Developer to seek anchor tenants in Yonkers.
by John Golden
Oct-16-2009
With a long-negotiated land agreement approved by Yonkers city
officials last week, the city’s private development partners can begin
recruiting national commercial tenants to their estimated $1.5 billion
mixed-use redevelopment project.
The Yonkers City Council by a 5-2 vote approved an agreement with
Struever Fidelco Cappelli L.L.C. (SFC) on the sale or lease of
city-owned property needed for the proposed project, which includes:
River Park Center, a retail, restaurant, entertainment and high-rise
residential complex at Chicken Island near Getty Square; the Cacace
Justice Center, a proposed hotel, commercial office and fire department
headquarters complex across from City Hall on Nepperhan Avenue; and
Palisades Point, a high-rise residential development on the Hudson
waterfront south of the City Pier.
If fully built out, the SFC project would create 1,436 housing units and
put a 6,500-seat sports stadium and 150-room hotel in a commercially
revitalized downtown. At full build-out, SFC’s net purchase price for
city-owned downtown and waterfront parcels will be approximately $7.1
million.
With the council’s approval of the 100-page agreement in hand, “We need
to begin securing some of the national tenants that we’ve been unable to
recruit” while the land deal was being negotiated, said Joseph Apicella,
senior vice president at Cappelli Enterprises Inc. in Valhalla and SFC’s
executive project director in Yonkers. He said the developer will
attempt to recruit such national anchor retailers as Target, Kohl’s,
Wal-Mart, Bed Bath & Beyond and Regal Entertainment Group, the
multi-screen cinema operator. “It really makes an immense difference to
our marketing at this point,” he said of the completed deal.
In a nod to market conditions in the recession, the city council gave
the developer four years, rather than two years as first proposed, to
begin construction at River Park Center, considered the long-awaited
centerpiece to downtown redevelopment. City officials also cleared the
way for SFC to proceed separately with its 436-unit Palisades Point
development on the waterfront. As an incentive to move ahead on River
Park Center, the city will require SFC to pay an additional $2.18
million payment on top of approximately $15 million in land purchase and
other waterfront development costs if the Chicken Island project does
not begin within the agreed-upon time frame.
Apicella said the condo units planned on the waterfront will not be
built immediately. “The market is still very, very weak and still on
life support,” he said, “so you don’t put that type of product out to
market today.” He said the agreement gives SFC up to 10 years to develop
Palisades Point.
If the economy and housing and credit markets recover, construction at
River Park Center could begin “a year from now,” with the developer
bringing product into the market by 2012 or 2013. “That’s what we’re
looking at,” Apicella said.
City officials said businesses currently in the redevelopment target
area employ about 175 full-time and part-time workers. SFC’s downtown
project will generate an estimated 5,300 new permanent jobs at
businesses and about 13,000 construction jobs, they said.
The agreement also requires SFC to hire a consultant for minority and
women business recruitment to assist in hiring local, minority, and
women-owned businesses and employees for both the construction and
permanent jobs associated with the project.
Apicella said SFC has spent $30 million over more than three-and-a-half
years on the Yonkers project.
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