NEW SCOTLAND — New Scotland is poised to have its first Empire Zone, a state-designated economic development area that encourages growth through tax incentives.

An application to the state is in the works for the 440-acre Vista Tech Park at the end of LaGrange Road, with 20 percent of the land in New Scotland and the rest in Bethlehem.

The application organized by Albany County’s economic development office has been backed by New Scotland’s town board, Bethlehem’s town board and the county legislature. The state gave preliminary approval at the end of 2004, said Sean Maguire Albany County’s senior economic development planner. He administers the county’s Empire Zone program, which started in 1998.

Vista Tech Park

The Vista Tech Park has been in the works since March of 2003 when the county’s executive office dedicated $1 million to its development. That summer, BBL Development Group was chosen by the county through a bidding process to develop the acreage into a technology campus.

William Herbert, the vice president of development for BBL, told The Enterprise last week that he plans to come before New Scotland’s planning board with an official proposal before the winter is through. So far, his company has done many studies over 2005, he said, such as environmental review.

Fifteen to 20 buildings are proposed with 1.4 million square feet of commercial space. A few of the buildings will be three or four stories high — the limit in Bethlehem which does not permit high rises, Herbert said.

The campus also will include park elements. BBL is interested in being part of a regional walking path, running through the town of Bethlehem along the Normanskill, Herbert said.

Entrance to the tech park will be from within Bethlehem by the Slingerland’s Price Chopper. The state’s Department of Transportation is constructing a highway bypass within Bethlehem; there will be no major road construction in New Scotland.

The entrance to the tech park is a long way away from the New Scotland border, Supervisor Ed Clark points out, so no road construction is planned for Route 85 in New Scotland, but there are buildings and internal roads within the campus in New Scotland’s jurisdiction, Clark said.

Herbert said that, right now, his company is moving forward with the possibility of just the one main entrance into the campus. The roads within New Scotland will really just be drives, he said.

There are three possible building sites in New Scotland, offering 200,000 to 300,000 square feet of commercial space, Herbert said.
"The town of Bethlehem will drive it predominantly," Clark said of planning, since most of the proposed project is within their boundaries. Of biggest interest to Clark is what businesses will occupy the park, what will be going on in the park, and what kinds of waste disposal will there be, Clark said.

Herbert said the tenants will be determined by the market; he anticipates a mix of leasing and selling the buildings. While the facilities will be built to suit, they are marketing to technology firms that are just getting started in the area.

The uses will predominately be office, research and lab; production will be extremely limited, Herbert said, with no large-scale waste.
"Clean technologies," he said, such as the computer industries, will occupy the park.
Some will be single-tenant buildings while others will be multi-tenant buildings. "It really depends what comes to us," Herbert said. Some companies have already expressed interest, but he is not able to divulge their names yet, he said.

It will take 12 to 14 months for the state to construct the bypass, Herbert said, and BBL plans to start on the construction of the tech park very shortly after that.

So far meetings with both municipalities, following a very careful planning process, has been straightforward and have gone fairly smoothly, Herbert said.

Empire Zone

The county’s current application to the state is to expand the boundaries of the existing Empire Zone, to include the Vista Tech Park.

This New Scotland location will be the eighth area in the county to be part of the Empire Zone, Maguire told The Enterprise.

The program started in Albany County after military reductions eliminated arsenals in the area; some of the first designations were lands once used by an arsenal in Watervliet and the army depot in Voorheesville and Guilderland Center, Maguire said.
Now, the focus has been switched to urban revitalization and targeting technology business, he said. "It is looked at as a jobs program," Maguire said.

The old industrial model is being replaced by a more modern technology model, Maguire said, of economic planning.

While some people have been skeptical of Empire Zones after revitalization projects in cities have not resulted in the yield of anticipated jobs, the Vista Tech Park is new development, not revitalization with additional costs for the town or county.

Albany County’s Empire Zone annual report shows that the total amount of capital investment made by zone-certified businesses throughout that year, not including operating expenses, was $51 million, some in the form of real property, renovations, new construction, and business acquisitions.

Annually, the county evaluates the existing Empire Zone areas to see where its not performing, looks around to find other opportunities for economic development, and talks with mayors and supervisors for feedback; that’s how the proposal for the Vista Tech Park as an Empire Zone came to fruition, Maguire said.

The tax incentives tied to the Empire Zone are performance-based, Maguire said. Once land is designated as an empire zone, the only benefits that a company located within that zone is entitled to are sales-tax refunds for the material for construction, Maguire said.

But the Empire Zone can give businesses tax exemptions and real property and business tax credits. One such break is sales tax exemptions on the purchase of property or services used by the business.
Once a business locates in an Empire Zone, it can apply to the Albany County Zone Administrative Board to become a "certified business." To qualify a cost-analysis is applied. For every dollar that the state puts into it, the public has to get back $15, Maguire said, which can be in the form of salaries.

Once certified, the company will become eligible for state tax credits; rate reductions through National Grid, formerly Niagara Mohawk; and rate reductions for some telecommunication services, Maguire said, all because of tariffs with New York State.

The designation lasts until the county’s zone administrative board revokes it, but in practical terms, the Empire Zone designation for one area has a life of 10 years until the benefits are used up, Maguire said.

The zone administrative board is made up of resident volunteers, county executives, city and town government representatives, and local business owners, Maguire said.

In no way does the county force these economic-development programs onto municipalities he said; it’s very much a joint effort with input.

Built into the Empire Zone initiative is a county tax abatement program, Maguire said. But, so far, that component has not really caught on too much, he said. Only the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland has applied for the 485E tax abatement.

Additionally, a local government can also choose to offer a small abatement incentive. For the Vista Tech Park, New Scotland and the school district chose not to opt in to that, Maguire said.

The idea with abatement, Maguire said, is that by offering to abate property tax, the community benefits in other ways. The county or town sees its investment return when the new business creates more jobs for residents, he said.

Supervisor Clark told The Enterprise that the town is in support of creating a state Empire Zone within its boundaries because the state incentives to develop a particular area will bring in high tax production and "provide real property taxes for the community." And it "doesn’t cost us anything," Clark said.

This Empire Zone at the Vista Tech Park will provide state tax breaks but New Scotland will still get all its property taxes, Clark said.

The New Scotland Town Board in December passed a resolution supporting Albany County’s application appealing to the state to expand and include New Scotland territory in the Empire Zone.