Harrison REVIEW THE
January 26, 2018 | Vol. 6, Number 4 | www.harrisonreview.com
Dems look to revive gun, immigration bills
LOGAN’S RUN
By JAMES PERO Staff Writer
New Rochelle’s Jake Logan captured the 182-pound title at the Westchester County Championships on Jan. 20. Logan currently sits atop the Section I rankings in his weight class. For story, see page 15. Photo/Mike Smith
Wegmans signs deal on ‘Platinum Mile’ property By FRANCO FINO Staff Writer Normandy Real Estate Partners has negotiated a deal to sell the vacated office complex at Corporate Park Drive to Wegmans Food Markets, which plans to build a supermarket at the location. Earlier this month, the Connecticut-based commercial real estate advisory firm Newmark Knight Frank, which represented both the buyer and seller, announced that the two parties reached an agreement on the 20acre property, located at 106-110 Corporate Park Drive. “We set out on a path more than five years ago to attract alternative and more productive land uses within the I-287 corridor due to the surplus of outdated office inventory that hasn’t fit the needs of the
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community for a very long time,” said Matthew Lavell, the senior vice president at Normandy Real Estate Partners in a release. “We’re excited to add to the efforts we’ve already made in the area by closing on the sale of 106-110 Corporate Park Drive to Wegmans.” Introduced in December 2016, Wegmans plans to construct a
125,000-square-foot, 2-story grocery store, which includes a café area, at the abandoned office complex in the town’s “Platinum Mile” area. The Harrison Town Council gave the project its final approval last summer, paving the way for the Lower Hudson Valley region’s first Wegmans supermarket.
Wegmans is headquartered in Gates, New York, near the city of Rochester, where it was founded in 1916. The privately owned regional supermarket chain, which owns 93 stores across the mid-Atlantic and New England regions, is known for selling locally sourced food. According to Wegmans officials, the supermarket chain will create 180 full-time and 250 parttime positions with the company, which is planning to open a second location in the New York metropolitan area along Brooklyn Navy Yard’s Admiral’s Row, located along the East River, this year. As of press time, Wegmans plans to construct the supermarket in late spring or early summer of this year. CONTACT: franco@hometwn.com
Under a new Democratic regime, legislators will reincarnate two vetoed bills, including a piece of controversial gun legislation, that were nixed under former County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican. The legislative agenda on Jan. 22 will feature the reintroduction of a bill to ban gun shows on county owned property that was vetoed by Astorino last year, after being passed by Democrats on the Board of Legislators. Specifically, the bill seeks to eliminate the possibility of hosting gun shows at the Westchester County Center, which Democrats say promotes a toxic gun culture in the county. While current County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, has already signed an executive order banning the gun shows—a reinstatement of a previous ban that lapsed under Astorino—unlike the order, the passage of a more formal piece of legislation would permanently ban the shows in the future. In tandem with a bill to ban gun shows, Democrats will also reintroduce a county immigration bill that would limit the amount of information that the county shares with the federal government.
This bill was also introduced and passed last year, but was eventually vetoed by Astorino who said it would hamper the efforts of county law enforcement. Both bills are being revisited by a new Democratic majority with an extra advantage of three seats over last year’s Board of Legislators makeup. Currently, Democrats outnumber Republicans 12-5, giving them a supermajority, in addition to the support of Latimer, who unseated Astorino in November last year. In addition to both bills, Democrats will also push two bills that expand paid sick leave countywide—companies with five or more employees would be required to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick leave—as well as a bill that would ban employers in the county from asking how much prospective employees made at a previous job. These bills will mark the start of a reinvigorated progressive agenda from Latimer and the Board of Legislators, who recently elected a new majority leader, Ben Boykin, a White Plains Democrat, to replace the previous chair, Michael Kaplowitz, a Yorktown Democrat, in a divisive nomination process. CONTACT: james@hometwn.com
With a new Democratic majority, legislators will look to resurrect bills that had been vetoed under a previous Republican administration. File photo