What to Do With Old, Tired Suburban Office Parks?

WHITE PLAINS, NY-Landlords who built or invested in suburban office campuses across the nation have been seeing their tenant rosters thin out thanks to the prevailing trend of businesses looking to locate in urban centers and near mass transit.

As these campuses age, property owners are faced with needing to invest in their properties to keep them competitive with newer product in their market, or think outside the box and consider other users that might invest or lease space at their properties.

(The issue of adaptive reuse of properties in Westchester County will be just one of the subjects covered at RealShare Westchester Fairfield Counties on August 15 at the Crowne Plaza hotel in White Plains. Confirmed speakers at a roundtable program entitled “Dynamic Development and Redevelopment" are: Joe Kelleher, president of Simone Healthcare Real Estate Group; Gary Stevens, vice president, real estate of Life Time Fitness Inc.; and Marissa Brett, executive director of economic development for the Westchester County Association. For more information on the event or to make a reservation, go to RealShare Westchester Fairfield Counties.)

In some markets across the country suffering from high vacancies, property owners and affected communities are considering “adaptive reuse” as a possible solution to their problems. A case study in a region starting to embrace adaptive reuse is Westchester County, NY. This affluent suburb of New York City has seen its suburban office campuses along the I-287 corridor in the White Plains and Harrison markets, which were built in the late 1960s to early 1980s, suffer high vacancies as these properties age and become less competitive.

However, the city of White Plains has recently changed the zoning in the area to allow for other uses besides office, and Harrison is currently updating its master plan and will likely also modify its zoning to allow uses such as senior housing, housing for young professionals, and retail for office buildings located in what had been called “the Platinum Mile.”

A host of users have successfully worked through the approval process in Harrison and secured necessary special use permits to convert office buildings into other uses or demolish them entirely and build new projects. For example, Summerfield Suites, now Hyatt House, Fordham University, and Sloan Kettering have or are in the process of repurposing existing office buildings or are building new developments at former office sites. The largest project is the redevelopment of the former Journal News building on Gannett Drive into a new 209,000-square-foot Life Time Fitness facility, which is currently under construction.

Another growth sector in Westchester County is medical office and earlier this month a major medical practice announced it was expanding its presence in the I-287 corridor. Simone Healthcare Development Group and Fareri Associates say they will break ground next month on a new 85,000-square-foot office building for WESTMED Medical Group, a rapidly expanding medical practice based in Westchester County.

Simone officials said the construction cost for the new four-story medical office building at 3030 Westchester Ave. in Purchase will be $22 million and the project is expected to be completed in 18 months. The new building is part of Simone's existing three-building Harrison Executive Medical Park, which totals 158,182 square feet. Simone Healthcare is a division of Bronx-based Simone Development Cos.