2 | HUDSON VALLEY HOUSING JANUARY 11, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 2
YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR REGIONAL BUSINESS NEWS
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‘SOMETHING VERY HISTORIC’
POT PHARMACY DEBUTS IN WHITE PLAINS BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com
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Dr. Laura Bultman displays a vaporizer used to inhale cannabis oil and other medical marijuana products at the new Vireo Health of New York medical marijuana dispensary in White Plains.
ri Hoffnung, CEO of Vireo Health of New York, stood before a row of cameras and notebook-wielding reporters in the waiting room of the drug dispensary that his company was to open in less than 48 hours in downtown White Plains at the start of the state’s medical marijuana program. Behind him, workers put the final touches to the corner office at 221-223 E. Post Road, where an ID checkpoint for visitors in a locked entry alcove and 24-hour video surveillance pointed to the precautions and state-imposed regulatory controls that accompanied the program’s launch on Jan. 7.
A former managing director at Bear Stearns until the investment bank’s financial collapse in 2008 who later served as a New York City deputy comptroller, Hoffnung last November joined Vireo Health of New York, one of five winners among 43 applicants for the state’s first medical marijuana manufacturing and dispensing licenses. His own New York City company, Fiorello Pharmaceuticals Inc., which he founded two years ago and led as CEO until his move to Vireo, was among the losers in Albany last summer with its failed bid to build a medical cannabis facility in Schenectady County. “Something extraordinary and something very historic » MARIJUANA, page 6
Software company leaving NJ for Start-Up NY SYNCSORT PARTNERS WITH IONA COLLEGE BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com
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ew Jersey’s loss is a gain for metropolitan New York and its technology sector, as Iona College has found in the Garden State its first business partner in the Empire State’s
2-year-old Start-Up NY economic development program. That partner, though, will not be moving to the college’s urban campus in New Rochelle but instead to a Rockland County office park where Iona’s Hagan School of Business has a graduate center for students pursuing
MBA degrees. Iona officials and Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month announced that Syncsort Inc., a big-data software provider for industries with an international list of clients, will relocate its headquarters from Woodcliff Lake in New Jersey’s Bergen County to Blue Hill Plaza, a two-building, 1.1 million-square-foot office park in Pearl River. Syncsort has leased 50,000 square feet of space in 2 Blue Hill Plaza, the six-story, 550,000-square-foot office building where Iona operates its Rockland Graduate Center. Syncsort CEO Lonne Jaffe
said the company expects to make the 6-mile move across the state border in late spring after a build-out of the Pearl River headquarters. The company told state officials it will invest $2,895,000 in its New York location. Jaffe said Syncsort has about 145 employees at its Woodcliff Lake headquarters, and he expects all to stay with the company when it relocates within a roughly 15-minute commute from its current location. Operating in a designated Start-UP NY area, the company will pay no state taxes for 10 years. Employees residing in New York will pay no state per-
sonal income taxes for the first five years at Syncsort’s new location. For the second five years, employees will be exempt from state taxes on income up to $200,000 for individuals, $250,000 for a head of household and $300,000 for taxpayers filing a joint return. Jaffe said the state income tax exemption could be an incentive for some Syncsort employees to move from New Jersey to New York. “That’s another ancillary potential benefit for New York,” said Jaffe, a New York City resident and former IBM Corp. executive. Syncsort gives Iona College and particularly its business » SOFTWARE, page 6