June 12, 1983

A SAUSAGE factory has been turned into an office building, a stormwindow factory has been turned into a waterfront restaurant, a vaudeville theater has been restored to its former glory and a rundown shopping area has been brightened and renovated. These are some of the changes that were recognized by the Westchester Municipal Planning Federation in its annual awards, given earlier this month. The awards were presented to New Rochelle, Peekskill, Tarrytown and White Plains, with commendations given to Croton-on-Hudson and Greenburgh. All the awards this year went to projects that involved preservation -unlike previous years, when most awards were given for new developments and parks. This year they went for groups of buildings, neighborhood improvement and a golf course - St. Andrews in Hastings - that was facing financial collapse but was saved by a plan to build 209 condominiums priced at about $350,000 each on the edge of the course.

GREENWICH THE chairman's name is Ransom. No one, John S. Ransom said, has ever remarked on the irony. That seems a bit surprising, since Mr. Ransom is in the business of storing people's riches. He is the chairman, chief executive officer and co-owner of the Vault, a security vault that opened here last week. Mr. Ransom does not inquire as to what his customers store, but he expected that gold bullion and jewelry would figure prominently. Artworks, antiques and business records also are likely deposits, since the Vault has special climate-controlled rooms for each.

THERE'S a sign that hangs outside the trading room at Bear, Stearns & Company - a cavernous, darkened room populated by rumpled traders, jangling telephones and dozens of computerized screens that command the attention of all. The sign reads: ''Let's make nothing but money.'' And, indeed, that's just what Bear, Stearns, one of the few remaining private partnerships left on Wall Street, does best. By most accounts, it is one of the street's most profitable firms, and one of the scrappiest. Its partners boast of not having Harvard M.B.A.'s and, in some cases, of not even having graduated from college. But they do know how to make a dollar - often by taking on controversial deals that other firms sniff at, fearing their image might be tarnished. Bear, Stearns represented maverick financier Irwin Jacobs in his abortive takeover of Pabst Brewing, and even proposed his current assault on the Bekins Company, a moving van corporation. It represented dissident shareholders trying to oust management - something other firms won't do - at Global Natural Resources and Tosco, two energy companies. And, it has grabbed for publicity by making former Governor Hugh Carey a special limited partner and hiring New York Jets quarterback Richard Todd as a stockbroker.

PRESSING two children close to her, On Soon Whang bowed her head and began to cry. Then she gazed around the Dobbs Ferry living room filled with American parents and their adopted Korean children and said softly: ''I'm sorry for my tears, but this is a dream. I'm always thinking - how are the children? How are they doing, and how are they studying?'' The diminutive woman had flown halfway around the world to find out. Aware of her advancing age, the 81-year-old ''grandmother'' to several thousand Korean orphans had decided to visit some of these children in the United States.

A month after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission laid down the law at Indian Point, the agency seemed to turn that law on its ear, at least in the minds of some critics. Acknowledging that plans to evacuate nearly 300,000 persons living near the Westchester reactors were still flawed -the deficiency that prompted the May 5 threat to close the facility - the N.R.C. nevertheless decided last week to let the plants remain open because steps had been taken toward improvement. The 3 to 2 decision, one N.R.C. commissioner complained, made ''a mockery of our emergency-planning regulations.'' That was echoed by Ellyn R. Weiss, general counsel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, which asked the N.R.C. to close the complex in 1979. ''There will never be a more clear-cut case for enforcing the rules,'' she said. ''None of the commissioners even argued that there is preparedness today or will be in the future.'' But Nunzio J. Palladino, the chairman, said he voted with the majority because ''the necessary commitments have been made.'' Mr. Palladino added that he hoped a drill to test emergency preparations at the plants, which are 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan, would be held as soon as possible.