Medical tenants fill Westchester County’s empty office spaces

Average asking rents still declining and vacancies are up

From left: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in West Harrison rendering and Harrison Executive Park in Purchase, New York
From left: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in West Harrison rendering and Harrison Executive Park in Purchase, New York

Westchester County’s office market continues to struggle, but the health care industry is providing some much needed medicine in the form of large leases for former corporate space.

Clinics, Labs And Research Centers Are Taking The Place of corporate operations as individual doctors consolidate their practices into large medical parks, the Wall Street Journal reported. Simone Development and Fareri Associates are repositioning their Purchase, N.Y., executive park as a medical center, according to the newspaper, while Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center expects to open a new outpatient facility in West Harrison next month.

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Nearly 4.9 million square feet of office space in Westchester has been converted for other uses since 2001, according to CBRE data cited by the newspaper. The amount of high-quality office space has fallen from 33.2 million to 28.4 million in that time.

The fall has not yet pushed up prices. In fact, average asking rents dropped 1.9 percent to $25.69 per square foot since 2011, according to JLL data cited by the Journal. Vacancies also increased to 20.6 percent from 19.2 percent over the past three years. [WSJ] — Tom DiChristopher

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