westfaironline.com November 14, 2022
Galleria as seen from Court and Main Streets in White Plains. Photo by Peter Katz.
BY PETER KATZ Pkatz@westfairinc.com
W
hile site plans had not yet been filed with the City of White Plains as of our publication deadline, it appeared likely that demolition of the existing mall and garages will be part of redeveloping the 10-acre
site that’s been home to The Galleria at White Plains shopping mall and cityowned Lexington-Grove East & West Garages since 1980. The municipal garages next to the Galleria have 2,792 parking spaces. “They want to do residential buildings... but there would be not a mall,” White Plains Mayor Tom Roach
told the Business Journals. “The connectivity would be that whatever retail is there you could access from outside and you would be able to walk through the project, across it and lengthwise.” The Business Journals sought Roach’s reaction to an announcement that the owners of the Galleria, California-based Pacific
Retail Capital Partners (PRCP) and Aareal Bank, which is headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany, are joining with White Plainsbased developer Louis Cappelli’s The Cappelli Organization and SL Green Realty Corp., which is billed as Manhattan’s largest office landlord, to redevelop the mall site.
Roach said that the announcement did not come as a surprise to the city, since officials have been in regular talks with the mall’s owners for many months regarding the future of the mall and the status of the city-owned garages. “The likelihood is that the garage would be removed but we would
require as part of any kind of deal that’s done here that the parking spaces currently being used will be available in the new parking that was requited for a new project,” Roach said. “I don’t think anyone thinks that that garage is worth keeping. The spaces are worth keeping, but in a more modern
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Breeze Airways takes on new omnipresence at regional airports BY PHIL HALL Phall@westfairinc.com
T Breeze Airways founder and CEO David Neeleman. Contributed photo.
he budget carrier Breeze Airways is a relative newcomer to the regional aviation scene — it set up an East Coast base at Bradley International Airport in February and began flights out of Westchester County Airport in April, and now it has the most flight routes of
any carrier at both airports. On Nov. 2, Breeze inaugurated its new nonstop service from Westchester to Los Angeles, which marked the first nonstop transcontinental flight from the White Plains-based airport. David Neeleman, the airline’s founder and CEO, he freely admitted it took a long time for him to appreciate what Westchester had to offer air travelers.
“I lived in New Canaan for 20-plus years when I started JetBlue,” he said, referring to the budget carrier he started in 1998. “I know the airport really well, and most of time I’d have to drive right past it to head to Kennedy. I know that people really want to go to Westchester — they really love that airport — and it’s something that is filling a
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