The NYPA Finance Committee approved a request by Lori Alesio, executive vice president and general counsel of NYPA, on Sept. 17 to authorize staff to negotiate a Definitive Agreement with Hamilton Green II Partners, LLC to build a new 297,105-square-foot corporate headquarters building for NYPA across the street at the former White Plains Mall site from its current headquarters building at 123 Main St. in Downtown White Plains.

Ms. Alesio noted that NYPA issued an RFP for a new corporate headquarters and a buyer for its current headquarters building back in August of 2023. NYPA received three responses from developers and in November 2023 decided to move forward on two proposals. She reported that NYPA entered a non-binding letter of intent with Hamilton Green Partners in May of 2024 and signed a non-binding offer sheet with the development partnership in August of 2024.

The Finance Committee also approved a request for $50 million to fund initial capital expenditures in connection with the development site. Ms. Alesio explained that $30 million will be used for the purchase of the pad/air rights at the development site and $20 million for costs associated with the purchase of equipment and the design of the building for the remainder of 2024.

She said that NYPA is pursuing an “aggressive” time line that projects a Definitive Development Agreement to be reached with Hamilton Green Partners by November 2024 and the move-in to its new corporate headquarters by June 2027.

The new headquarters would provide NYPA with a modern-designed building with many energy-efficient amenities and also fulfill its commitment to the City of White Plains to build a new headquarters building in Downtown White Plains and be a part of the business district’s revitalization.

No other terms of the transaction were disclosed. In addition, it is not known at press time the status of the component of the RFP that called for the sale of its current headquarters property, which rises 16 stories and totals 417,014 square-feet with an integrated six-story, 700-space parking structure. The office property, which houses approximately 900 NYPA employees, was built in 1981 and acquired by NYPA in 1991.

Jeff Loughlin, president of the Westchester Putnam Building & Construction Trades Council, told CONSTRUCTION NEWS that the  trades have held discussions with principals of Hamilton Green II Partners about a Project Labor Agreement in connection with the New York Power Authority project. When asked whether he was confident union tradesmen would be working on the project, Mr. Loughlin said, “Yes I am,” adding that during those conversations, Hamilton Green executives committed to a PLA on the NYPA project.

He added that he spoke several times to Hamilton Green executives over the summer concerning the NYPA headquarters project and “was assured it would be done under a PLA.”

A spokesman for Hamilton Green in a statement to CONSTRUCTION NEWS, stated: “We have met with Jeff Loughlin and discussed the use of Union trades on the project. It is our intent to use Union trades on the NYPA building which is mandated to be a Prevailing Wage project. Prevailing Wages are different from Union Wages and in most instances Prevailing Wage is a higher wage so we have to work thru the mechanics of how to do this within a PLA. We will be working toward that goal together with the Building Trades.”

The scope of the potential development project at the Hamilton Green development came into greater focus recently during a White Plains Common Council session on Sept. 30. The Westchester County Business Journal first reported that Mark Weingarten of DelBello, Donnellan, Weingarten, Wise & Wiederkehr, LLP, presented an application to amend the project’s approved Conceptual Development Plan to change the approved use of 220 Hamilton Ave. from residential to office use.

Janet J. Giris, a partner with the DelBello, Donnellan, Weingarten, Wise & Wiederkehr firm, in a letter submitted to the Common Council, stated the new office building, part of Phase 2 of the project, would total 297,105 square feet of office space. The amended plan would add approximately 270,000 square feet of office space to the overall project.

The building would be LEED V.4 and Gold-certified and would be designed to be all electric and energy efficient.

Other changes to the CDP outlined in the letter include:

• Construction of the building at 20 Barker Ave. as an affordable condominium development containing 156 affordable dwelling units;
• The addition of a new ingress/egress to the parking structure on Martin Luther King Boulevard, which will serve the proposed office building;
• The addition of a new ingress/egress to the parking structure on Barker Avenue, which will serve the residential units at 20 Barker Ave.;
• The elimination of all residential units from the building located at 220 Hamilton Ave. and a reduction in the overall number of residential units on the 20 Barker Ave. property from 390 to 156;
• A reduction in total retail/restaurant space from 57,805 square feet to 35,603 square feet on the overall property;
• An increase in the number of parking spaces on the entire property from 964 to 1,270 parking spaces;
• An increase in the private open space from 21,182 square feet to 25,500 square feet on the overall property; and
• The addition of two levels of above-parking structured parking on a portion of the 20 Barker Ave. property.

Construction of Phase 1 of the project is well underway with rental apartments at 25 Cottage Place scheduled to open before the end of 2024 and 5 Cottage by June 2025.