D&D EXCLUSIVE
Cappelli: Ritz-Carlton opening this September
140 Ritz-y ‘Residences’ already under contract
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: February 7, 2007

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel and 213 Ritz-Carlton branded units now under construction in downtown White Plains will be completed this September, four months ahead of schedule, Louis R. Cappelli said today.

“We expect to open the hotel and deliver the first unit by the end of September,” the president of Valhalla-based Cappelli Enterprises Inc. declared in an interview. “People will be starting to move in October 1 through the end of the year. And the hotel will have its grand opening by my birthday, October 10.”

That would be just over a year to the day Cappelli joined Simon F. Cooper, Ritz-Carlton’s president and chief operating officer, in celebrating the topping out of the first of the two towers comprising Cappelli’s $450 million Renaissance Square complex.

Cappelli said the warm weeks of December and early January allowed workers to get a jump on construction plans that were initially slated for completion in January 2008.

The 180 uber-luxury apartments, plus 32 smaller Atelier units, are in the southern of the two 40-story towers within Renaissance Square, now taking shape on a site bordered by Main Street, Hamilton Avenue and an extension of Court Street. The 123-room hotel, complete with 600-seat ballroom, occupies a lower-rise building between the two towers.

To date, Cappelli said, buyers have signed contracts for 140 of the units. “The first tower should have sales finalized at 75 to 80 percent by the end of February. Average price for units is just under $1,000 per square foot – almost twice what Cappelli’s Trump Tower project at City Center fetched.

“We had always thought it was going to be $800,” Cappelli said.

That may be because buyers of some 30 percent of units sold have combined their spaces with adjacent units to form larger condos. The average unit size is “well over” 2,000 square feet, Cappelli said – compared with 1,600 square feet at Trump Tower.

2d tower’s 180 condos go on sale next month

As a result, Cappelli said, “We’re going to put the second tower on sale starting the beginning of March.” The northern tower will house another 180 ultra-luxury condo apartments, also to be branded The Residences at The Ritz-Carlton, Westchester.

“We’re about a year ahead of our original sales projections, which is why we put the second tower up.”

The brisker-than-expected sales, he said, showed that there’s much life in Westchester’s condo market, at least on the luxury end: “We hit a market here that I’m not sure anybody though existed, that I’m not sure that we exactly knew the depth of it. It’s deep. Think about it: There are about 10,000 people that belong to country clubs in Westchester. And all we’re trying to capture is 300 of them. That’s 3 percent.”

Renaissance Square also includes

Cappelli also offered updates on other projects in development:

LeCount Square: The developer said he is 30 days away from announcing “huge” deals for the office and retail space within the $600 million mixed-use, 1.2 million square-foot complex. The project would rise on a downtown New Rochelle block bordered by LeCount Place, North Avenue and Anderson and Huguenot streets. He would not name tenant names, but did say: “By September we’ll be starting construction.”

Trump Tower: Buyers have entered into contracts for about 100 of the project’s 181 units, totaling $80 million in sales, Cappelli said. “The first people will be moving in in June.”

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