Hello from Tarrytown, NY!

Tarrytown-The Program that Almost Wasn’t

Hello from YAI in Tarrytown, NY.  I would like to tell you a little bit about our program. Tarrytown is located 24 miles or 36 minutes from New York City.   YAI has been in our building in Tarrytown since 1990.  How we came to this building is an interesting story.  

Tarrytown was actually made up from two different programs-one in Eastchester and one in Bedford.  These two programs leased space from their respective school districts and in 1990 these leases were running out.  The school districts were expanding and they needed the space.  The search began for a new building and with only weeks to spare before the start of the school year, the building in Tarrytown was found.   

This was no ordinary building though.  You see, this building was owned by none other than the Queen of England.  Her Majesty wanted to sell this property to just one corporation and not have it sub-divided into a building with many different companies.  This was lucky for us, because our competition for the building was Fuji Film, who only wanted part of the building and then rent the rest out. 

The Queen dispatched her commercial real estate administrator from none other than India to mediate the transfer of the property.  As it happens with real estate transactions, there were disagreements and arguments concerning this point or that point.  In one such heated exchange between the lawyers, the Queen’s representative, topped in a bowler hat and all, calmly cleared his throat, took out his chained pocket watch and stated that the lawyers should resolve their difference soon because in five minutes he was going to leave “and never to return!”.   Well, this spurred the lawyers to work out the deal.

With the deal finalized, there was only weeks to go before the school year opened and the building in Tarrytown was not yet ready.   With the likes of Kevin Travers, Paul Smoller and Steve Freeman lending their hands as construction workers, the building was finally ready….for Eastchester anyway.  Only half of the building was ready.   Days before school was set to begin, the Eastchester program went to work on a Friday in Eastchester-(Individuals even came to program), and reported to work in Tarrytown the following Monday.  In true YAI fashion, not a day of program was missed.  Five months later the building was nearly complete and the Bedford program moved in and the rest is history.

Today, the Tarrytown Program remains the only commercially owned YAI property.  It is the largest Day Habilitation providing program in the agency and serves over 285 Individuals.