SPOTLIGHT —ON—WESTCHESTER on Westchester… · shuttle using an Uber-like app for transportation in the downtown area. The city has also worked dili-gently to plan ahead for schools,

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SPOTLIGHT—ON—

A D V E R T I S I N G S U P P L E M E N T T O C R A I N ’ S N E W Y O R K B U S I N E S S

WESTCHESTERMount Kisco

Welcome to Westchester County—the county that truly has something for everyone. We offer the quickest commute of the suburban counties to New York City, but life here

doesn’t just revolve around our big neighbor to the south. Westchester County is picturesque, a green county—except where we are blue, boasting magnificent views of the Long Island Sound and the mighty Hudson River. We have a very well- educated population and a diverse corporate roster that allows us to stay strong during challenging economic times. From IBM, the first great multinational corporation, to financial services companies like Mastercard, to consumer products from PepsiCo, to the biotech and health care boom fostered by companies like Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Acorda Therapeutics, Westchester has it all. But that doesn’t mean we are complacent here. We’re always looking for ways to improve life for our residents and our businesses. We strive to be flexible and we are always looking at new ways to attract more startups and small and mid-sized companies. We’ve even undertaken an exper-imental initiative no other county government has attempted, creating Element 46, our own startup incubator. At the same time we’re working to coordinate better between the chambers of commerce in all the municipalities throughout Westchester, so they can learn from each oth-er and ultimately share one larger spotlight. I’m also looking to work with our neighboring counties in the Hudson Valley, to draw more of the tourists who come to our region from around the country and the globe. Westchester is the gateway to the region—and boasts enough attractions to invite visitors to take a quick weekend escape from reality. So, come explore Westchester County. It’s a great place to visit and an even better place to live. We’re glad you’re here. George LatimerCounty Executive

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Come to New Rochelle these days and you’ll find “dust, noise and traffic jams,”

said Luiz Aragon. But the city’s commissioner of development is not complaining—in fact, he al-most considers it a boast. “New Rochelle hadn’t had much in-vestment for quite a while,” Aragon said, explaining that in 10 years there was just one six-story building added. That changed in 2015 when the city council rezoned 300 acres, about 3% of the city’s land, to allow for residential development. Now, after much planning and consulting with the community, the shovels and jackhammers are working hard. The city now has six zones al-lowing varying densities (from six stories to 48 stories at the center), and 31 projects totaling 12 million square feet of new construction that will add more than 6,000 housing units, bringing more than 15,000 new residents to the city. The multifamily buildings are large-ly transit-oriented development (TOD), meaning they are being built near communities downtown, close to the train lines that carry commuters to New York. “This is smart growth,” said Marsha Gor-don, president and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester. “It will attract young people, but also boomers in large houses who want to downsize but who also want to stay in their community.” And New Rochelle is far from alone in building these developments. Westchester, which has a population of under a million people in the six cities, 19 towns and 20 villages spread throughout 500 square miles, has long been known for its large sin-gle-family homes on suburban plots.

But now there is a multifamily hous-ing building boom that is “firing on all cylinders,” said Bridget Gibbons, the county’s deputy director of eco-nomic development, adding that the Westchester IDA approved almost $2 billion dollars in private investment for multifamily housing in 2019. (In 2018, the IDA granted about $49 mil-lion in tax incentives to developers, yielding $881 million in private in-vestment for new projects.) “Two years from now, Westchester County will be transformed,” she said. Andrew Gerringer, managing direc-tor of The Marketing Directors, a de-

velopment advisory group, says the growth really started taking off about five years ago in New Rochelle and White Plains as well as smaller towns like Tuckahoe and Peek-skill. He expects 30,000 new units countywide over the next eight to 10 years. And while there’s some concern about saturation, he expects most buildings to do well, pointing to the upscale 100-unit apartment complex called The Mason in Mamaroneck, “which leased more quickly and for higher dollars than expected.” “This is a long overdue situation,” said Martin G i n s b u r g , w h o s e Ginsburg Develop-ment was a pioneer in the arena. “Westches-ter is a relative bargain and it’s close to the city. It’s an undiscov-

ered gem that is finally getting dis-covered. We’re getting New York City and national developers up here now.” Gibbons added that because the county’s cities and towns have lacked the housing to attract a younger workforce, they have also had more difficulty attracting jobs and maintaining restaurants and re-tail. But now, said Gibbons, “These places are revived and surging, with young people and empty nesters who want just one car and to be able to walk to their restaurants and gym and shops.” The residents attract more business-es, Ginsburg said, and then the new businesses will attract more resi-dents, fueling success for these com-munities. Wilson Kimball, Yonkers commissioner of planning and de-velopment, said her city has thou-sands of new units in the works. “We had a lot of space and we’re finally filling it in.” The hope is to create a younger, hipper vibe. Kimball said new resi-dents means more foot traffic that will improve public safety. In addi-tion, she believes they will draw more coffee shops and dry cleaners to serve locals, and boutiques and other stores that will draw people downtown. A wine shop called Wine in Due Time had opened there a few years back, recalled Kimball but “was ahead of its time” and closed. Now with the addition-al new feet on the ground, she said, “I’m sure it would work.” The beauty of all this housing, Gib-bons said, is that it appeals both to people who live and work in West-chester and those who commute to New York. She recently met with the

city’s department of planning to dis-cuss how important Westchester’s appeal is as part of the job engine for Gotham. “We have a symbiotic rela-tionship.” While the largest number of units is being added in the bigger munici-palities like White Plains, Yonkers and New Rochelle, the development trend has spread and no place may be more transformed than the vil-lage of Sleepy Hollow. It is there that Edge-On-Hudson is being built, with waterfront views on the site of an old GM plant. The project will add 1,177 units to the village’s 3,600 existing residential units, an in-crease of more than 25%. “It will have a huge impact,” said Mayor Ken Wray, adding that the project has already provided the vil-lage with 28 acres for new parks-and-recreation options. “It will generate revenue so we can do things we couldn’t do before, and it will bring in residents with high in-come who will spend on the busi-nesses in the village.” But not every municipality has em-braced the trend. “Of course there is pushback,” Gerringer said, explain-ing that while towns want the in-creased tax base, people worry about traffic and pressure on other services. “Local politics is local politics and it can be very provincial,” Ginsburg added. While some smaller towns like Mount Kisco and Ossining are taking measured steps—adding mul-tifamily units but not high rises on the scale of the cities—others are re-luctant. “People don’t want change.”

Both Ginsburg and Gibbons caution that those who aren’t open to at least

some growth may be left behind economically. “Those who resist may have mom-and-pop shops that cannot survive without more foot traffic,” Gibbons said. But county executive George Latim-er said some of the more elite towns and villages, like Larchmont, Ar-monk, Rye, and Hastings-on-Hud-son will be just fine. “Their housing stock is estates and mansions and they do not need growth,” he said. “Peekskill and Portchester are a little grittier and have a more diverse population so they are going for a more cool, urban vibe, but the polit-ical judgment for each town and the strategy for each can be different.” Kimball said some NIMBY con-cerns, about traffic and managing growth are normal. “It’s good to ask those questions,” she said. Aragon said that in New Rochelle one key has been “massive com-munity outreach,” asking residents what they want from all the new development. One result of the outreach will be a new black box theater which will be built as part of another building. Another is The Circuit, a 100% electric, free shut-tle to alleviate traffic concerns. Residents will be able to call for the shuttle using an Uber-like app for transportation in the downtown area. The city has also worked dili-gently to plan ahead for schools, sewers and other community and infrastructure needs, and has made building easier by creating a system that can guarantee approv-al for site plans within 90 days. Aragon credits local politicians for working together to foster the growth. “It takes a good relation-ship with the community and it takes political will.”

Welcome to Westchester: Land of the suburban apartments

nrny-crains-full-page.indd 1 10/11/19 10:17 AM

A new two tower mixed use development –– 48 stories with 600 residential units and 23 stories with 190 hotel rooms––will soon rise at 11 Lawton Street in New Rochelle

The 360 Huguenot is a new luxury building in New Rochelle, named for the 360 degree views of Long Island Sound, Westchester County and the Manhattan skyline

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W hen Edie Demas looks out her office window at the Jacob Burns Film

Center, where she is executive direc-tor, she sees Pleasantville as a town on the rise. “From here I can see two restaurants and a tap room that will open in the next 6-8 weeks,” she said. “This place was a sleepy village but especially in the last 18 months it has really popped.” While Demas is quick to praise “a concerted effort by the village to build the downtown,” the Film Center itself has played a crucial role since it opened nearly 20 years ago. “We put the village on the map,” she said, adding that the growth from three to five screens in 2015 elevated the center’s status as a Westchester destination, al-lowing them to showcase films for a longer time period pleasing both distributors and Film Center members. The Center, which now hosts about 180 special events per year, also collaborates with other local insti-tutions from Caramoor Center for Music and Arts to the Westchester Community Foundation (as well as regional players like the Brook-lyn Academy of Music and the SPACE on Ryder Farm in Brew-ster). “These partnerships can help lift all boats,” she said. Westchester has long had an im-pressive list of attractions for both its residents and tourists: Rye Playland, historic mansions like Lyndhurst (the Jay Gould Estate) and Kykuit (the John D. Rockefel-ler estate), the Capitol Theatre, the Untermyer Gardens Conser-vancy, a bounty of scenic areas

with orchards and hiking trails such as the Mianus River Gorge Preserve and Croton Gorge Park, and annual events like The Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze. “We also have great museums like the Hudson River Museum and the Katonah Museum, which have world-class exhibits and are filled with Westchester families on weekends,” said Marsha Gordon, president and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester. “And our libraries throughout the county are hosting cultural events on the weekends for the communities.” “Our biggest challenge is spreading the word and communicating all that we have to offer, for tourists and for people here to learn what’s in their own backyard,” said Natasha Caputo, director of Westchester County Tourism. The word appears to be getting around. Travel and tourism in Westchester County is a nearly $2 billion industry as measured by visitor spending (the county earns 45% of all visitor spending in the Hudson Valley) and visitor spending grew 5% last year to a new high. Bridget Gibbons, the county’s deputy director of economic de-velopment said Westchester is “the luckiest county in the coun-try.” Its proximity to New York City not only offers Westchester resi-dents an endless buffet of cultur-al, culinary and entertainment options but it also makes the county the go-to getaway destina-tion from the city, for a massive audience of people who see West-chester County as “the country,” said Gibbons. “We’re closer than

the Catskills so it’s easy for people to buy a weekend home here or just take a day trip.” There are plenty of new options opening and Caputo said another thing that makes the county so vi-brant is that many places are rein-venting or reinvigorating them-selves. Demas said Pleasantville’s growth drew two live theaters there within the past decade, Arc Stages and Axial Theatre. The two give theater-loving residents even more options beyond the more established Hudson Stage Com-pany, which moved to its new lo-cation in Whippoorwill Theatre in Armonk, in 2014. And, last year, the Bedford Playhouse joined the Jacob Burns Film Center, and also the Picture House in Pelham (ren-ovated in 2011), to give county residents another art house movie theater. Meanwhile, this year the historic Armour-Stiner house in Irvington opened its doors for guided tours. (There’s even a plan afoot for a Sing Sing Prison muse-um in Ossining.) Additionally, said Caputo, Cara-moor Center for Music and Arts has added outdoor “sound art” in-stallations and is working in alli-ance with Jazz at Lincoln Center on programming dedicated to American Roots music. “They are transforming the place,” she said. “And in the last five years, the ho-tels and resorts have been invest-ing and expanding, adding new amenities and talents,” said Capu-to. Examples she points to include Goosefeather, a new restaurant by celebrity chef Dale Talde, on the grounds of the historic Tarrytown

House Estate; Abbey Inn & Spa, set to open in January in Peekskill, featuring everything from a full-service spa to Apropos, a farm-to-table restaurant, as well as walking trails and a Zen garden. The Abbey Inn will also have a view of the Manhattan skyline. Gibbons thinks there’s room for even more ways to draw visitors, especially with dinner cruises and other ways to access the Hudson River. County Executive George Latimer said he hopes to collaborate on that front with the other counties of the Hudson Valley region. But it’s not all serene, cultural at-tractions—there’s also plenty of high-energy family fun to be had at places like iFLY Westchester, which has offered indoor skydiv-ing since 2015; the Legoland Dis-covery Center in Yonkers that opened in 2014 and, this fall, a new multilevel go-kart track at Grand Prix New York Racing & Entertain-ment in Mout Kisco.

The biggest addition may be yet to come. This year, MGM Resorts spent $850 million to buy Empire City Casino and the Yonkers Race-way property. The casino is al-ready the second largest vid-eo-lottery facility in the state, with 5,200 machines. It has the sixth largest gaming floor in the nation, employing more than one thou-sand people with an annual pay-roll of $28 million, while having paid $71 million in property taxes to Yonkers since 2006. MGM Resorts has big plans to transform the property that could

have a ripple effect for the city and beyond. Empire City Casino president and COO Uri Clinton said the company is working to-ward gaining a gaming license for a full casino, with live gaming ta-bles and a full-fledged entertain-ment center. That said, much of MGM’s business is hospitality and entertainment and not just gam-ing, so the long-term plan in-cludes the possibility of a 4,000- to 6,000-seat arena, a conference center, recreational development and hotels. There are 97 acres available for development, said Clinton, including the former horse track. If fulfilled, the plans would generate nearly 3,000 jobs and Wilson Kimball, the Yonkers commissioner of planning and development, said MGM Resorts has a great track record for hiring minorities, women and veterans. Clinton pledges to do the same in Yonkers. “Empire City Casino was always an economic engine for the east side of Yonkers, but with MGM resorts we have the opportunity to magnify all those good things times a thousand ... or a million or 850 million,” said Kimball. “We hope their growth will spill over to the rest of the city.” “This could spur investment in the area,” Clinton said, explain-ing that a full casino would gen-erate the revenue to build those additional spaces on the proper-ty, which could host everything from a Lady Gaga concert to a WNBA game to trade shows. “We will reflect what the community wants. A lot could happen.”

The suburbs offer peace and quiet, and plenty to do

Untermyer Gardens, Yonkers

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Yonkers is attracting a whole new generation of innovation. Be part of it.

Learn more at GenerationYonkers.com

“ MGM Resorts is all in on Yonkers.”

Uri ClintonPresident & COO of Empire City Casino


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If you were making a movie about jobs and industry in West-chester County, the star and

new heartthrob would be biotech. Sure, there are plenty of other major characters in the sto-ry—the county is home to IBM, PepsiCo, Mastercard, Heineken USA, Wheelabrator Westchester, BASF Corporation and White Plains Linen. And, of course, you’d cast health care and tourism in support-ing roles, along with financial and legal services, not to mention tour-ism. But biotech is on the rise and thanks to a new development deal, called the North 60, may soon be ready for its closeup. Westchester has long been home to several important players in the biotech universe, most notably Re-generon Pharmaceuticals, Acorda Therapeutics and in the last de-cade, ContraFect Corp. And New York Medical College incubator, BioInc, helps startups take root.

“There has been tremendous growth in the biotechnology space,” said Marsha Gordon, presi-dent and CEO of the Business Council of Westchester. But she cautions that there is a void in the county, in between the largest companies and the incubators. “We need to build up to attract more second-stage companies. It’s a challenge but in a good way.” Tim Jones, CEO of Robert Martin Company (the county’s largest di-versified developer), agrees, saying that the challenge rests in the fact that building laboratories is very expensive. “We have a good ecosys-tem on both ends of the spectrum, but we perceive a lack of real estate support for industry needs for com-

panies as they reach the stage be-yond incubators,” he said. Westchester is not alone in this di-lemma. New York City and Cam-bridge, among other titans vying for development projects in the biotech field, are in a similar situa-tion, but, Jones said, Westchester County has the space, the highly educated workforce and now the housing to give it an edge. “It’s very attractive to employees and it’s close to New York but with a cost advantage over the city and Cam-bridge,” he said. The county also has numerous uni-versities, an added incentive since biotech companies love being situ-ated near research hospitals and colleges to partner with and from which to recruit. And, said Gordon, health care is already a huge and growing sector within the county, with Westchester Medical Center expanding and Montefiore Medical Center “growing like crazy.” North-well and New York Presbyterian are also expanding their footprint with-in the county, among other health care institutions. The chicken-and-egg question is whether it will take new biotech firms looking to build out spaces to to propel Westchester to the next level or if developers need to build first so they will come. “We’re wrestling with that now,” said Jones, whose concern is that startups coming out of incubators will leave the county for lack of space. Building labs on spec is “tricky” he said because they are expensive and normally have spe-cific requirements for each com-pany. His company is trying both

approaches and believes the more that get built, the more companies will want to come. “There is a real advantage to clusters in business-es so this can feed on itself.” One major leap is already under-way. Earlier this year, Westchester County Executive George Latimer made a deal with developer John Fareri for a 99-year lease to create the North 60, a new biotechnology development. The $1.2 billion proj-ect, formally called the Westchester BioScience & Technology Center, will sit on 60 acres of county-owned land adjacent to Westchester Medi-cal Center in Valhalla, plus 20 ad-joining acres owned by Fareri Asso-ciates. The center will have 3 million square feet of medical office, labo-ratory and research space and is expected to create 8,000 permanent jobs after the 4,000 construction jobs needed to build it. It would then generate $9 million annually in property taxes while paying about $7 million in rent to the county. Even with all that building, the North 60, which will emphasize green roofs and other sustainable features, will maintain more than 40 of the 90 acres as green space, in-cluding on-site wetlands and inter-pretive trails. The county is also looking to en-sure collaboration in the field, said Bridget Gibbons, the county’s deputy director of economic de-velopment. “We’ve created an in-novation task force to meet with the institutions and companies and hospitals to see what they would need to make them more successful, to see what they’d want at the North 60, to see what kind of support services are need-ed,” she said.

Gibbons added that the Westches-ter County Industrial Development Authority also is approving a sales-and-use tax exemption of nearly $1 million for a new biotech project in Ardsley Park. BioMed Realty is planning two buildings there for smaller companies, leasing as little as 5,000 square feet in a shot. “We’re on the verge of something really big here,” she said. Gibbons said Westchester is not just relying on biotech and health care for future success, however. The county is hiring a consultant to develop methodical and data-driv-en strategies to find what fields they should focus on. Tourism is already another known entity: Westchester visitor spending sup-ported 24,360 jobs directly and in-directly in 2018, which is 5% of all jobs in the county. In the meantime, the county is working to make sure entrepre-neurs view Westchester as a place that nurtures talent. This year the county created an incubator for startup businesses called Element 46. Gibbons said they selected 12 startups from 68 applications—those chosen were given co-work-ing locations in White Plains, Dobbs Ferry or New Rochelle; mentors; free professional services from lawyers and accountants; and two training sessions weekly on how to build a business. After four months, the first cohort will graduate at the end of October. An adaptive clothing business has already signed a deal with Zappos. Gibbons said a new cohort will start in January but she’s hoping to get federal and state support to

build Element 46 beyond that. “We’d love to be able to do more training, to provide more materi-als,” she said. “There are lots of startup incubators in Manhattan and Brooklyn and even in New Jer-sey and Connecticut. Our goal is to put Westchester on the map, to po-sition us as an entrepreneurial hub. If we get funding then we could launch 200 local businesses in the next five years.” For a movie about jobs and indus-try in Westchester County, you might once have ended up filming the interior shots in Brooklyn or Queens—the state gives film and TV studios up to $420 million an-nually in tax incentives and about 90% ends up in New York City. But filming has tripled in Yonkers in the last five years and now the city is about be transformed. Lionsgate, the studio behind movie franchises such as The Hunger Games and The Twilight Saga, is planning a $100 million site with five studios and a backlot in Yonkers. “This is a game changer for Yonkers and for the county,” said Natasha Caputo, director of Westchester County Tourism and Film Office. She said that the studio’s presence will also lead to more location shooting throughout the county, which can also provide a tourism boost if a film or series is exceedingly popular. Recently, Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman shot around Westchester, and Saturday Night Live filmed a Downton Abbey spoof at the Lyndhurst estate. “It helps our visibility,” Caputo said, “And it also gives a boost to local pride.”

Westchester is becoming a new laboratory for biotech

Biotech Development North 60, Valhalla

Untitled-5 1 10/16/19 11:38 AM


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F or the Westchester Coun-ty hospitals and physi-cian groups racing to

build new ambulatory care fa-cilities, the motivation is simple. Transforming the way medicine is practiced in Westchester is well worth their multi-million dollar in-vestments. A string of current or just-finished construction projects form an infrastructure supporting a health care industry that the Westchester County Association estimates to be worth $18 billion.

Traditional hospital services, phar-maceuticals and biotech are at the core of that growing health care sec-tor. Increasingly, so are outpatient and ambulatory services. Invest-ments are fueled by the shift away from inpatient settings. Even com-plex procedures such as interven-tional cardiology or cardiac cathe-terization can now be performed as outpatient services. As a result, health care construction projects dot the Westchester landscape.

In September, for example, Monte-fiore Health System and Simone

Healthcare Development held a groundbreaking ceremony in Har-rison for a pediatric specialty care facility. Simone is transforming the vacant four-story office building into an 115,000-square-foot facility that will be leased to Montefiore.

Construction is scheduled for com-pletion in the fourth quarter of 2020. The site is slated to accommo-date such specialties as maternal fetal medicine, sports medicine, in-fusions, psychological services, an imaging suite and laboratory ser-

vices. In addition to Montefiore’s health services, the facility also will house a new pediatric urgent care service operated by Westmed Med-ical Group, a multi-specialty physi-cian group based in Purchase.

“The pediatric specialty care center will be a first of its kind in the region, offering comprehensive ambulatory pediatric specialty care in one state-of the art building,” Dr. Steven Safyer, chief executive of Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said in a statement. “When up and running, it will pro-

vide a comfort zone for children and families in the entire region.”

The center also will create jobs, which is why many health care projects, including this pediatric fa-cility, are financially supported by the county’s economic develop-ment arm. The Westchester County Industrial Development Agency es-timated the Montefiore/Simone project will generate 100 construc-tion jobs and 250 permanent posi-tions. The IDA reportedly provided about $1.75 million in sales tax and

mortgage tax incentives for a $61 million redevelopment plan.

In May, an 18,000-square-foot Fami-ly Health Center/Behavioral Health Center opened in White Plains. It was able to tap a state grant of $7.5 million that covered 50% of costs be-cause the project advanced the state’s goals of expanding access to behavioral care and integrating pri-mary and behavioral care services through co-location. White Plains Hospital and St. Vincent’s Hospital, both affiliated with Montefiore, built the health center to accom-

modate an estimated 50,000 patient visits annually.

“Many patients who are high uti-lizers—coming to the emergency room and being admitted—also have concurrent behavioral health issues,” Dr. Michael Palum-bo, executive vice president and chief medical officer at White Plains Hospital, told Crain’s New York Business in May. “Even if you provide them good access to primary medical care, if you don’t address their behavioral health

needs, you aren’t able to really impact them.”

The family and behavioral health center is part of a multiyear campus transformation effort at White Plains Hospital. Construction start-ed in April on a major component: a nine story, 252,000-square-foot outpatient center for advanced medicine and surgery. The new project will cost an estimated $272 million. It will house operating rooms, endoscopy suites, imaging services, wound care delivered through hyperbaric chambers, and

specialty physician practices such as orthopedics, spine, maternal fe-tal medicine, neurosurgery and a Heart and Vascular Center.

The advanced center is the latest of several construction projects at White Plains Hospital. In 2016, it completed an expanded Center for Cancer Care, and in 2015 added a new lobby and patient tower. Since 2015, the hospital has renovated or added about 475,000 square feet “to meet the growing de-mand for advanced inpatient and out-patient services close to home,” said President and CEO Susan Fox.

Over the last five years, she added, White Plains Hospital “has under-gone a significant campus transfor-mation to become the leading ter-tiary care hub for patients in Westchester County and beyond.”

Demand for expanded outpatient capabilities also drove construc-tion of a 60,000-square-foot, eight-story Ambulatory Care Pavil-ion that just opened in Valhalla. The facility was conceived as an ambulatory care hub on the West-chester Medical Center Health Network’s campus, with an array of specialty services such as cardiolo-gy, imaging and surgery.

And just last week, Montefiore an-nounced plans to build a $41 mil-lion health care complex. It will re-place Mount Vernon Hospital, which will close and be redevel-oped once the new center is func-tional in late 2020. The 40,000-square-foot location will house a comprehensive ambulato-ry care center and an emergency department. The outpatient center will provide integrated primary and mental health care, specialty care, pediatric care, interdisciplinary care for chronic disease manage-ment, a wound care program and onsite imaging services.

In Ardsley, home to the corporate headquarters for Acorda Therapeu-tics, development continues at the Ardsley Park Life Science Campus, which has 100,000 square feet of laboratory and office space avail-able. Demand is strong from bio-tech companies searching for smaller lab facilities, ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 square feet. And on land adjacent to Westchester Medi-cal Center’s campus and to New York Medical College, a proposed $1.2 billion mixed-use develop-ment includes a Westchester Bio-Science and Technology Center with nearly 3 million square feet of space for biotech research labs, start-up incubators, medical offices and other uses.

Health care is Westchester’s largest economic sector. As demand for outpatient and biotech facilities continues to grow, the steady pres-ence of construction cranes across the county is assured.

Westchester’s healthy demand for medical facilities

New construction fuels growth in health care industry

“ Over the last five years, White Plains Hospital has undergone a significant campus transformation to become the leading tertiary care hub for patients in Westchester County and beyond.” —Susan Fox, White Plains Hospital’s president and CEO

Rendering of White Plains Hospital’s planned outpatient center for advanced medicine and surgery

Westchester’s Best hospital

White Plains Hospital is proud to be named Westchester’s Best – the only hospital in the county recognized as a Best Regional Hospital, according to U.S. News & World Report. Ranked nationally for

gynecology and high-performing in seven other areas of care, White Plains Hospital once again delivers on its promise of exceptional care and an outstanding patient experience, close to home.

To learn more, visit wphospital.org/awards

A M E M B E R OF TH E MONTE FIOR E H EALTH SYSTE M


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V irtual-care company Teladoc’s promotional tagline nicely sums up

telehealth’s allure: “The quali-ty care you need with the con-venience you want.” As more patients show a willingness to test out the technology, Teladoc and like-mind-ed Westchester County players have plowed millions of dollars into tele-health, betting it will transform med-icine through convenient, affordable and easily accessible care.

The promise of seeing a clinician from the privacy of your own home is so compelling that even the feder-al government has become a cau-tious fan of telehealth. The Federal Communications Commission in July embraced plans for a $100 mil-lion pilot program to promote tele-health services among certain pa-tient populations.

“Telehealth has begun to take off,” said Dr. Henry Chung, senior medi-cal director of behavioral health in-tegration strategy at Montefiore Health System’s care-management organization. “Millennials and younger generations are more ac-customed to video from using FaceTime, so it’s a comfortable tech-nology. There’s less travel time. And when used for mental health ser-vices, it addresses the issue of stig-ma, because you don’t need to leave your own home to travel to see a mental health provider.”

Westchester’s major telehealth com-pany, Purchase-based Teladoc, has nearly 30 million paid subscribers that turn to its technology platform for colds, second medical opinions, and increasingly, behavioral health.

“One in five people have a diag-nosed mental health issue. It’s a global crisis,” Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic said in October, speaking at CB Insights’ Future of Health con-ference in Manhattan. “Virtual care

is really a great equalizer in mental health. It breaks down access to care, gets past the stigma and is much more anonymous.”

Teladoc’s mental health revenue will grow by 50%, Gorevic predicted. Last year, the company generated more than $60 million in revenue from behavioral health virtual visits.

Westchester Medical Center Health Network has invested heavily in a telemedicine program. The county’s only provider of Level 1 trauma care, Westchester Medical Center built an eHealth platform in 2015 that gives Westchester and the Hudson Valley access to advanced tertiary care ser-vices. The network has invested more than $10 million in telemedicine to date in technology, infrastructure, staff and other resources for its 5,500-square-foot eHealth opera-tions center. The site’s 20 multimedia stations form a telehealth patient monitoring hub staffed around the clock by physicians, nurses and other health care professionals.

One of WMCHealth’s first eHealth programs was in psychiatry, con-necting behavioral health outpa-tients and staff at its MidHudson Regional Hospital in Poughkeepsie with clinical psychiatry specialists at its Valhalla base.

As it pushes for new applications of telemedicine, WMCHealth recently launched a unique TeleCourt pilot in New York State that lets patients at its Behavioral Health Center vir-tually attend court mental hygiene hearings without leaving the hospi-tal. The remote, secure, HIPAA-compliant real-time video confer-encing lets patients attend treatment and retention proceedings.

“This pilot program is a logical exten-sion of our significant investment in our telehealth platform in a variety of settings across WMCHealth,” Dr.

Stephen Ferrando, WMCHealth’s di-rector of psychiatry, said in a state-ment. “The quality of this technology allows the court to still meet its pri-mary responsibility of providing a fair hearing for patients.”

The WMCHealth telehealth initia-tive also offers eNeonatology, eICU, eTrauma, eStroke, STAT mobile ICU and eDermatology. Its platform is more comprehensive than standard telehealth visits with patients in their homes. Through telehealth technology, medical personnel oversee patients in ICU beds from the centralized location. They can receive vital signs, blood test results, X-rays and other medical informa-tion electronically transmitted from bedside monitors. Electronic ICU patients are monitored through two-way video cameras that allow the eHealth team to communicate directly with the bedside clinical team, patients and family members.

Westchester’s big medical groups also have expanded into telehealth. Westmed Medical Group, a multi-specialty practice based in Purchase, introduced telehealth ser-vices in 2018. The Westmed Virtual Visit debuted as a secure video con-ferencing platform for non-emer-gency illnesses or conditions. A ten-minute virtual visit is covered by most insurers and has an out-of-pocket cost that tops out at $49.

CareMount Medical launched a telehealth platform last year. The Mount Kisco multi-specialty medi-cal group charges $99 for virtual vis-its through the CareMount 24/7 app for patients with non-emergency symptoms, such as sore throats, fe-vers, coughs or rashes. The tele-health platform also is geared to pa-tient follow-up after a surgical procedure, and for monitoring chronic conditions such as diabetes.

Westchester entrepreneurs also see promise in telehealth. Dr. Samant Virk founded Valhalla-based MediSprout at New York Medical College’s biotech incubator, devel-oping a virtual video product, V2MD, as a secure way for clinicians to connect with existing patients. The Susan and Leonard Feinstein Inflammatory Bowel Disease Clinical Center at Mount Sinai Hospital has been among the cus-tomers for MediSprout’s video con-ferencing technology for telemedi-cine visits.

Many clinicians believe telehealth is especially suited for mental health visits. Companies like Teladoc have mental health therapists in their networks. But in many communi-ties, including Westchester County, behavioral health specialists are of-ten out of network. Among psychia-trists, almost 60% of providers do not take insurance, noted Montefiore’s Dr. Chung.

Policymakers in New York State are experimenting with ways to ex-pand the use of telehealth for mental health among small prima-ry care practices that lack the re-sources of large medical groups like Westmed and CareMount. By integrating behavioral and prima-ry care at a small primary care practice, more people can be screened for mental health issues. Montefiore has been working on that model for small physician practices, including those in Westchester, so they can increase their patients’ access to mental health care. In recent months, Montefiore added a video compo-nent, said Dr. Chung.

Access to the country’s limited number of mental health profes-sionals is one of the challenges for all telemedicine providers. Teladoc’s growing business in men-tal health virtual visits relies on a broad group of professionals li-censed to provide therapy, not just psychiatrists and psychologists. Psychiatrist visits are largely re-served for medication manage-ment, Teladoc’s Gorevic said at the CB Insights conference.

“That’s where we have the biggest constraint,” he said. “There are five visits with a therapist for every one that’s with a psychiatrist.”

Gorevic shared an anecdote about a police chief in a town who was “fear-ful of seeing a local therapist be-cause of the stigma.” With virtual visits, there was no risk of local resi-dents seeing his car parked near a mental health provider’s office.

“This person can get treatment without the fear of backlash,” said Gorevic. “When we talk about changing the dynamic around mental health, that’s what we’re talking about.”


Westchester providers embrace telehealthVirtual visits can expand access to mental health care

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A Westchester Medical Center nurse communicates from the eHealth Center with a patient’s bedside care team

Westchester Medical Center medical staff review patient information at a pod in the hospital’s eHealth Center


SPOTLIGHT —ON—WESTCHESTER on Westchester… · shuttle using an Uber-like app for transportation in the downtown area. The city has also worked dili-gently to plan ahead for schools,

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