Henckels’ P’ville Building Nearing Completion on Marble Avenue
Work on the Zwilling J.A. Henckels headquarters on Marble Avenue in Pleasantville is nearing completion, the village’s Building Inspector Robert Hughes said this week.
According to Hughes, the building department is currently working with the company to grant a temporary certificate of occupancy for the back section of the building, which will serve as the company’s warehouse.
He said that the warehouse and shipping center, which will serve all of North America, is expected to be up and running in the coming weeks. The front portion of the building, which will house the offices, will take another one to two months to complete.
“They’re two separate buildings in a sense,” Hughes explained of the construction process.
The offices will take more time to get ready for occupancy due to more complicated construction features, including elevators and bathrooms, Hughes said. But the offices are less urgent because employees are able to work remotely, he added.
The priority at the moment is the opening of the warehouse, so that Henckels can relocate from its smaller facility on Route 9A in Hawthorne, Hughes said. He expects that the site will be fully occupied by November.
With the warehouse expected to open soon, village officials are expected to ban parking on weekdays on Village Lane, which is adjacent to the site, in order to accommodate large trucks that are expected to enter and exit the property multiple times per day.
“The concern is that there are quite a few cars that park along there and we will now be having some more traffic as a result of Henckels,” said Mayor Peter Scherer.
At a village board meeting earlier this month, trustees amended a proposed resolution that originally banned parking on Village Lane at all times. In the revised resolution that is scheduled to be voted on at Monday night’s meeting, parking will be allowed on weekends and after 6 p.m. on weekdays. This will allow motorists to park on the street when there are school sporting events at nearby Parkway Fields.
Trustee Jonathan Cunningham worried about where the cars that are regularly parked on Village Lane will go. He said he feared those vehicles will be relocated to nearby side streets that are already crowded.
The resolution was tabled at the last meeting so that officials could reach out to area merchants to warn them about the upcoming parking change. They would also like to know whom the cars belong to and where else they could park.
Hughes said the property may continue to look like a construction site for the next few months but that good progress has been made.
“The building is coming out really well. They’re doing a really nice job,” he said.
Last month, a small group of protestors were seen picketing in front of the site. Hughes said they had objected to a subcontractor on the site who was accused of not hiring union workers. However, the picketers were not against Henckels, which has adhered to union requirements, he said.
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