3 | AT ODDS IN GREENBURGH JANUARY 4, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 1
12 | FILLING THE GAP westfaironline.com
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Office park owner pays $16.3M for Good Counsel campus BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com
A A START AND A FINISH >>page 8
Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest Davis extols the benefits of 42 Broad Street West, an $85 million development shown in architect’s rendering at right, in his final days in office. Photo by John Golden
n owner of The Centre at Purchase office park has paid approximately $16.3 million to acquire the Good Counsel campus on North Broadway in White Plains, ending the 125-year presence of a teaching order of Roman Catholic nuns whose plans to close all-girl schools on the historic site sparked protests by parents and alumni in 2015. An entity of George Comfort & Sons Inc. closed in late November on the $16,265,000 purchase of the 16-acre property at 52 N. Broadway from Sisters of the Divine Compassion, whose founder, Mother Mary Veronica, established the private academic complex in 1890. The buyer’s identity and the purchase price, filed in
Westchester County land records in mid-December, were not disclosed in an initial announcement of the sale from the Sisters of the Divine Compassion’s spokesperson in late November. Based in Manhattan, where most of its real estate investments and managed properties are, George Comfort & Sons also owns and operates the 676,000-squarefoot Centre at Purchase in a joint venture with O’Connor Capital Partners and 900 King St., a 215,000-square-foot office property in Rye Brook. Across the Connecticut border in Stamford, the commercial real estate firm owns the 573,000-square-foot High Point Park and Shippan Landing, a 780,000-square-foot office complex formerly called Harbor Plaza. Adjoining Pace Law School, » CAMPUS, page 6
Cuomo vetoes hotel tax BY EVAN FALLOR evan@westfairinc.com
MUCH TO THE DELIGHT OF hotel owners and to the dismay of town officials, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has vetoed a series of bills that would have created a 3 percent hotel occupancy tax in 13 Westchester municipalities. The tax would have been in addition to a 3 per-
cent tax already imposed by the county. The six bills that were approved earlier this year by state lawmakers included the villages of Harrison, Tuckahoe, Mamaroneck and Port Chester as well as the towns of Greenburgh and North Castle. The Greenburgh bill included hotels
in the incorporated villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Elmsford, Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington and Tarrytown. Also included in the veto was a bill that would have imposed a 5 percent bed tax in Woodbury. State lawmakers originally approved the bills before the close of the 2015 legislative session this
past summer. In his veto message, Cuomo cited Rye Brook as the lone, rare instance where a village was approved for a hotel occupancy tax. Former Gov. David Paterson authorized that bill in August 2010, which Rye Brook Mayor Paul S. Rosenberg estimated brought in $552,000 for the vil-
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lage the past fiscal year. “The Legislature has historically advanced occupancy tax bills only for counties and cities, except in one unique circumstance in the past,” Cuomo said. “If there is to be a policy change on this issue, it should be done pursuant to a comprehensive and
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