Leasing Interest Peaking at Former IBM Facility

MOUNT PLEASANT, NY-The former IBM Latin American headquarters property here hadn’t attracted much interest after IBM vacated the property last year. However, the intense leasing activity in Westchester County has produced tangible prospects for this 383,000-sf corporate headquarters facility.

Robert Martie, senior vice president of Gale & Wentworth of Florham Park, NJ, which owns the property now called the Mount Pleasant Executive Center, says that Westchester’s office market had lagged behind other suburban locales such as New Jersey and Connecticut. Activity in Westchester is now intense and available space is on the decline, however.

“It was like somebody turned on the on-switch in January 2000,” he recalls. Gale & Wentworth acquired the property situated on 67 acres in November 1998. Last year, IBM vacated the site, which had served as headquarters for its Latin American operations since it was built in the 1970s.

Martie says that until this year activity at the property was light. But when available space in Jersey City and in prime markets in Connecticut was all but filled up, suddenly corporations began to look more seriously at Westchester County, he says.

Martie reveals that his firm is now in negotiations with deals ranging from 150,000 sf of space to the full building. While he would not reveal the identities of the prospective tenants, he says that the firms are from Westchester County, New York City and Connecticut.

“I would expect to be 50% leased by the end of March,” Martie predicts, “based on the amount of interest we have in the property at the moment.”

While the building was occupied by just one user since its opening almost 30 years ago, it can easily be divided for multi-tenant use, Martie says.

One of the property’s chief amenities is its location–on Route 9 and at the intersection of Route 117. The Mount Pleasant Executive Center site was formerly part of the Rockefeller estate. Martie says that recently the Rockefeller family sold New York State adjacent property that surrounds the site for use as a state park.

Another key amenity at the property is an approved heliport. Martie notes that few commercial properties in Westchester offer such a service.