News
Quite An Estate
January 5, 2011
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| Here’s a chance to own a unique asset—the 100k SF mansion Arden House, which sits atop a 450-acre estate in Harrison, NY. The former E.H. Harriman estate is the US’s first-ever conference center and was once part of Columbia University’s portfolio. Colliers International’s Bob Freedman and Richard Warshauer are leading the marketing team, and say Arden House is an ideal site for a variety of non-profit users—including universities, think tanks, and medical centers—who’d like a satellite campus or conference facility with proximity to NYC. (There’s already been interest from a major Midwestern university and international educational institutions.) Because of deed restrictions, it can only been sold to a non-profit, but commercial users can lease it on a long-term basis. |
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| Here’s a bit of history: Arden House was designed by the same architects as the New York Public Library and Frick Museum, and contains a main house, and east and north wings with 97 guestrooms. There’s also a conference wing with a state-of-the-art auditorium. It was originally built in 1909 by railroad magnate Harriman. In 1950, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was Columbia’s president, the Harriman family gifted the house to the university for its domestic and foreign policy study group, the American Assembly, which established the building as the first conference center. With110k acres of park and preservation lands, the 125-acre Cranberry Lake, and a 50-acre footprint that allows for new construction, Bob likened it to the East Coast equivalent of buying property in the middle of Yosemite State Park. |
