From sleek office parks to multimillion-dollar mansions, Harrison has a little bit of everything. The consolidated town/village is home to the Westchester County Airport, two colleges and the "Platinum Mile" of office parks, which includes such companies as IBM Corp. and Pepsico. In northern Harrison, the tony Purchase section features some of the county's most expensive real estate, and boasts celebrity residents like Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera and former Knick Latrell Sprewell. Harrison also has more modest neighborhoods, like those nestled along the main thoroughfare, Halstead Avenue, and in West Harrison, a former enclave for Italian immigrants. More than one-third of the town's residents boast Italian ancestry. Every year, thousands converge downtown to celebrate Columbus Day and the joys of living in Harrison. Small businesses, including pizzerias, specialty shops and nail salons, occupy Harrison's sleepy downtown business district. Also packed into the town's 22 square miles is Riis Park and the Westchester Country Club. The town's latest project is the $10 million cleanup of a once-polluted area along Oakland Avenue to make way for ball fields, a nature trail and playgrounds. The undertaking, dubbed Project Home Run, includes the cleanup of the Beaver Swamp Brook, a polluted freshwater brook on the Harrison-Rye border that empties into the Long Island Sound. By LIZ SADLER THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: October 30, 2005)