Tornado Causes Some Damage to Office Parks

David Sims, SVP and managing director of the Westchester/Connecticut division of Reckson Associates Realty Corp., says that the Summit office complex sustained "several million dollars in damage.

"It was pretty serious. We took a big hit," he says.

Sims, who says that his firm immediately mobilized employees and vendors from its other adjacent properties to assist tenants and employees impacted by the disaster and work on cleanup afterwards, was at the scene about an hour-and-a-half after the twister touched down on July 12. Upon arriving at the site, he noted, "It was a pretty big disaster. It looked like something out of a movie. Thank God no one was hurt."

He adds that the firm should know soon just how much it will cost to repair the damage caused by the tornado.

Hardest hit was Reckson's 100 Summit Lake Dr., which had significant window damage that included extensive broken glass to the building's four-story glass atrium. Subsequently, the firm closed off the atrium area to prevent any injury to tenants. The F2 tornado also caused significant tree damage in both the front and the back of the building as well as some damage to vehicles at the property. He adds that the building is "structurally sound" and that cleanup of the shattered glass and other debris has been completed.

Its 200 Summit Lake Dr. office building, which totals 240,834 sf had about 50 of its windows broken. The 208,660-sf 500 Summit Lake Dr. office building was unaffected by the storm. Power was lost for a short time at the 100 and 200 Summit Lake Dr. properties as well as the firm's 115 Stevens Ave. property nearby.

Meanwhile, in Hawthorne, Mack-Cali Realty Corp.'s Mid-Westchester Executive Park along Route 9A suffered "some landscaping damage, a couple of fallen trees, a few broken windows and a couple of cars damaged from the fallen trees," says a company spokesperson. Mack-Cali did not release any estimate on damage to the complex. That property is just down the road from a California Closets Warehouse on Route 9A that was heavily damaged with collapsed walls and extensive roof damage.

The twister touched down just after 3:30 p.m. on July 12 in Grand View in Rockland County, crossed the Hudson River and swept through Tarrytown, Sleepy Hollow, Hawthorne, Valhalla, Mount Pleasant and North Castle before crossing the border into Greenwich, CT. The hardest hit areas in Westchester, according to Westchester County Executive Andy Spano, were Mount Pleasant and Sleepy Hollow.