Westchester County Business Journal + Front Page

Taste of success
Humble legume spawns a new Bean town By BRYAN F. YURCAN

Mark and Matt Fitzgerald insist they are not professional chefs, nor businessmen.

Nonetheless, Scarborough-based Cool Beans, the all-purpose condiment the brothers created, now appears in 20 stores throughout Westchester County and several others in Connecticut since they begin bottling it in July

Yonkers Democrats want the Republican mayor’s signature on their revised living-wage law this fall but could come up against his renewed veto instead.

Westchester County’s public sector urgently needs reform, and its business community is ready to take the lead in a collaborative alliance to begin that long overdue process, the Westchester County Association’s Property Tax Reform Commission concluded in its initial report released last week.

It’s a quiet, sunny day at Rainbow Ridge Pet Cemetery and Crematorium in Fishkill. Co-owner Elizabeth Dreeben makes the daily reverse commute from her Yonkers home and not only enjoys the quiet of the Hudson Valley, but the fork in the road she took on her career path: Dreeben, a funeral director for several years, is now strictly taking care of funerals and cremations for animals.

A trial for a lawsuit filed by a local auto body shop against Ohio-based Progressive Corp. will likely not begin until next year.

AvalonBay Communities Inc., a national real estate investment trust with a growing presence in the Westchester County luxury-rental market, has joined the company of developers with their sights on Yonkers.

Mike Torelli, who helped bring business to Orange County, will now be doing the job for the mid-Hudson region, including Westchester.

At Century 21 Wolff in White Plains, President Nicholas R. Wolff was pleased last week with his company’s third-quarter house sales in the Westchester market.

People’s United Financial Inc. increased its commercial loan portfolio by $300 million in the third quarter from a year ago, or 8 percent, partially offsetting an 11 percent decline in its residential mortgage portfolio.

While a wedding reception was beginning in one room and Joe Torre’s resignation press conference was ginning up in another, down a corridor of the Hilton Rye Town, more than 400 women – and even some men – joined to celebrate the progress of the Latina community in the workplace and to educate each other on the importance of women’s leadership in politics.

A recent lawsuit filed against Sleepy Hollow by its neighboring village of Tarrytown over the size of the proposed Lighthouse Landing project has no teeth, according to Sleepy Hollow Mayor Phil Zegarelli.

As the president and CEO of Pleasantville-based Compufit Computer Corp., Tara Meenan Lansen has created a full-service information technology company that has worked with some 3,000 clients over the past decade. That wasn’t the original plan for the company, however.

Thanks to a $20 million bequest from philanthropist Kathryn Wasserman Davis, born in 1907, Scenic Hudson will buy more land to create public parks up and down the Hudson River.