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One Developer Out, Another Expanding in Yonkers

John Golden

Jun-26-09, 02:14 PM

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Topics: Economic Development, Real Estate

Neighboring developers in downtown Yonkers have gone opposite routes in the recession: one’s out of the city, leaving behind heavy debt and lost properties, while the other is more deeply in.

While MetroPartners L.L.C. recently acquired another Buena Vista Avenue property as part of its residential expansion plans near the downtown waterfront, Homes for America Holdings Inc. has vacated its headquarters in Station Plaza, the 3-year-old office and retail building that, like a ship’s prow pointed at the Hudson River, straddles the southeast corner of Main Street and Buena Vista. Amalgamated Bank, the defaulted developer’s mortgage lender in Manhattan, has assumed ownership of the largely vacant building and is said to have a buyer for it.

The Yonkers Downtown Waterfront Development Corp. recently sold one of the city’s undesignated historic landmarks, Teutonia Hall at 41-49 Buena Vista Ave., to MetroPartners for $450,000. Kenneth Dearden, president for development at MetroPartners, said in addition to the cash purchase, the partners over several years “have spent thousands and thousands of dollars on the property. We’ve been paying the carrying costs on the property” as required in the company’s land disposition agreement with the city.

A former dance and arts hall built in 1891, the architecturally distinctive though deteriorated building is part of an approximately 2-acre assemblage of residential and industrial properties on Buena Vista where MetroPartners plans to expand its residential development from The Lofts at Metro 92, a former trolley barn at the southwest corner of Buena Vista and Main Street converted to 40 live-work rental lofts and retail space.

Dearden said MetroPartners accelerated its scheduled purchase of Teutonia Hall to fill a gap in the assemblage. “The lenders didn’t like having that gap in the properties,” he said.

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