Waterfront deal in Yonkers
By
John Golden
Westchester County Business Journal
August 27, 2010
A Yonkers manufacturer and his development partners have acquired a
prime redevelopment parcel on the city’s waterfront at a bargain price
in a deal that had been cloaked in secrecy.
Linda Shaw, an environmental attorney in Rochester representing the
buyer, said a private group of developers bought the company, One Point
Street Inc., that owns the 15-acre property, a former industrial site at
the northern end of Alexander Street.
Vacated by BICC Cable Corp. in 1996 and later used by the film industry
for sound-stage production and location shooting, the property is one of
the largest brownfield sites in the state, Shaw said. Its cleanup
already has cost $40 million and will total about $60 million when
completed by the end of this year.
A reliable source said the buyers paid $5 million to $6 million in the
deal. The property was sold to a developer for about $22 million in
2004.
The new ownership group includes Ron Shemesh, owner of Excelsior
Packaging Group Inc. on the downtown Yonkers waterfront. The property
adjoins the Excelsior transparent-packaging plant at 159 Alexander St.
The sellers were led by Satellite Asset Management L.P., a Manhattan
hedge-fund firm that was lender to the failed developer of the site,
Homes for America Holdings Inc.
Commercial real estate broker Paul Adler facilitated the deal in his
other role as managing partner of Blackacre Partners OPS L.L.C., a
liability transfer company that operates the massive brownfield cleanup
on the site, now in its sixth year.
A national development company formerly based in Yonkers, Homes for
America Holdings about two years ago unveiled plans for Point Street
Landing, a proposed $900 million development of more than 1,100
high-rise and townhouse residences, public parks and about 100,000
square feet of office and retail space on the former factory site. The
project at 1 Point St. was to be a major element in the city’s plans to
redevelop its Alexander Street waterfront corridor as a high-density,
mass-transit-oriented neighborhood.
But Homes for America last year vacated its downtown Yonkers
headquarters and disappeared from the real estate scene after defaulting
on a $100 million loan from Satellite Asset Management for the Point
Street Landing project. Homes for America also defaulted on its mortgage
loan with Amalgamated Bank for its Station Plaza office building at 86
Main St. and failed to repay the city of Yonkers a reported $2.9 million
of a federally guaranteed construction loan.
If city officials carry out their master plan for Alexander Street’s
redevelopment, which has been stalled by the credit crisis and
recession, the modern, state-of-the-art Excelsior plant would be among
several businesses forced to relocate from the waterfront. The recent
deal by Shemesh led one source to suggest the plant owner would expand
Excelsior operations to a portion of the cleaned-up brownfield site and
use the property as leverage in future negotiations with the city.
Shaw, though, said the new owners’ plans for the site “should be
relatively consistent with the city’s master plan. I don’t believe the
long-term plan is to expand that plant. I think the long-term goal of
the group is to redevelop the waterfront” for residential or mixed use.
“These are private individuals with sufficient means to move the project
along,” Shaw said. “They’re certainly situated to actually get something
accomplished. There should be some movement on this in the near future.
I know they’re actively starting and working on the real reuse of the
site.”
Before Shaw spoke, Shemesh was said to have imposed a “gag order” to
prevent parties from disclosing the deal. Even Yonkers City Hall
officials have been left in the dark about the purchase, according to a
source.
Shemesh and David Simpson, spokesman for Yonkers Mayor Philip Amicone,
did not return calls for comment.
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