Westchester County Business Journal 031615

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2 | ART OF INFLATION March 16, 2015 | VOL. 51, No. 11

13 | TREE TO BOTTLE westfaironline.com

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Simone Development plans $35M redevelopment in Yonkers BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

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prominent red-brick architectural relic from Yonkers’ industrial past that has fallen into partial ruin and became a many-walled gallery for graffiti artists while standing vacant for nearly two decades will be restored and expanded in a $35 million, 85,000-square-foot mixeduse redevelopment project by Simone Development Cos. The Yonkers City Council at its March 10 meeting unanimously approved the $4.25 million sale of the Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research property at 1086 N. Broadway to a realty acquisition arm of the Bronx-based developer, formerly headquartered in New Rochelle. The developer’s planned 20-month construction » SIMONE, page 6

An architectural rendering of the planned redevelopment of the Boyce Thompson property on North Broadway in Yonkers.

NY wins a round in payday loan fight BY LEIF SKODNICK lskodnick@westfairinc.com

A $2.1 MILLION PENALTY AND an agreement to cease using a famous face as an endorser are the latest blows struck against the payday lending industry in New York state. Selling Source LLC, a Nevadabased company that does business as MoneyMutual, along with celebrity endorser Montel Williams, agreed to a consent order including the $2.1 million penalty to settle charges from the New York State Department

of Financial Services. The charges alleged that Selling Source sold payday lenders sales leads for more than 800,000 New Yorkers. The lenders then made loans to those New York residents with interest rates far above those allowed by state law, according to the state agency. The sanctions against Selling Source are the result of the first successful enforcement action against a lead-generation firm. Lead-generation firms do not typically make payday loans directly, but instead set up websites marketing those illegal loans,

according to the Department of Financial Services. Through promises of easy access to quick cash, the lead-generation companies entice consumers to provide them with sensitive personal information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, and then sell that information to payday lenders operating unlawfully in New York and other states. Williams, a talk show host and celebrity endorser for Selling Source, agreed to no longer extend his endorsement of Selling Source to New York

customers. In addition, Williams and Selling Source will no longer advertise specifically to New York residents. “Using Mr. Williams’ reputation as a trusted celebrity endorser, MoneyMutual marketed loans to struggling consumers with sky-high interest rates — sometimes in excess of 1,300 percent — that trapped New Yorkers in destructive cycles of debt,” Benjamin F. Lawsky, superintendent of the Department of Financial Services, said in a press release announcing the » PAYDAY, page 6


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