Westchester County Business Journal 020816

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3 | BACK TO COURT FEBRUARY 8, 2016 | VOL. 52, No. 6

YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR REGIONAL BUSINESS NEWS

21 | SMART GROWTH westfaironline.com

WHITE PLAINS COUNCIL APPROVES $275M SOUTH BROADWAY REDEVELOPMENT BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

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A rendering of the twin-towered commercial and residential development proposed for 60 S. Broadway in White Plains.

oving at a comparatively swift pace of review for large-scale redevelopment projects in Westchester, the White Plains Common Council has approved a national developer’s plan for a $275 million redevelopment of the largely vacant Westchester Pavilion property on South Broadway. The council’s unanimous support for the mixed-use project came less than three years after the owner of the downtown property first publicly aired an ambitious proposal to transform what the city’s mayor called “an underutilized and underperforming site.” “This is a tremendous proj-

ect,” Mayor Thomas M. Roach said at the Feb. 1 meeting of the White Plains Common Council, which unanimously approved a site plan and special permits to allow outdoor dining at 60 S. Broadway, where a nearly 858,000-squarefoot, twin-towered commercial and residential development will be built over the next three years and employ an estimated 2,895 construction workers. The developer, Broadway and Maple Holdings LLC, is an affiliate of Lennar Corp., a publicly traded real estate development and management company headquartered in Miami. The White Plains project is led by the diversified company’s Lennar Multifamily Communities LLC in Virginia. In a deal between the city and » WHITE PLAINS, page 6

Bill seeks PLAs for all county construction projects over $250K BY EVAN FALLOR evan@westfairinc.com

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n economic development package introduced by the Westchester County Board of Legislators includes

a bill that requires the county to enter into Project Labor Agreements (PLAs) on every construction project over $250,000 rather than $1 million under current law. Co-sponsored by Democratic

lawmakers Kenneth W. Jenkins and Catherine Parker, the bill would ensure better fiscal accountability, in part because of what Jenkins called a “loophole” created to avoid negotiating PLAs. The bill would include carpenters, painters, electricians, operating engineers and all other building and trades unions. “PLAs are good for county taxpayers and businesses by providing good, safe job opportunities and ensuring projects get completed on budget and on time due to the supply of

qualified labor and relative ease of project management,” Jenkins said. Ross J. Pepe, president of the Construction Industry Council of Westchester and Hudson Valley Inc. that represents 600 regional construction businesses, said that his group fully supported the bill. “PLAs are a way to ensure labor harmony in the workplace and other public benefits,” Pepe said. “With a threshold set at $250,000, it’s likely that these savings and many public benefits would be more limited

than on larger projects where the potential for cost-efficiencies are often greater.” Benefits of PLAs include standardized workdays, expedited grievance processes, and another “15 or 20 reasons you would want to do them,” Construction Industry Council spokesman George Drapeau said. PLAs allow project owners to circumvent the Wicks Law, which requires that state and local construction projects costing more than $1.5 million in Westchester to have separate plumbing, heating/ » DEVELOPMENT, page 6


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