Westchester County Business Journal - August 25

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August 25, 2014 | VOL. 50, No. 34 JOHN GOLDEN

YOUR ONLY SOURCE FOR REGIONAL BUSINESS NEWS | westfaironline.com

INSIDE

TEAM FORMING TO MANAGE PLAYLAND Consultant, ice rink operator meet with lawmakers BY MARK LUNGARIELLO mlungariello@westfairinc.com

HOUSING PROJECTS • 5

D VISION WORKERS • 14

Building owners behind a carpet mills arts district in Yonkers are, from left, Harlan Rose, Philip Futterman, Randall Rose, Peter Sanford, Sandra Bendfeldt, Kurt Simonides and George Huang.

ARTS DISTRICT AVANT-GARDE PAGE 12 Owners seek rezoned space at historic Yonkers mills

OFFERING HOPE • 13

BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com A GROUP OF YONKERS LANDLORDS in the city’s historic Nepperhan Valley industrial area have banded together to build upon a tenant base of artists and artisans and brand their collective properties as an arts district that would draw retail businesses and restaurateurs and more arts-focused tenants to their factory and warehouse buildings. Yonkers planning and development officials, with whom the owners group has been working this year, said they are considering a “tweak” to the city’s industrial zone regulations to allow ground-floor retail and restaurant uses at the former Alexander Smith Carpet Mills complex.

Bounded by Nepperhan Avenue, Saw Mill River Road, Ashburton Avenue and Lake Avenue, the sprawling, densely built industrial site has been a national historic district since 1983. Tony Lembeck, a commercial broker and vice chairman at Friedland Realty Advisors in Yonkers, who is advising the owners group, said there are about 20 building owners and nearly 2 million square feet of space in the mill complex. YoHo, a work community of about 80 artists leasing studio space at 540-578 Nepperhan Ave. in the former mill, would be expanded to become YoHo at the Historic Carpet Mills Arts District. The new marketing name was selected by several owners at a meeting in late July. Yonkers’, page 6

an Biederman worked as a consultant to Sustainable Playland Inc., the nonprofit group chosen to run countyowned Playland park. SPI walked away from its agreement with the county in June, after its improvement plan for the park withered under legislative scrutiny and community opposition, but Biederman is still part of the Playland planning process. He is working on an analysis of the park’s operations and is set to issue recommendations in a report on the future of the county-owned park by Nov. 30. Biederman said this time his role will be different because he is working directly for Westchester and his views won’t be filtered by a board of directors. Delays and a lengthy review process were to be expected, he said. “Nobody should be, from my perspective, annoyed, ashamed about how long things take,” said Biederman, of Manhattan-based Biederman Redevelopment Ventures Corp., which counts Bryant Park among its park redevelopment projects. For Bryant, there was six years of debate before implementation of a redevelopment strategy and private-management plan. “I see a lot of commonality with what we’ve done and what we’d be doing here.” The county Board of Legislators’ labor, parks, planning and housing committee met Aug. 18 with Biederman, with some lawmakers asking questions about the somewhat vaguely defined scope of the consultant’s work and expressing concern about whether his recommendations would differ greatly from the SPI plan. SPI planned to transform what is now a summer-seasonal amusement park into a yearround destination that would have included an 82,500-square-foot athletic field house that became a rallying point for opposition groups, which said it would create an eyesore, increase Playland, page 6


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