West 06/02/14

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luXury ApArtMEnts Could rEplACE ‘obsolEtE’ MAll

JOHN GOLDEN

INSIDE

June 2, 2014 | VOL. 50, No. 22

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT • 23

BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

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keting employees and two occasionally employed interns work the phones and computers in tight quarters with the 45-year-old boss. “I’ve got three little kids. The flexibility is incredible,” Bahl, a former IBM employee, said of his work-from-home arrangement. His wife works on Wall Street as a managing director at JPMorgan Chase & Co. Their 9-year-old son was 2 ½ when diagnosed

illing L. Biddle, president and CEO of Urstadt Biddle Properties Inc., brought a document stacked more than a foot high to his recent presentation at the Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors office in downtown White Plains. It was the draft environmental impact statement for a major redevelopment project that would add more apartments – as many as 650 to 700 – and more walkable streets to a city encouraging the growth of downtown housing and more pedestrian-friendly urban spaces to attract a young workforce. Biddle the previous day had submitted to city officials the hefty document, a required step to obtain the central business district zoning change his company seeks for its approximately 4-acre property at 60 S. Broadway. The four-county Hudson Realtors group has its headquarters there in the Westchester Pavilion, the former Alexander’s Department Store site purchased in 2013 by Urstadt Biddle for $39.9 million. At the time of the purchase, there was little competition from big-box retailers in the White Plains market, Biddle told Realtors, whose headquarters would be relocated if Urstadt Biddle’s plans are approved by the city. But with the development of City Center and the arrival of Whole Foods and other national retailers at developments on nearby Bloomingdale Road, the Westchester Pavilion has suffered from a tenant drain that has left the 180,000-square-foot mall largely vacant. Among its losses were anchor tenants Borders Books and Music, which closed before the bankrupt company was liquidated in 2011, and Toys “R” Us/Babies “R” Us, which relocated to City Center last year. Biddle is saddled with a problem: a “functionally obsolete” space with low ceilings and a poor

Energy bars, page 6

Apartments, page 6

FACES & PLACES• 39

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Arshad Bahl

From IBM to energy bars, an entrepreneur’s story BY JOHN GOLDEN jgolden@westfairinc.com

HIS CHILDREN WERE HEADED OuT the front door to school as Arshad Bahl began his work day at a laptop on a patio table in a quiet nook outside a rear basement office of his Hartsdale home. The narrow office is the headquarters of Amrita Health Foods Inc., Bahl’s startup energy bar business. Two sales and mar-


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West 06/02/14 by Westfair Business Journal - Issuu