SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY—General Motors has sold its 96-acre former minivan assembly plant property here for approximately $39.5 million. The deal puts the long-delayed redevelopment of the property that will include nearly 1,200 residences at full build-out finally on the front burner.
The deal involving the sale of the site by General Motors to the joint venture Lighthouse Landing Venture LLC consisting of SunCal of Irvine, CA and Diversified Realty Advisors, LLC of Summit, NJ closed on Dec. 23. While parties to the transaction refused to disclose financial details of the transaction, Sleepy Hollow Mayor Ken Wray told Globest.com in a telephone interview that the parcel traded for approximately $39.5 million. The village will use the sale price to determine the assessed value of the property and subsequently the taxes that will be paid on the parcel to the village. For many years the automaker's tax burden was based on a Payment in Lieu of Taxes arrangement. As part of the sale, the new ownership donated 28 acres on the eastern portion of the property for open space and municipal and public use, including 16 acres on the waterfront.
Wray estimates it will take about a year to 18 months for the developers to secure site plan approval and to begin construction on the first phase of the project. General Motors shut down the minivan assembly plan in 1996 and since then the village and the automaker have attempted to secure approvals for a massive redevelopment of the parcel. Since that time environmental remediation of the property has been completed. However, lawsuits, the recession and other factors have contributed to the lengthy delay. In December 2013, General Motors, SunCal and Diversified Realty Advisors signed a contract for the parcel. A year later the deal closed.
The new ownership will work off the approved scope of the project that was approved by the village on June 7, 2011 as part of a special permit that calls for the development of 1,177 housing units, a 140-room hotel, 135,000 square feet of retail space, which could include a 25,000-square-foot market, an 18,000-square-foot multi-plex cinema, and a 35,000-square-foot office building.
Wray says there is considerable infrastructure work that will involve new roads, electric, sewer as well as the either the rehabilitation or replacement of the Beekman Avenue bridge over the Metro North railroad tracks to accommodate heavy construction vehicles.
“For me it is pretty easy to look at it and say it is a $1-billion project,” the mayor says.
Jonathan D. Stein, foundering partner and co-managing partner of Diversified Realty Advisors, says that the SunCal-Diversified venture hopes to secure site plan approvals and begin construction on the infrastructure work in late 2015. He adds that the venture will seek to secure approvals on the first phase of the development that will include several hundred units of rental, condominium and townhome housing units.
Stein and Frank Cappello, president of SunCal's eastern region, both say that it is too early to determine the total cost of the multi-phased development. Cappello says that the SunCal and Diversified venture also includes an unnamed institutional capital partner.
Stein is a former executive with Roseland Property Co., which was the designated developer for the Lighthouse Landing project at the GM site. However, Roseland in late 2007 exited the project due to litigation surrounding the project and issues over the scope of the project between GM and the village. Stein left Roseland shortly thereafter, and later formed Diversified Realty Advisors with fellow founding partner Nicholas Minoia.
“It's a huge life milestone for me,” Stein says, noting that he has been involved in the redevelopment of the GM Sleepy Hollow site for about 15 years. “I have been working on this for a significant portion of my professional career… Certainly as a private developer it is a thrill to be able to finally move forward on the development and really create a special downtown extension of the village of Sleepy Hollow.” For the village, the project will provide access to a section of the Hudson River that has been closed off for generation, he adds. The site had been an automobile manufacturing site since 1899 when The Mobile Company of America (Walker Steamer) and the Maxwell-Briscoe Company began operations there.
“We think it is a tremendous piece of real estate, within 30 minutes of midtown Manhattan,” Cappello says, noting that the GM site plays into SuCal's core strategy. “We are really focusing on in-fill properties where you really don't have to predict whether people will want to live there, it is just a matter of finding a way to develop the property.”
He adds that project, which has been called Lighthouse Landing, will be very attractive since no other waterfront parcel along the Hudson River in Westchester County can offer the development scale that the GM property can provide.
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John Jordan
John Jordan is a veteran journalist with 36 years of print and digital media experience.
