White Plains Hospital Leases 50,000 Square Feet At Refurbished Office Building on Post Road
John Jordan | March 3, 2015
WHITE PLAINS—White Plains Hospital, which has been expanding its growing operations on the small footprint of its White Plains campus, has signed a major lease deal just outside the campus at an office building slated for redevelopment.
White Plains Hospital has leased the entire 50,000-square-foot 101 East Post Road office building, which at one time housed the New York State Attorney General’s office as well as federal court operations. The lease deal at the vacant office building was revealed at a meeting of the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency on March 12. The hospital and building owner Post Road Associates, LLC sought approval of the lease deal from the IDA. The agency unanimously approved the lease transaction.
Last June the IDA approved incentives for Post Road Associates’ plan to undertake a $6-million renovation of the office building. Paul Guillaro, president and CEO of Unicorn Contracting and general partner of Post Road Associates, said that construction on the project would begin in April. The IDA last summer granted Post Road Associates $329,250 in tax benefits that included $251,250 in sales tax exemptions and $78,000 in mortgage tax exemptions. The project has been estimated to create about 50 construction jobs.
Jon Schandler, CEO of White Plains Hospital, said that approximately 150 back office administrative workers will transfer from White Plains Hospital down the street to the 101 East Post Road building. The vacated space at the hospital will be repurposed for additional health care services use, he noted.
“We are bringing a lot of our back-office operations, all of our finance operations, medical records, public relations and development (staff),” he said. “We will essentially eliminate all conference rooms at the hospital.”
Schandler said that the hospital “is bursting at the seams” at its East Post Road campus and has added 400 new jobs there in the past four years. “We are layering on services everyday and we just don’t have any places to put these things,” he said.
Glenn Walsh, executive managing director, and Lawrence Ruggieri, senior managing director, of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the building owner in the lease transaction.
The hospital is “land-locked” and is adding 65,000 square feet of space at the front of the hospital with its more than $100-million capital improvement to the main hospital building as well as a new 40,000-square-foot Cancer Care building being constructed at the corner of Longview Avenue and East Post Road. Schandler said that both projects are expected to be completed by the fall. He added that he hoped to have the personnel relocated to 101 East Post Road well before December of this year.
Earlier this year, White Plains Hospital announced it would open a new multispecialty outpatient medical facility in Armonk at 99 Business Park Drive adjacent to the Equinox Fitness Center. The 24,000-square-foot space will be the first White Plains Hospital satellite practice and imaging center in the Northern Westchester area. Clinical services offered will include: urgent care, primary care, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, surgical and medical specialists, and diagnostic imaging including mammography, 3-D mammography and breast ultrasound. The hospital hopes to open the new satellite office sometime in September.
On Jan. 8, Montefiore Health System and White Plains Hospital announced that their partnership agreement has been approved by the New York State Health Commissioner. White Plains Hospital is now a member of Montefiore Health System, serving as the tertiary hub of Montefiore’s growing Westchester network. The alliance will result in more advanced, coordinated care in the region, hospital officials stated.
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