WHITE PLAINS—The storied Westchester County Association, which has been one of the county’s leading business advocacy organizations for nearly 70 years, says it intends to merge operations with regional economic development agency the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp. The deal between the two organizations is intended to create a regional economic development and business advocacy…
Read MoreYONKERS—The era of the Rooney family at Yonkers Raceway came to an end on Jan. 29 with the closing of the $850-million sale of Empire City Casino and Yonkers Raceway to MGM Resorts International. The Rooney family acquired the storied Yonkers Raceway property in 1972 and opened the highly successful Empire City Casino in October…
Read MoreNEW YORK—It looks as if the much sought after first phase of the Penn Station Access project may finally be arriving at the station. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Jan. 22 that Metro North and Amtrak signed a memorandum of understanding concerning scheduling on an underutilized rail line in the east Bronx to allow the…
Read MoreGOSHEN—The developer who earlier this month signed a contract with Westchester County to build a more than $1-billion bioscience park in Valhalla, has proposed a$60-million plan to rid the Village of Goshen of a mostly vacant and blighted property. Fareri Associates of Greenwich, CT presented the Goshen Planning Board on Jan.22 a plan to redevelop…
Read MoreHARRISON—Toll Brothers’ groundbreaking adaptive reuse of two office buildings here has a new partner and more than $100 million in construction financing. The developer reports it has formed a joint venture with New York City-based J.P. Morgan Asset Management to develop the $157 million, 421-unit Carraway luxury apartment property off Westchester Avenue in Harrison. The…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—The Hudson Valley residential sales market remained strong in 2018, despite lower sales due mainly to a lack of available inventory. In a report released earlier this month by the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service, Inc., the overall five-county market serviced by HGMLS (Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Sullivan counties) saw a 2.6% decline…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—Westchester County political and business leaders are scrambling to gauge the potential economic impact of a moratorium on new natural gas connections for a majority of the county by utility Con Edison. Some fear the moratorium, to begin March 15, could all but halt several billion dollars’ worth of new development projects in the…
Read MoreNEW YORK—A New York State Appellate Court has overturned an earlier lower court ruling and has upheld controversial state regulations that restrict what state regulators have termed excessive marketing costs and other unscrupulous activity in the title industry. The Appellate Division, First Department, on Jan. 15 reversed a ruling last July by New York Supreme…
Read MorePEARL RIVER—A Piscataway, NJ-based pharmaceutical firm has signed a major lease for approximately 83,000 square feet at the former Pfizer complex in Pearl River that is now known as the New York Center for Innovation. Los Angeles-based Industrial Realty Group, which purchased 207 acres of the campus in late 2015 from Pfizer, announced the lease…
Read MoreYONKERS—The Yonkers Industrial Development Agency reports it has approved more than $13.6 million in incentives for three major development projects in the city. The IDA’s Board of Directors approved at its meeting last Friday resolutions of intent to provide financial incentives for two mixed-use developments and one strictly residential project totaling more than $391 million…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—At a meeting of the Building Owners and Managers Association of Westchester last week, a panel of development executives said conditions are still ripe for both commercial and multifamily development in the suburbs of New York City, despite the tumult taking place in Washington, DC and Wall Street. The BOMA panel at the Jan.…
Read MoreTARRYTOWN—The long sought-after development of a major bioscience project at the Grasslands campus in Valhalla cleared a major milestone on Jan. 10 when a lease deal was signed between the developer and Westchester County. At a meeting of the Westchester County Association, Westchester County Executive George Latimer announced the county had signed a 99-year lease…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—While remaining robust, residential sales in some areas of the lower Hudson Valley were slightly lower in 2018 than the historic highs of the past two years. In 2018, Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties all experienced declines in the number of residential sales as compared to 2017, according to the “2018 Annual and Fourth…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—While I do not profess to possess the prognostication skills of the “Amazing Kreskin” or “Carnac the Magnificent,” I thought I would share my thoughts with the Real Estate In-Depth readership on the top stories/issues I believe could have an impact on the commercial, residential real estate and capital finance markets in the Hudson…
Read MoreCENTRAL VALLEY—The highly successful Woodbury Common Premium Outlets here reports it has added five new retailers while it has submitted plans to the Town of Woodbury on another major expansion project at the property that intersects Route 17 and the New York State Thruway in Orange County. Golden Goose Deluxe Brand, a high fashion sneaker…
Read MoreWHITE PLAINS—The Westchester County Industrial Development Agency released its full-year 2018 activity report on Jan. 2 which showed that its $48.8 million in incentives are projected to create $881.4 million in future private investment capital in the county’s economy. The report noted that the approved projects will create 2,680 construction jobs, 222 permanent jobs and…
Read MoreWASHINGTON—In what the National Association of Realtors described as a “critical win for home sales,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported on Dec. 28 that it will issue and renew flood insurance policies during the partial shutdown of the federal government, reversing an unexpected and controversial ruling the agency released several days earlier. "FEMA and…
Read MoreYONKERS—MGM Resorts International reports its previously announced $850-million purchase of the Empire City Casino property here is scheduled to close in a January. MGM recently announced the planned closing of its purchase in connection with its appointment of Uri Clinton as president and chief operating officer of Empire City Casino. Clinton will head operations at…
Read MoreNEW CITY—Real Estate In-Depth recently sat down with Rockland County Executive Ed Day to discuss some of the pressing issues facing the county as it enters 2019. Day, who was re-elected to a second term of office in November 2017, spoke frankly on ongoing fiscal reform. the failed Sain Building sale and the proposed $200…
Read MoreNEW YORK CITY—Add Google to the list of mega US tech companies that are planning major expansion initiatives in New York City. Ruth Porat, senior vice president and CFO of Google and its parent company Alphabet Inc., announced in a blog released this morning that Google plans to invest more than $1 billion in capital…
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