Westchester 5/14

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WESTCHESTER COUNTY

BUSINESS JOURNAL

YOUR only SOURCE FOR regional BUSINESS NEWS | westfaironline.com

May 14, 2012 | VOL. 48, No. 20

DEVELOPER SEEKS TKO OF SPORTS CENTER RIVAL BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

T William Guerrero, left, president of Purchase Park 2 Fly, and marketing coordinator Philip Sanford are steering travelers to the airport parking and shuttle service on the Purchase College campus.

he development boom in sports and fitness centers in Westchester County has sparked its first battle for survival, as partners in an indoor sports center being built in Ardsley try to deliver an early knockout punch to a competitor in Greenburgh and deflate its sports dome project before a lease is scored. “This is going to become a big issue,” said Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner. He and other town board officials have been accused of creating an uneven playing field for the sports center developers. The contentious issue ultimately could play out in state Supreme Court. In Ardsley, Elm Street Sports Group L.L.C. plans a soft opening in August of its House of Sports, an 85,000-square-foot

Parking 101

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riving down from Dutchess County on a recent weekday morning, Frank Rogers and Michael Kuzmicz left their car with an orange-jacketed valet in a parking lot at Purchase College and hustled to a waiting shuttle bus. They had a flight to catch at Westchester County Airport, a fourminute bus ride from their SUNY campus stop. “My daughter found out about it,” said

Rogers, a first-time customer at Purchase Park 2 Fly, a nonprofit campus business that is close to breaking even after its first year of operation, when 50,000 cars were parked. He stood outside a blue-awninged parkinglot office that had a past life of ponderous travel as a cargo container. “It’s so expensive to park at Westchester airport.” At the county airport, travelers pay a $27 daily parking fee. The daily charge at SUNY Parking, page 6

Sports, page 6

Nonprofits applaud AG’s call for new partnership

Startup takes off with fliers BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

sports and recreational facility rising at 1 Elm St. beside the Saw Mill River Parkway. In a $14 million project, the developer, a new player on Westchester’s commercial real estate turf, is converting and expanding a former office and warehouse building vacated by a supermarket merchandiser. With the mild winter, “We’re way ahead of schedule,” House of Sports CEO Donald Scherer said of the construction project. “It’s going extremely well.” Scherer and his family partners in House of Sports are determined to ensure that their rival’s proposed project does not go at all. Based in Tarrytown, Game On 365 L.L.C. plans to build the Westchester Field House, a 94,000-square-foot air dome and attached 15,000-square-foot clubhouse on the vacated site of the former Frank’s Nursery on Dobbs Ferry Road. The devel-

BY PATRICK GALLAGHER pgallagher@westfairinc.com

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ew York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman last week called for a new partnership between government and the nonprofit sector and pledged to work with lawmakers to tackle the inefficiencies that he said plague the state’s nonprofit regulations. Schneiderman spoke at the 10th

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BANKER HONORED • 23

annual Not-For-Profit Leadership Summit on May 7 in Tarrytown, where earlier that day executives of several prominent local nonprofits launched the Nonprofit Association of Westchester, a coalition aimed at unifying the county’s 5,700 such organizations as they seek regulatory relief. The summit, which drew over 700 Nonprofits, page 7

Good Things • 51


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