Piece of Yonkers’ history up for sale
By JOHN GOLDEN

Realtors at CB Richard Ellis Inc. this month launched a marketing campaign to sell a prominent piece of Yonkers’ manufacturing history, and the largest available industrial property in Westchester County, where a precision metal-stamping company’s 64-year-old operations will close by the end of this year.

Prospective buyers of the Stewart EFI plant at 630 Central Ave. could include investors and developers who view the two-story, 201,000-square-foot, industrially zoned property as a potential addition to the mix of redevelopment projects in the state’s fourth largest city.

CB Richard Ellis Inc. is the exclusive sales agent representing the owner, Stewart EFI. No asking price has been set for the property, which sits on about 3.5 acres between Yonkers Raceway and the Cross County Shopping Center. The marketing team from the CB Richard Ellis office in Stamford, Conn., includes Vice President Budd Wiesenberg, Executive Vice President William V. Cuddy Jr. and Senior Vice President Al Mirin.

Founded in 1936 in the Bronx, Stewart Stamping moved to its Yonkers location in 1944, said Philip J. Rejeski, Stewart EFI vice president of operations. The plant, which currently has 145 employees and peaked at about 450 workers in the 1980s, produces metal stampings for cars, electrical fixtures and electronic equipment. The company, which employs about 300 workers in the U.S., has offered to relocate several Yonkers employees to its Thomaston, Conn., headquarters or El Paso, Texas, plant, Rejeski said.

Rejeski said the decision to close the plant was driven by customer demand. “The biggest factor is that about 70 percent of what we make in Yonkers gets shipped into Mexico,” he said. “Our customers want us to be closer to them, which is basically our El Paso plant.” Faced with customers’ threats to give their business to competitors, “We didn’t have a choice,” he said.

Stewart EFI last year nearly doubled square footage at its El Paso manufacturing plant. It also has a joint-venture manufacturing operation in Hangzhou, China.

Stewart EFI was formed in 1999 from the merger of Eyelets for Industry Inc., or EFI, with Stewart Stamping Corp. Rejeski and five other employees in 2003 purchased the company from its bankrupt parent company, Insilco.

The brick and concrete plant, built in stages between 1930 and 1983, has about 15,000 square feet of finished office space and 186,000 square feet of manufacturing space on two floors.

“A building like this may never come on the market again and we believe it will appeal to a variety of users located in the tri-state region, including manufacturers, distributors, retailers, wholesalers and transportation companies,” CB Richard Ellis’s Wiesenberg said. “Investors and developers as well should have their eyes on this unique parcel as it also lends itself to redevelopment as the area continues its transformation with the success of Empire City at Yonkers Raceway, the major renovations under way at Cross County Shopping Center and Forest City’s Ridge Hill mixed-use development under construction nearby.

“We are trying to facilitate the highest and best use” of the property, “and that might be another use” other than industrial, Wiesenberg said. He said brokers already have received “a lot of inquiries” from interested parties.