day.

“People are ready to re-engage,” she says. “We just have to find the right opportunities for them.”

Since Latimer has taken office, the county has made helping minority- and women- owned business enterprises a priority, Gibbons says, adding Westchester recently held a job fair and panel to boost MWBEs in construction and development.

Next up, Gibbons says, will be a focus on technology, with a technology accelerator program for startups.

“We will help them fine-tune their business, so at the end of the training period they are investable,” she says. “At the end we’ll have a pitch day with a community of investors.”

Gibbons is researching how Westchester can find its place in New York state’s $500 million investment in clean energy, specifically off-shore wind turbines.

That’s a reminder that when it comes to investing in Westchester, as Latimer says, the county “is a player, [but] not the dominant one—we need the state and federal government.”

Now more than ever, the county executive see positive signs in that area.

“The good news is that the state just authorized money for a major sewer fix for Mount Vernon, and that’s essential for the people living there but also for future economic growth,” he says.

“And the infrastructure commitment from the federal government is something we’ve never seen before in my lifetime. That’s a great asset for us, to be able to fix things and grow in way that could be pivotal to attracting businesses in the future.”

All of this is about laying groundwork for projects that may not be finished until Latimer is out of office, but he says he doesn’t mind.

“It will take awhile for all these things to come to fruition, but we are setting out on the right path,” the county executive says.

In towns that don’t need a boost, county government should regulate but stay out of the way, while in struggling towns, it should continue to try to help, he says.

Meanwhile, positive developments abound in the county, from the new Lionsgate Studios Yonkers to the likelihood that MGM will be granted a full casino license by the state for the Empire City Casino to the building boom near transit hubs.

“There are cranes all over White Plains, New Rochelle and Yonkers and even some of the smaller communities, and it’s all happening near train stations,” Latimer says. “There is a lot of good news like this out there, and it’s important to recognize that.”

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

One man’s vision and gumption transform Westchester’s skyline rough decades.

“The city was having issues,” the builder says.

The City Center, with two apartment and condo towers, combined with 600,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and entertainment space, triggered a spark there, the way New Roc City had down the road.

With a renaissance underway, Cappelli followed up with his top-of-the-line project, the RitzCarlton condominium and hotel next door.

“It was a $750 million project and the largest one we ever took on ourselves with no partners,” Cappelli says.

(The hotel was closed by the pandemic, and these days it’s being rebranded as part of Marriott’s luxury Autograph Collection, but the other half is still operating as the Ritz-Carlton. It’s where the Cappelli Organization has its offices.)

After all that work, Cappelli, whose company has also been extremely active on the big stage in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, was ready to see both cities reach for the sky.

“We were trying to create a city in the downtowns,” he recalls, “and New Rochelle especially had a 1 Clinton Park, New Rochelle – Cappelli’s LRC Construction team recently completed the first grand vision.” phase of this two-tower project for RXR Realty.

But then the Great Recession arrived and everything changed. In recent years, however, the longor four decades, Louis Cappelli has probably done more than awaited transformation has finally taken off, in large part, Cappelli any single individual to develop New Rochelle and White says, to New Rochelle’s approach.

Plains.

“The city is a sophisticated partner when it comes to building,” He could just rest on his laurels, but from a resting position, he says. the 71-year-old builder might not be able to see the manifestation He notes that the city’s master plan created pre-established rules of his long-standing dream: “an actual skyline” rising up in and regulations for thousands of units that allowed the city to Westchester County. shrink its approval process dramatically, reducing it from a year to Cappelli, born in the Bronx and raised there and in Yonkers, 90 days, which is, of course, every developer’s and builder’s dream. followed in his father’s footsteps, then carved out his niche. Luca Combined with the city’s opportunity zones, he says, New Cappelli started in appliance repair, then created his own electrical contracting business. Louis, who graduated from Notre Dame with Rochelle has changed the game.

“There’s no stop sign,” Cappelli says, explaining that unlike an engineering degree, worked for his father, then decided that the decades ago, the idea of adding all these new buildings—requiring real fun—and potential for wealth and power—was in real estate. infrastructure and resources—no longer scares the city’s leaders, Starting off with assets from his father’s company, Cappelli who instead embrace it with open arms. decided to develop a property in Valhalla. The establishment “It’s a great place to work, a great place to build,” he says in scoffed, saying no one wanted 102 acres there and the $500,000 praise of New Rochelle. investment was just the beginning of a major folly.

All of that activity has attracted numerous deep-pocketed But Cappelli was undeterred, a trait that has served him well in and equally ambitious companies from The Related Cos. to RXR the 40 years since then. He started building a 1.3 million-squareRealty to L&M Development Partners. It has also provided more foot office complex that would eventually cost a reported $130 partners for the Cappelli Organization. For example, the company million, become a financial success and earn a major architectural developed two buildings on Huguenot Street, owned by Related, award. and two others on South Division Street, called Clinton Place, for Beyond being the founder of the Cappelli Organization, RXR. Cappelli is the chairman and CEO of two subsidiaries: LRC “There’s tremendous momentum now for the city,” Cappelli says Construction and the Fuller Development Company. Looking back on his career, he sees three other “transformative” projects for both of New Rochelle. “It has complete credibility as a place to live and a place to work, just 25 minutes to Manhattan.” the Cappelli Organization and Westchester County.

Those new buildings—and others, such as the Standard, which The first came in the mid-1990s when he took over New Roc Cappelli developed without partners—have provided coherence.

City, the first big step in revitalizing New Rochelle’s downtown.

“New Rochelle now looks like a city, not just a place with The site was a shuttered mall that had left a gaping void in the city. sporadic buildings going up,” he says. “There’s an actual skyline Cappelli’s $190 million development of the 1.2 million-square-foot coming over the course of the next two years. I’ve never seen space brought style and panache to New Rochelle and showed the anything like this before in a Westchester city.” city’s potential.

Cappelli says White Plains could soon follow suit, explaining “It was one of the bigger risks we ever took on a project,” he that as New Rochelle successfully fills out, developers will see says, “but it was very successful.”

Early in the new century, Cappelli set his sights on White Plains, White Plains and Yonkers as the natural next hot spots.

(Of course everything Cappelli says about these cities is offered which was also in need of a downtown refurbishment after a few

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with a strong caveat, given inflation and supply-chain shortages that have created extraordinary price uncertainties. With the Fed having raised interest rates to try to tame inflation, he says, he remains concerned about the possibility of a recession. “I’m scared of that,” he says, “and if it happens, then everything I’ve said is just bunk.”)

White Plains has not completed a master plan like New Rochelle’s, so the approval process—taking from 12 to 18 months—is a bit arduous for his liking. But despite that situation, the developer says, things are about to explode there.

“White Plains is going to come into a building boom that could be like no other, given the amount of money” there, he says.

White Plains, like New Rochelle and other cities in the county, is striving to avoid sprawl by focusing on transit-oriented development. Metro-North Railroad just completed a $95 million renovation of the station there, further amplifying the downtown feel.

“People want to live near train stations, and they will even more [so] when Manhattan comes roaring back,” Cappelli says.

One such example of the appeal of transit-oriented development in White Plains was the groundbreaking in March of 25 North Lex, a two-tower development that will feature 500 luxury rental residences, nearly 60,000 square feet of amenities and 19,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space.

It marked the first residential development project in New York by Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC, a sign of Westchester’s growing appeal. The two towers, 16 and 25 stories tall, will be built

by Cappelli’s construction affiliate, LRC Construction, and are expected to be completed in 2024.

In addition, Cappelli is working on two other projects in White Plains, one bringing new life to another old mall.

“We’re spending a billion dollars on three jobs there,” Cappelli says. “The face-lift of the skyline is going to be absolutely incredible.”

More than 15 years ago, the county executive at the time, Andrew Spano, said he saw a dividing line in Westchester’s development, one that measured the impact of one man on the county. He thought of it as a “Westchester B.C.—before Cappelli— and [a] Westchester now.”

With Cappelli’s fingerprints all over the most important projects in two of Westchester’s biggest cities, the observation appears even more perceptive today.

333 Huguenot Street, New Rochelle – Cappelli Development is nearing completion of the first phase of a two-tower development.

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

From film studios to new schools, Yonkers is building its future

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onkers has been undergoing a growth spurt.

“We are on a roll,” Mayor Mike Spano says, explaining that the boom has brought new residents, new schools, new housing, new businesses and new jobs. During the mayor’s administration, Yonkers has witnessed more than $4 billion in private investment in new projects leading to more than 9,000 multifamily units planned, completed, under construction or approved for development. “There’s a positive vibe here and it’s contagious.”

The first big splash came in 2019 when MGM spent more than $800 million to buy Empire City Casino. Spano says many people, including those in state politics, said sarcastically, “Yeah, right,” at the idea of the deal even happening.

“But that [purchase] was a recognition of Yonkers as a place to do business,” Spano says.

Now, the odds are looking good that Empire City Casino, already the city’s largest taxpayer and employer, will ascend to another level. New York State has decided to grant three full casino licenses to downstate businesses. MGM, which has already been flourishing as just a racino and racetrack to date, seems to be a favorite for one of those licenses. The site has one of the largest gaming floors already and 97 acres of land, leaving MGM and Empire City Casino plenty of room to expand by adding more gambling opportunities but also hotel space and entertainment venues.

“It will transform Empire City Casino and Yonkers into a true destination,” Spano says.

Upping the ante has been the construction of the new Lionsgate Studios Yonkers, built near a former Otis Elevator site downtown.

The site is near the train station for easy commutes to New York city. The campus, built by Great Point Studios and aided by tax incentives from the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency, has already generated thousands of jobs through its first phase.

The space, which launched this year with the filming of the series Run This World, features three soundstages, two of 20,000 square feet and one of 10,000 square feet; suites for actors; writers rooms; and a carpentry shop.

Mayor Mike Spano at Lionsgate studio.

Plans call for an expansion that will allow for a back lot enabling filmmakers to shoot outdoor scenes, screening rooms, postproduction areas and a grand total of eleven soundstages. Great Point is also moving toward purchase of another plot of land in Yonkers allowing them to build even more, moving closer to Spano’s dream of creating “Hollywood on the Hudson.”

210,000 residents, passed Rochester in the last census to become the state’s third-largest city.

Spano notes that with all the newcomers, the city still has the lowest unemployment rate of large cities in the region and crime rate has dropped by 45% since 2011, making it the safest city in its size category. Still, given national trends, he recently added 10 police officers to the police force, the first time the city has done that since 2001. For good measure, the city can boast of a 90% high school graduation rate, the highest of the state’s largest cities, Spano says.

The city is confident that more people will want to live in this burgeoning hot spot. Yonkers is in the midst of a building boom that includes adding 4,000 units at market rate, Spano says. One highlight will be Hudson Piers, which just had a groundbreaking in May and is being handled by Extell Development Company; the $585 million project will become one of the region’s largest mixed-use communities featuring 1,400 apartments (luxury and affordable), retail and a riverfront esplanade and a small public park. It will be developed over six years in three phases. (Other amenities will include everything from putting greens to bocce courts and a swimming pool as well as gyms, playrooms and basketball courts.)

In a nod to the emphasis on transit-oriented development, which Spano says “is a very important part of what we’ve been able to do in Yonkers,” there will be shuttle services to and from the Yonkers Metro-North train station.

The waterfront development is on old brownfield sites so this is not gentrification pushing out old-timers, the mayor says. He promises the city will not forget its humble roots.

Yonkers now has an ordinance that requires 10% of new units to be affordable housing. “But we don’t stop there,” Spano says, explaining that he has worked with the city’s IDA to offer tax incentives to boost the numbers, so that 22% of all new housing has been affordable. The city has tallied 1,500 affordable units since 2013.

Once the center of a national controversy for its racist policies in public housing, Yonkers is trying to make things right in those aging buildings that often date back more than half a century.

“They’d never been updated, but we put in new kitchens with microwaves and dishwashers, new windows and rooftop amenities to provide river views,” Spano says. “We don’t want people who make their lives here in Yonkers to feel they don’t have a place here too.”

Challenges remain, but Spano says the city is keeping those in their sights: The school system was “in dire need of repairs and upgrades,” Spano says, as well as more space. Spano says the city is currently 4,500 students over its ideal capacity before the new schools began being built. Traffic is a concern as growth continues and Spano says they will continue addressing infrastructure needs, particularly to improve travel along east-west corridors, which in Westchester is often more problematic than north-south travel.

“Every day we put one foot in front of the other,” the mayor says, “to make our lives just a little better.”

“Lionsgate is big news for Yonkers ... We are seeing a cluster of things starting to happen there.”

-George Latimer

“Lionsgate is big news for Yonkers,” County Executive George Latimer says. “We are seeing a cluster of things starting to happen there.”

Another part of that cluster, Spano says, comes from Great Point Studios—it’s partnering with the city to build a school on the site that will focus on film.

In addition, the city is building a $56 million elementary school named for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Those schools are needed because the city, with more than

Mayor Spano (left) and Robert Halmi, CEO of Great Point Studios (right).

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

With the pandemic receding, Westchester welcomes back the world

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ith the pandemic finally fading into a new normal, people are eager to get out and enjoy life to the fullest. Westchester County, with 24,000 acres of parkland, is confident that its diverse array of attractions has something for everyone.

“For mindful trips, spending time in the great outdoors and then going for a wonderful meal, come to Westchester,” says Natasha Caputo, the county’s director of film and tourism. “There’s easy access—you can get to us by car or train. And then we have waterfronts and rolling vistas—you can bike and hike and sail and kayak. And also great culinary treats.”

Need evidence? Look no further than to chefs Dale Talde of Goosefeather in Tarrytown and Eric Gao of O Mandarin in Hartsdale. Both were nominated as best chefs in New York state in this year’s competition for the James Beard Award.

Restaurants from Archie Grand in White Plains to Basso56 in Chappaqua continue to open in the county.

The pandemic did, of course, do lasting damage, closing some major hotels, but Caputo notes that new hotels and upscale inns are replacing them.

The former Ritz-Carlton in White Plains is now the Opus Westchester, which has a 42nd-floor restaurant, the highest vantage point between New York City and Boston. The former Crowne Plaza in White Plains has been reflagged as Sonesta White Plains; the Westchester Marriott in Greenburgh was recently sold, and its new owners plan a multimillion-dollar renovation. Peekskill’s the Abbey Inn ranked No. 3 on the USA Today list of the 10 best new hotels in the country.

People are now looking to get away on weekends and are booking weddings, Caputo says, and both the getaway urge and the

desire to marry are a boon for Westchester’s hotel business.

Hotels are important to the county’s business community, she explains, as companies seek to bring people together once again for meetings and conferences. With their ease of access and nearby attractions, she says, Westchester’s hotels have become increasingly desirable.

One of the county’s most popular attractions, the Rockefeller estate known as Kykuit, was closed in the pandemic. But it’s back on track. It reopened in May for tours that show off the estate’s art collection, architecture and gardens.

The summer especially provides numerous events that draw visitors. These events include the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at the Lyndhurst Mansion in Tarrytown (which now allows spectators again), the Westchester Pride 2022 event, the summer concert season at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, Westchester Magazine‘s annual Wine & Food Festival and the Pleasantville Music Festival.

“There’s always more to be done, of course,” Caputo says, adding that the county doesn’t act alone in drawing people to the region. “We’re part of the Hudson Valley region and we want the whole valley to be successful. Promoting the whole region as interconnected is a way to bring more national and international visitors.”

Westchester draws 45% of all visitor spending in the region.

One more factor boosts the county’s tourism: its film industry.

“We’re the biggest county in the state for production outside of New York City, and we opened during Covid as soon as possible with the proper guidelines and protocol,” Caputo says. “Now there’s a new boom in ‘screen tourism,’ where people come to see the sites where shows and movies were filmed.”

Lyndhurst’s popularity jumped after HBO’s The Gilded Age filmed there. Other sites, such as the Belvedere Estate in Tarrytown and the Glenview Historic Home in Yonkers, have also earned screen time.

It’s not just the luxury lifestyle that draws filmmakers and then visitors. Caputo points out that the Croton Gorge Dam and Harvest Moon Farm and Orchard were both recently featured on one of TV’s longest-running programs: Sesame Street.

So any day now a parade of toddlers may lead their parents to Westchester for a weekend getaway.

The Capitol Theatre.

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

In Westchester, the Golf Courses are well above par... in a good way.

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quick scan of most lists that rank the nation’s best golf courses reveals an unparalleled cluster in the New York City neighboring communities of Westchester and Long Island.

“The history of golf runs very deep in Westchester County,” says Natasha Caputo, the county’s director of film and tourism. The St. Andrew’s Golf Club in Hastings-On-Hudson was the site of the first round of golf played in America, she points out.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer notes that the most famous courses draw people to the county to play or watch tournaments. The courses, he says, are part of Westchester’s appeal to business executives who play and schmooze simultaneously. The clubs are frequently used for films and TV shows, further raising their profile and enhancing their appeal to tourists, Caputo adds.

But Latimer emphasizes the county also offers six public golf courses. “And they are nice,” he says emphatically. “They’re not open cow pastures where you whack a ball around on a flat piece of land—I have seen places like that.”

Those six public courses in Westchester, Latimer refers to are: Dunwoodie in Yonkers, Hudson Hills in Ossining, Maple Moor in White Plains, Mohansic in Yorktown Heights, Saxon Woods in Scarsdale and Sprain Lake in Yonkers. Visit www. visitwestchesterny.com/things-to-do/sports/golf/.

Here’s a brief tour of the county’s four most famous clubs.

Winged Foot Golf Club, Mamaroneck The club’s two renowned courses were designed by architect A.W. Tillinghast, with a recent restoration by architect Gil Hanse.

Winged Foot club has hosted numerous major tournaments, most notably a PGA Championship and six U.S. Opens—only two other clubs in the nation have been home to more U.S. Opens.

Members have also reportedly voted against holding more U.S. Opens there in recent years, preferring to keep tee times for themselves. The most recent Open there, won by Bryson DeChambau in 2020, came nearly a century after Bobby Jones’ 1929 triumph.

Jack Nicklaus was once asked to rate the West Course’s difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10, and he gave it a 12.

It’s such a challenge that Hale Irwin’s 1974 U.S. Open win there, at 7 over par, was dubbed “Massacre at Winged Foot.”

The club is extremely desirable. Despite a reported $150,000 initiation fee and annual dues topping $15,000, the waiting list for membership—which is by invitation only—is supposedly more than a decade long.

The most famous (fictional) caddy, Danny Noonan, was played in Caddyshack by actor and Larchmont native Michael O’Keefe, who actually caddied for two years at Winged Foot.

Quaker Ridge Golf Club, Scarsdale This course, also designed by Tillinghast, was also restored by Hanse, who removed numerous trees and altered everything from bunkers to greens, some of which had shrunk but he expanded to their original dimensions.

It may not be as famous as it’s Mamaroneck neighbor, but when told that Winged Foot was considered by some to be the world’s best course, Nicklaus replied, “That may be, but there is quite a golf course down the street.”

He was talking about Quaker Ridge.

Sleepy Hollow Country Club, Sleepy Hollow The club, which features majestic views of the Hudson River from

Hudson Hills Golf Course 1. the course, was founded by a group that included an Astor and a Vanderbilt. More recent members have ranged from Rockefellers to Bill Murray.

The original course had 11 holes designed by C.B. Macdonald.

Tillinghast added seven holes, but in the past decade, it was redesigned to follow Macdonald’s original style for the entire course.

It’s a star of the screen, having shown up in The Good Wife, Madam Secretary, 30 Rock, The Blacklist and Ray Donovan.

Westchester Country Club, Harrison In 1963, when the Thunderbird Classic came to Westchester, it featured some of the sport’s biggest stars, with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus winning it in two of the first three years. In 1967 the tournament, a key U.S. Open tuneup, was renamed the Westchester Classic. Although that tournament ended 15 years ago, the club has since hosted the Senior Players Championship and the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship.

The club’s member roster through the decades has featured boxer Gene Tunney, Shirley Temple, Howard Hughes and television stars Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan, Carol Burnett and Johnny Carson.

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MGM Resorts betting big on new downstate gambling license

N

ow seems like a good time to bet big on Empire City Casino.

MGM Resort’s Yonkers property is perhaps the leading candidate for one of the three forthcoming downstate licenses the state will award for full-fledged casinos.

With good reason.

While it functions only as a racetrack racino built around slot machines, it draws 9 million people annually, President and Chief Financial Officer Ed Domingo says.

It gets more visitors than the Statue of Liberty, Domingo notes.

For his enterprise, it’s been frustrating to watch New Yorkers travel to Connecticut’s tribal casinos and Atlantic City’s gaming houses.

“Our games are too limited, so we’re not on equal footing,” Domingo says. “We are thrilled New York state is doing [the licensing]. We think we compete well against anyone in this space.”

The CFO has high hopes. “If we get approved,” he adds, “we’ll repatriate a significant amount of revenue and tax dollars back to New York, then pull in business from places like Bergen County [New Jersey] and Greenwich [Connecticut] as this becomes a regional entertainment facility. We want to reverse the flow.”

Westchester County Executive George Latimer joins Domingo in his excitement over this potential opportunity.

“They are sitting on an incredible market filled with people who want to gamble,” the county executive says.

MGM Resorts has already transformed the casino since defying skeptics and investing more than $800 million to buy it in 2019.

The construction of an employee dining room was among the initial changes.

“We ask our employees to work all hours,” Domingo says, “so the least we can do is provide them a free hot meal every shift, which wasn’t the model when we got here.”

Next, MGM Resorts approved new labor contracts, significantly raising wages for nearly every employee and, Domingo says, in some cases, doubling them.

“For our guests to be taken care of, our team members must feel like they’ve been taken care of,” he says.

After that, MGM Resorts turned to more traditional improvements. It installed a VIP slot area and lounge, and it invested in the racetrack, with LED lighting, new surfacing and a track regrading that hadn’t been done in nearly 20 years.

indirect and induced jobs, along with a billion dollars in potential economic activity, statistics that he says are borne out by what happened in Detroit and Springfield, Massachusetts, where casinos helped lift entire regions.

Spano says that when the “world-class entertainment,” for which he says MGM Resorts is known, and a hotel and casino come on board, he’s optimistic about the boost in jobs and revenue it will offer Yonkers. But the mayor is also excited about the “spillover” effect, meaning that he expects restaurants, bars and other businesses to open in the vicinity of Empire City to capitalize on its presence.

“We expect ancillary development to follow,” says Latimer, the county executive.

Domingo agrees. “Our goal is to be part of a bigger story like that. We try to design our facilities to ensure they lift communities and are not just insulated boxes,” he says.

“The impact,” the CFO promises, “will be felt in Yonkers and Westchester as a whole.”

“We are thrilled New York state is doing [the licensing]. We think we compete well against anyone in this space.”

-Ed Domingo Empire City is already Yonkers’ largest taxpayer and largest employer, Mayor Mike Spano says.

“We have gone all in on the market, the property and Yonkers,” Domingo explains.

The president and CFO is eager to take Empire City to the next level. It has one of the nation’s biggest gaming floors; it sits on 97 acres—much of it devoted to parking; and it’s near New York City.

“There’s a huge canvas for us to develop on,” he says. “We do a lot of things well—gaming, but also entertainment, which this property has lacked, and hotels.”

Domingo says the transformation could yield 10,000 direct,

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New Rochelle’s revamped process fuels a building boom

C

huck Strome knows a thing or two about New Rochelle because the city manager has seen more than a thing or two in his three decades in the local government.

“I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now,” says Strome, who’s retiring at year’s end. “I was coming over the Throggs Neck Bridge on Saturday and I couldn’t believe the skyline—I was here when there was no skyline.”

Nothing was developed in New Rochelle in the first 20 years of his career, the city manager says.

But today’s a different story.

“Despite Covid, despite the other stuff going on with the economy,” Strome says, “we have 11 buildings under construction, 10 completed and leasing, and another 10 that are approved.”

The goal, Development Commissioner Adam Salgado says, is to create a “15-minute city” downtown, “where everything one needs to live, work, recreate and shop is within 15 minutes of home. That’s the driving force, and we want to overlay that with sustainable development practices, looking at things like heat islands and planting green infrastructure, planning for green infrastructure.”

Strome and Salgado point to their rezoning in 2015, which was amended last year, as the catalyst for change.

They say the new zoning rules provide specificity, and they take elected officials out of the final approval process, vastly speeding up matters.

“We removed significant hurdles,” Strome says.

But New Rochelle did not simply hand over the keys to the city to developers.

“In our amended zoning we’ve added lessons learned from the first wave of development,” Salgado says. “There’s a renewed

commitment to climate justice, social equity and affordable housing that we’ve made by tweaking the zoning code. We’ve increased the level of requirements for developers to have the privilege of building here.”

The development commissioner notes that grants from the state and federal government have allowed the city to develop a linear park connecting the downtown to the Lincoln Avenue corridor, a historically disenfranchised, mostly African American community. “[The grants] allow us to add amenities, open space and pedestrian connections between neighborhoods affected by previous development practices, to incorporate people physically and psychologically into the fold,” Salgado says.

The city also now requires developers to award a percentage of all work to minority and women owned business or local hires.

New Rochelle also created a fund to help boost minority and women owned businesses seeking to respond to that requirement.

The city also has added requirements for developers in terms of attaining financing that requires 15% of the total cost of the job has to be awarded to minority and women owned businesses and or local hires, while adding a fund to stimulate that the capacity of the community of the minority owned businesses to respond to the need that is created by all this development.

Developers have embraced the rules, Salgado says, because they provide certainty and clarity.

“We gave them a road map and very specific guidelines for compliance,” he says, “which made it easy to plan for and easy to implement.”

Strome , the city manager, notes that what might have once been traditional (and underused) retail spaces now may be filled

New Mural by Artist Dragon76 (Theme NewRo Strong); photo by Lisa Davis.

with day care centers or gyms. One developer, he notes, recently included in its plans a black box theater—generally, a performance space of four walls, a floor and a ceiling, all painted black.

Salgado says developers who add to the cultural infrastructure are eligible for a “community benefit bonus”—incentives or bonuses given to a developer in exchange for certain benefits or amenities for the community. In New Rochelle, the city will help on projects such as the black box theater to make them a reality.

While Strome is a believer in market forces, he knows the city needs to meet its new, younger residents where they live.

“We’re starting a virtual program where we want to give people the opportunity to tell us what they’d like to see downtown,” the city manager says. “We don’t want people to live here and go elsewhere for everything else.”

Salgado says he won’t lose sight of the city’s longtime, lessadvantaged residents.

“We want to make sure they experience the benefits of this revitalization,” the development commissioner says. “We’re very careful to make sure that we’re as inclusive as possible when making investments so that all boats rise in the harbor.”

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

One of the county’s best kept secrets is attracting attention

H

ere’s a sure sign a town is flourishing.

In response to the pandemic, retail stores around the nation went under as online shopping became the go-to move for people stuck at home, but Cortlandt actually posted its largest sales-tax collection.

“Our retail stores are rocking and rolling,” says Richard Becker, who became the town’s supervisor this year after having worked on the Town Board for 14 years. The town administration is

Cortlandt station.

remarkably stable, he adds, with its 12 department heads staying in their positions.

George Oros, an economic adviser to the town and a former county legislator, notes that the town’s two major malls, Cortlandt Town Center and Cortlandt Crossing, both have about an 85% occupancy rate. When a shoe store closed recently in one mall, he adds, a restaurant replaced it. The town has a new coffee shop, he says, as well as new art galleries in an old school in the hamlet of Verplanck.

Oros says what when he takes commercial brokers and developers from New York City or south of Interstate 287 on a driving tour of Cortlandt, they marvel at the business opportunities the town has to offer.

“You’ve got to see it to believe it,” Oros says.

More and more people are seeing this secret gem and believing in it.

“The word has gone out about Cortlandt,” Becker says. For homeowners and businesses, he notes, the town is much more affordable than lower Westchester County. “You can get twice the space for half the cost for retail, and we have an educated and diverse workforce.”

The pandemic brought Cortlandt, like much of Westchester, a burst of newcomers, mostly people who left New York City.

“We have a lot of new young families that came to town,” Becker says. “It was a dramatic change. Our average income keeps rising, and what used to be a rural community 30 years ago now has a sophisticated and educated population.”

But while change is in the air, the town offers stability. The town administration is remarkably stable, Becker notes, with its 12 department heads staying in their positions. Despite the pandemic,

the town has maintained continuity. It is operating fully in-person, he notes, but it continues to have hybrid board meetings so people can follow municipal business from their living rooms.

While much of Westchester has been emphasizing building housing near train stations, Becker says Cortlandt is “still a carbased population.” Plans are in the works, however, to develop the area near the Metro-North Railroad station, he notes.

Beyond transit-oriented development, Becker says, Cortlandt is focused on medical-oriented development. The idea is to allow residents to stay in the town as they age by offering both independent and assisted-living facilities, with pharmacies and a medical building, anchored by New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Even the biggest local challenge—the closing of the Indian Point nuclear power plant in the village of Buchanan—has not really affected the town and its residents.

“The town itself is very healthy,” Becker explains, “because we never received that much revenue from Indian Point. The school district was affected, but they’ve raised some property taxes to offset that.” He adds that the state and federal government provided funding to assist during the transition to buffer the loss.

“Those taxes used to be lower than those throughout Westchester,” the supervisor says, “so now they’re just more consistent with the surrounding towns.”

Beyond the town’s affordable prices, Becker says, newcomers are attracted to its green space.

Cortlandt is one of the few river towns—most have train tracks—with unobstructed river access. Plans are underway for a 120-acre park in an old quarry contiguous with Indian Point that will feature beaches, tennis courts, art galleries, and food and drink options.

“We are very careful with our zoning to maintain our open space,” the supervisor says.

The town’s Blue Mountain Preserve is the highest point in Westchester, and it’s close to Bear Mountain, which also brings visitors to the community.

“We’re even working with the state to have some hiking trails originate in the town,” Becker adds optimistically.

Four Strategic Areas for Growth In all, there are four strategic areas of potential economic growth,based on Cortlandt’s award winning Sustainable Master Plan.

The Master plan focuses on trends for the future of employment, such as work from home options and co-work spaces in order to reduce commute times, reduce negative impacts on the environment and attract a new talented workforce.

THE TOWN OF CORTLANDT IS WHERE LIFE WORKS AT HOME, WORK AND PLAY...

AND IT IS PRIME FOR INVESTMENT! Commercial space is often available with twice the space at half the cost, along with access to a highly educated and diverse workforce as well as a location near major transportation. Cortlandt is committed to aiding investors and entrepreneurs through a streamlined approval process.

S12 May 23, 2022

Orange County

Putnam County

Rockland County

TOWN OF CORTLANDT

Westchester County

Long Island Manhattan

WHAT WORKS FOR YOU? For more information on how the Town of Cortlandt can help bring your business and investment here contact: George Oros, Town of Cortlandt, Economic Development Coordinator at goros@townofcortlandt.com

“

If you are looking to locate, expand or relocate your business, Cortlandt is the smart choice.

Cortlandt is where life works… for your employees, your customers and your business.”

- Supervisor Dr. Richard Becker

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SPOTLIGHT on WESTCHESTER

In Westchester, an innovative way to inspire innovation

A

t ShelterZoom, founders Chao Cheng-Shorland and Allen Alishahi have spent the past six years using blockchain technology to birth what Alishahi calls “truly a new species” of documents for negotiations and contracts and digital preservation.

“From Mesopotamia when people would write on clay tablets, through papyrus and paper and PDFs, there were no innovations in the document, which is fundamental for humans,” Alishahi says.

“The surface area changed, but it never developed intelligence.

We created a new type of contract for the entire journey from kitchen table to closing table, an intelligent document that can be interconnected, trackable transferable, and traceable. With our document GPS, you have total control over attachments and documents. You can send something and take it back.”

Impressed by their product, Luiz Aragon asked the New York Citybased residents to come to Westchester County and share it for free.

This was more appealing than it might have sounded: Aragon is the project manager for the Westchester Innovation Network, a Business Council of Westchester program.

“We’re always about taking the next step in terms of growth and economic development for our community,” says Marsha Gordon, the business council’s president, “so we began asking what the county of the future will look like. We want to develop a culture of innovation and brand Westchester as a place where innovation thrives. And we decided to be innovative ourselves and focus on innovation in a new way.”

Heidi Davidson, who chairs the business council’s board, said the council wanted a program to incubate new business ideas and decided to match local companies that were interested in innovation with startups or scaleups with commercially viable products ready to test.

“It’s about finding the right synergy,” she says.

Aragon says that “adding innovation to the county DNA” has meant reaching beyond Westchester’s borders to welcome fresh ideas from all industries, all over the world. WIN began in

December, he says, and it’s already working with 12 innovators and 11 companies.

“They would not have come across each other otherwise and are now exchanging ideas and adapting their businesses based on the feedback,” the project manager says.

Business council members stopped going to events and trade shows when the pandemic struck, Davidson says, but WIN brings new ideas “to their doorstep and maybe they become customers or investors.”

Meanwhile, the program gives the county a chance to demonstrate its appeal—the proximity to New York, the open spaces, the educated workforce—in the hopes that some of the innovators may want to stay after the program ends or set up a U.S. headquarters in Westchester, Davidson says.

and Alishahi are benefiting from working hand in hand with the lawyers, getting feedback on how specifically to improve their product for law firms.

“It’s a win-win situation,” she says. “We want to educate people so the business world is familiar with the concept of what we are doing, and there’s PR value in building a client base, but we’re also getting that feedback. Everyone is benefiting.”

Alishahi says the WIN program could have a tremendous impact on Westchester County in the long term.

“It’s like they’re building a smart city,” he says, “not in the literal sense but in the way they are attracting innovative and smart companies to the area.”

We like having this relationship with a county that is an innovation hub, and the small and midmarket businesses are a good fit for us.”

-Heidi Davidson “It’s not required that they move here,” she says, “but it doesn’t hurt that they’ll see how fantastic Westchester is as a place to grow their business. “ Growing WIN is the goal, Davidson says, but the program accepts only innovators who are good match.

“We want both sides to be learning,” she says.

Cheng-Shorland says that’s what appealed to ShelterZoom.

“We like having this relationship with a county that is an innovation hub, and the small and midmarket businesses are a good fit for us,” she says. “And we like the community spirit and helping people looking for innovation.”

Cheng-Shorland and Alishahi are showing two law firms how their platform can elevate the firms’ practices. Cheng-Shorland says she has found that beyond that “sense of achievement,” she

Iona MV BCW officials: L to R—Andrea Haynes, Mount Vernon Director of Economic Development; Christoph Winkler, Director of the Hynes Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation; Seamus Carey, President of Iona College; Mount Vernon Mayor Shawyn Patterson Howard; BCW President Marsha Gordon; Rob Kissner, Designer-in-Residence at the Hynes Institute for Entrepreneurship & Innovation. The officials gathered at Iona College on May 2, 2022, to hear student presentations related to the Westchester Innovation Network’s community collaboration between Iona College and the City of Mount Vernon.

Nicholas & Lence Communications highly commends the Business Council of Westchester on their pioneering WIN program

We salute all participants, especially: Chao Cheng-Shorland and Allen Alishahi THE

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