Westchester County Business Journal 120715

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2 | CHANGES FOR DOWNTOWN DECEMBER 7, 2015 | VOL. 51, No. 49

23 | TELEHEALTH

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L.A. DEVELOPER HAS NEW VISION FOR PEARL RIVER PHARMA CAMPUS BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

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Developer Stuart Lichter, inset, plans to turn this Pearl River site into a mixed-use, multi-tenant campus that would include residences and a hotel.

alifornia real estate developer Stuart Lichter returned to metropolitan New York recently with a vision for future business on a reconfigured commercial campus in Rockland County and memories of the start of his company in Westchester County more than 40 years ago. His Los Angeles-based company, Industrial Realty Group LLC, in November closed on its $39.45 million purchase of most of the developed portion of the 550-acre Pearl River campus of Pfizer Inc., the pharmaceuticals developer and manufacturer. The deal came after about two years of negotiations and about five years after Pfizer took over the former Wyeth Pharmaceuticals headquarters on Middletown Road after acquiring its biopharma rival and began downsizing operations on the site. Lichter and IRG want to adapt the pharmaceutical campus as more than an office

and laboratory complex occupied by multiple tenants. On a website launched last month on the day the property sale closed, the company announced the facility “will be reimagined into a shopping, dining, meeting and educational destination.” IRG acquired 38 buildings with more than 2 million square feet of space and about 200 acres of a property whose history of commercial drug manufacturing dates to 1907, said a spokesperson for the privately owned real estate development and investment company. IRG and Pfizer representatives said Pfizer will retain 25 acres and about 500,000 square feet of office and laboratory space at the southern end of the property for research and development. Pfizer will lease back about 1.2 million square feet from IRG for production operations under short-term and long-term leases. Much of that leased space will be vacated by Pfizer in early 2017, including the site’s 950,000-square-foot central building » DEVELOPER, page 6

Utility data released for Sustainable Westchester, first time in the state BY COLLEEN WILSON cwilson@westfairincom

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or the first time in New York history, the state Public Service Commission has granted a request that utility companies release aggregate data from certain municipalities about their customers’ kilowatt usage and the total number of homes and business that are consuming electricity. Behind the request is Sustainable Westchester

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Inc., the nonprofit consortium of about 40 duespaying municipalities in Westchester County that has spearheaded the state’s pilot community choice aggregation program, which requires the data to move forward with its efforts. So far, the consortium has received data from the utilities — Con Edison and New York State Electric and Gas Corp. — for almost all of the program’s 25 participating villages, towns or cities that passed locals laws to opt-in to community choice aggregation.

Sustainable Westchester anticipates that there will be 135,000 customers in those 25 municipalities who will be automatically enrolled in the program, but they will have the choice to opt out. Each community choose a third-party supplier, known as an energy service company or ESCO that will negotiate lower electricity rates on the customers’ behalf. In talks with the utilities, Leo Wiegman, executive director of Sustainable Westchester, and Mike » WESTCHESTER, page 6

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