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New York Life Moves Offices To White Plains, Brings 500 Workers To City

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. – A globally known life insurer’s decision to move into a building on South Broadway is another sign that efforts to attract major players to the downtown business district are “bearing fruit,” Mayor Tom Roach said this week.

The Westmoreland Avenue Corridor in White Plains was rezoned from light industrial to mixed-use (retail and residential). New lofts there, and the planned move of an insurance giant into the downtown, are being hailed as much-needed progress.

The Westmoreland Avenue Corridor in White Plains was rezoned from light industrial to mixed-use (retail and residential). New lofts there, and the planned move of an insurance giant into the downtown, are being hailed as much-needed progress.

Photo Credit: Google maps screen shot

New York Life Insurance Company, the largest mutual life-insurance company in the United States and one of the biggest in the world, has leased several floors – amounting to 150,000 square feet – at Westchester One, a 21-story building at 44 South Broadway.

Other tenants at the 850,000-square-foot complex include Reader's Digest and Oxford Health Plans.

New York Life is expected to bring 500 employees with it. The move will take place over a period of months this year and completed by 2018.

According to westfaironline.com, Dannon Co. Inc. last fall was weighing moving its headquarters to White Plains. The move would bring 300 employees from the yogurt maker’s home in Greenburgh.

The company applied to the city’s Common Council in September for a zoning change, westfaironline.com reported.

The status of that application could be be determined Thursday.

According to realestateindepth.com, Dannon currently occupies a 75,000-square foot space on Hillside Avenue in Greenburgh. It was, realestateindepth.com reported in October, mulling a $30.4 million project at 100 Bloomingdale Road, aka 1 Maple Ave., in White Plains.

Saying the city has “worked hard to attract and retain businesses” in its downtown, Roach added that those efforts "are bearing fruit with recent decisions by well-known companies such as Dannon and New York Life choosing to be in our city,” he said.

Roach touted the city’s decision early last year to rezone a light industrial area known as the Westmoreland Avenue Corridor to allow it to be used for mixed-use, as well as residential, development.

The corridor was.a “good fit” for residential use because of its proximity to the city’s transportation hub, which includes the Metro North train station, Roach said.

The Common Council Tuesday approved another residential project in the corridor --Westmoreland Lofts, to be located at 146 Westmoreland Ave.

Using the Norden Lofts project at 121 Westmoreland Ave. as an example of the zoning change’s “positive impact,” Roach said buildings in the zone are “proving to be attractive to millennials and young couples."

The Common Council approved the site plan application in March. Plans for the market rate rental project, geared toward young professionals include 45 studio apartments, 18 one-bedroom apartments, five two-bedroom apartments and a parking garage.

The new Westmoreland Lofts project, Roach said, will continue to move the city in the right direction.

It consists of a 5½-story building with a green market/coffee shop and a micro-brewery on the first floor and 62 rental apartments on the floors above.

Also proposed  is a residential lobby, which will include a theater, bicycle storage room and lounge. The roof deck will have an outdoor kitchen, fireplaces and seating.

Thirty-three of the rental apartments will be studios, 20 will be one-bedrooms and the remaining nine, two-bedrooms.

As with the Norden Lofts applicant, the city will assess a parks and recreation impact fee of $174,000 that will be used to enhance existing parks and playgrounds or build new ones. 

To read the realestateindepth.com story, click here.

To read the westfaironline.com story, click here.

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