Disused Avon Campus In Rye To Get New Life Through NY Blood Center

RYE, NY — Driving around the Hudson Valley can sometimes feel like a passing encounter with celebrity (There's the Pepsi campus. Oh, look, Mastercard World headquarters. Is that IBM's base of operations?), but the newest titan in the neighborhood will give us a good reason to be star-struck.

Passing the Avon campus near the Rye Metro-North Station was special among the who's who of the region's corporate residents. Glimpsing the familiar logo offered a stroll down memory lane, conjuring happy images of visits from the "Avon Lady" and that meant coffee cake and a certain zebra-shaped comb from the catalog (that a preschooler just had to have).

That brief daily escape from the evening commute mostly vanished when Avon closed the Rye facilities in 2019.

There was understandable consternation following Avon's departure. While the property is certainly in a prime location, nearby neighborhoods make the site a poor choice for heavy industry or noisy warehouses.

"It's been years that the City of Rye has been concerned about either Avon leaving or finding a suitable use for this campus," Mayor Josh Cohn said at a groundbreaking event on Thursday at the 18-acre site. "Today is a great day. Those concerns have evaporated."

Former City of Rye mayor and current state assembly member Steve Otis echoed his successor's sentiments.

"Avon was a good neighbor for years," Otis said. "I don't think there is any doubt The New York Blood Center will be a great neighbor."

That soon-to-be new neighbor could very well put the global spotlight on Rye for all the right reasons. Christopher Hillyer, the CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of the New York Blood Center said that when completed, the new state-of-the-art facilities will not only streamline blood donations across the Northeast, but will provide a boost to the center's groundbreaking research. The center is developing treatments and cures for diseases from sickle cell anemia to cancer and even the effects of aging.

Hillyer gave a nod to the previous tenant of the campus even as he looked toward the future.

"In a lot of ways, Avon helped change the way women were thought of in the workplace," Hillyer said. "We want to change things in the world of research. In the past, we tended to think of medical advancement in terms of new pills, but the work we will be doing here could move us far beyond."

As he spoke, train whistles and trucks on nearby I-95 worked hard to make a reporter's handheld recording device useless, but Hillyer joked that those sounds were music to his ears, noting that the easy access to commuter rail and major highways has a two-fold benefit — the distribution of critical blood supply to hospitals will be streamlined and the convenience means the new cutting-edge research facilities will be able to draw talent from New England to Manhattan.

The 187,000-square-foot facilities on Midland Avenue will be home to the blood center's tri-state operations, including space for life sciences research, blood collections, processing and cell therapy manufacturing.

The Rye campus is expected to be finished in mid-to-late 2024 and will be the first-ever single campus for the New York Blood Center. It will be the new home of research in areas of health and humanitarian causes with a global lifesaving impact. New York Blood Center Enterprises' research arm, the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, already has a global reputation for advancing groundbreaking innovations in clinical care and biotechnology.

Founded in 1964, New York Blood Center is a nonprofit organization that is one of the largest independent, community-based blood centers in the world. NYBC, along with its operating divisions,  Community Blood Center of Kansas City, Missouri (CBC), Innovative Blood Resources (IBR), Blood Bank of Delmarva (BBD), and Rhode Island Blood Center (RIBC), collect approximately 4,000 units of blood products each day and serve local communities of more than 75 million people in the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT), Mid-Atlantic area (PA, DE, MD, VA), Missouri, Kansas,  Minnesota, Nebraska, Rhode Island, and Southern New England.

NYBC and its operating divisions also provide a wide array of transfusion-related medical services to over 500 hospitals nationally, including Comprehensive Cell Solutions, the National Center for Blood Group Genomics, the National Cord Blood Program, and the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, which — among other milestones — developed a practical screening method for hepatitis B as well as a safe, effective and affordable vaccine, and a patented solvent detergent plasma process innovating blood-purification technology worldwide.

"The groundbreaking of the new New York Blood Center campus in Rye is a monumental achievement for the life sciences industry and public health, especially in Westchester County," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said of the project. "This cutting-edge facility will be the new hub of NYBC's tri-state operations, including life sciences research, blood collections, processing, and cell therapy manufacturing, all in one convenient location. With a focus on global life-saving research and groundbreaking innovations in clinical care and biotechnology through the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, NYBC is leading the charge in advancing public health. This first-ever single campus for NYBC is a testament to their vision, leadership, and unwavering commitment to making a difference. Get ready for a new era of life-saving impact on our Westchester communities and beyond."