What used to be a longtime White Plains Chrysler dealership is officially headed for the history books. On June 30, construction crews broke ground on a 10‑story, 203‑unit luxury rental project at 70 Westchester Avenue, clearing the way for a mixed‑use tower with street‑level shops, resident amenities and a podium parking structure. The joint venture between Cord Meyer Development and Saber Real Estate North says the property was cleaned up through New York’s Brownfield Cleanup Program before any vertical construction began.
What’s going up
The roughly 331,691‑square‑foot building is set to stack 203 apartments on top of a multi‑level podium and three levels of cast‑in‑place parking garage, with the entire second floor reserved for amenity space and a pool deck, as described by Callahan Construction Managers. The design combines a heavy concrete podium with cold‑formed steel on the upper floors and lifts many resident amenities onto an elevated deck to free up as much street frontage as possible. Renderings highlight rooftop gathering spaces, co‑working areas and pet‑friendly features pitched to commuters and shoppers circulating around downtown.
Financing and cleanup
The capital stack includes a $29.9 million mezzanine and Brownfield Tax Credit bridge arranged by Siguler Guff, which said its financing package sits alongside a larger senior loan to support construction, according to Siguler Guff. The developers enrolled the former auto site in New York's Brownfield Cleanup Program to address decades of automotive‑related contamination before breaking ground, a state fact sheet shows, and regulators identified petroleum‑related contaminants, metals and PFAS that required investigation and cleanup under NYSDEC oversight, according to NYSDEC.
Timeline and neighborhood impact
Developers marked the ceremonial start of work on Tuesday, June 30, and local reporting indicates construction is expected to run through 2027 with an early‑2028 completion target, per Daily Voice. Once finished, the project is slated to add about 9,600 square feet of ground‑floor commercial space and roughly 266 parking spaces in a garage. The site sits directly across from The Westchester shopping center with quick access to I‑287, planting the building squarely in the middle of a broader wave of downtown White Plains apartment construction and refinancing activity aimed at commuters drifting away from the city.
Why this matters
70 Westchester has been inching toward reality for years, helped along by incentives from local agencies as officials looked to convert aging auto lots into higher‑density housing. The Westchester IDA signed off on an incentive package tied to the development during an earlier round of approvals, according to New York YIMBY. Later, planning‑board minutes show, a 2024 zoning amendment bumped the Saber project’s allowable units from 175 to 203 while shaving down the retail footprint, a modification the board recommended to the Common Council after conducting an environmental review, per the White Plains Planning Board.
