A commercial building that has long fueled speculation over development next to Willson’s Woods Park in Mount Vernon will become the new headquarters for real estate developer Stagg Group.
The property was purchased Aug. 28 by One Bradford Road LLC from LTTR Home Care for $4.05 million, said Alan Landauer, the owner of the medical supply company.
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Jay Martino, senior vice president of construction for Stagg, confirmed the purchase and said the company had outgrown its office space in the Bronx and was anxious to turn the vacant Mount Vernon property into a “campus” for its workers.
“We’re going to be bringing it back to life, turning it into a paradise,” Martino said. “When the project is complete the neighbors will be pleasantly surprised by how appealing it will be.”
The sale came with no fanfare, so neighbors were surprised in late August to see trees being knocked down on the 3-acre property and debris removed from the dilapidated office building.
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A city permit for debris removal was issued to One Bradford in early August. But after the complaints from neighbors, building department officials went to the site Wednesday and placed a “Stop Work” order on the front door.
Mayor Andre Wallace said later that the concerns were a “false alarm” and the order was rescinded after he met with the developer and was assured the work complied with the permit. Martino said he also met with Westchester officials to allay concerns that some of the trees were removed from the county parkland that abuts the property.
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The building was the home of medical supply company Landauer Metropolitan but has been vacant for the past six years. The property was filled with numerous cars from a dealership in recent months. It backs up against the Metro-North Railroad tracks and sits across from the county aquatic center at Willson’s Woods Park, just south of Lincoln Avenue and west of the Hutchinson River Parkway.
“Being in Mount Vernon was a positive experience,” Landauer said Friday. “There was a good labor pool and people always treated us well.”
But he said selling the property was frustrating because of the inability of city officials, particularly in the administration of Mayor Richard Thomas, to decide what it was they wanted built there. The sale price ended up being about $1 million less than what he was asking in recent years, he said.
There were two serious proposals this decade to turn the property into luxury housing.
The first, by an Atlanta company, Wood Partners, led the City Council in 2015 to rezone the property from light industrial to multi-family residential. That project fizzled and Landauer reached a new agreement to sell the property to a Cleveland-based developer, NRP Projects.
But when the similar tax breaks Wood Partners had negotiated from the city’s Industrial Development Agency were sought in 2017, the IDA did not take up the project. That was because Thomas preferred a hotel or catering hall, hoping they would spur the local economy more than housing could.
NRP then backed out of the deal. Landauer sued the city and the IDA, claiming they were unfairly withholding the tax breaks and interfering with the company’s ability to sell the property. The lawsuits are still pending.
The housing proposals were fought by local residents. Jane Curtis, who lives next to the park, said one reason neighbors were caught off guard by the construction activity last week was because they thought the county was considering purchasing the property to combine it with the existing parkland.
“That would have been the best possible solution, permanently removing the threat of overdevelopment there,” Curtis said.
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The existing building will be refurbished so there will be no demolition, Martino said. It was unclear what if any land use approvals would be required for the Stagg project. Martino insisted the property’s old zoning would not have to be restored — though Councilman Marcus Griffith insisted he would do so “in a heartbeat” to ensure the property is put to use again.
Told of the plans for a new corporate headquarters, Curtis said that would be far preferable to any housing there. But she was frustrated that the developer could knock down dozens of trees with no ramifications since a proposed tree ordinance has languished in City Hall for years.
“Those trees always served to shield the parking lot and the building visually,” she said.
Martino said there were plans to put 50 new trees on the property and a reflecting pool as part of the new parking lot.
Curtis also questioned whether there is an issue of soil contamination at the site. She cited notes she took when the Woods Partner development was under consideration that its application included results of soil testing showing levels of copper, lead, mercury, nickel and zinc in excess of state Department of Environmental Conservation limits. The property had been a research lab before Landauer moved there and a printing plant for decades before that.
But Landauer insisted there was no contamination, and that he shared the Wood Partners environmental report with prospective buyers. Mark Stagg, the company president, said he was unaware of that testing but suggested that contamination levels for residential properties were higher than for commercial uses. And he said that his company had no intention of doing any extensive digging and may even simply pave over the areas it needs for access and parking.
Stagg Group is a housing developer that has built 2,500 apartments over the past two decades, mostly in the Bronx with two projects underway on Bronx River Road in Yonkers.
The company is also working on a project in New Rochelle that will include a new Family Court complex for Westchester County. The county approved a 30-year lease for space from another company affiliated with Stagg Group.
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