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Ground broken on Yonkers hotel
JENNIFER BISSELL
INSIDE
March 3, 2014 | VOL. 50, No. 9
BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com
HANDS-ON TRAINING • 2
DIGITALLY SPEAKING • 17
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John, kept their store open. Like many business owners, the Johnstons say it’s important to stay open. It’s a commitment to their customers. While it normally snows less than 30 inches a year, it’s already snowed nearly 60 inches. And for each day schools closed and workers stayed home, businesses lost out. For many, sales are down and workers have fallen behind on their work. Before any snowstorm, customers at Crisfield’s stock up on pot roasts and ground
ackhoes stripped the surface of a fenced-off parking area in the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers as city officials joined mall owners and private partners at a groundbreaking ceremony last week for Hyatt Place Yonkers, a 155-room hotel expected to open in 2015 in an eight-story tower formerly used as a hospital and office building. Construction on the approximately $25 million, 75,000-square-foot project has begun as Cross County’s owner, Brooks Shopping Centers L.L.C., prepares to celebrate this year the 60th anniversary of the fully renovated Yonkers landmark, one of the first outdoor shopping centers to open in the U.S. “This has been a long time coming,” said James Stifel, executive vice president of Brooks Shopping Centers, owner of the Cross County property since 1977. The hotel’s co-developers called the project “complicated,” as workers will retrofit the existing tower – the former Cross County Hospital – while ground-floor retail tenants stay open for business during the 18-month construction period. An approximately 11,000-square-foot gatehouse will be built at the front of the tower to accommodate the hotel’s public spaces and ground-floor shops. And that work will go on “in the middle of a 1 million square-foot shopping center,” said James Friend, president and CEO of Friend Development Group L.L.C. in Manhattan. The hotel’s original developer, Friend has been joined in the development by Yonkers
Winter, page 6
Hotel, page 6
Dan Johnston of Cristfield’s Prime Meat in Rye.
Winter of discontent
FACES & PLACES • 31
Storms slowed sales, productivity BY JENNiFER BiSSELL jbissell@westfairinc.com
SnoW or no SnoW, Crisfield’s Prime Meat in Rye will be open. “Bad weather is never good for business,” said Dan Johnston, a Crisfield’s manager. “But we have to stay open. We sell perishables; we don’t have a choice.” An unusually high number of snowstorms blanketed Westchester and Fairfield counties this winter. Yet for each storm, Dan and his father,
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