Edward Sheeran, special assistant to Yonkers Mayor John Spencer, says that the Yonkers Industrial Development Agency came to an agreement recently with Alfred Weissman Real Estate Inc. to have the Yonkers-based firm "discontinue the build out and discontinue its interest in the process" of redeveloping the 116,000-sf building now known as the inValley Technology Center.

Sheeran says that Yonkers IDA plans to retain the National Development Council, which oversaw the successful $53 million transformation of the former Otis Elevator building in downtown Yonkers into a new library and Board of Education building, as the construction manager for the project.

While he praised the Weissman firm for its past work in Yonkers and elsewhere, Sheeran says that the IDA, which purchased the property from the Purdue firm in Feb. 2000 for $1, had hoped that the redevelopment work would have been completed by year's end 2002.

"We were not comfortable that it was proceeding as fast as we wanted it to," Sheeran notes. "This apparently was not on the upper end of their priority list."

Weissman did confirm that it severed its interest in the property but had no comment on the reasons surrounding that decision.

Sheeran says the IDA plans to spend approximately $6 million on the redevelopment of the property into an office/high-tech facility. The city plans to house Empowerment Zone and Empire Zone operations as well as establish a Small Business Development Center in about 19,000 square feet of space at the building. In addition, he says that the city plans to complete work to accommodate a tenant in about 50,000 sf of space. The build out on that space must be done before May 1, he adds. Sheeran refused to identify the tenant that plans to move into the building, which is located in the Nepperhan Valley section of the city.