Millions at play for Guilderland development

GUILDERLAND — It’s been an “extremely busy year” for the Guilderland Industrial Development Agency, said Chief Executive Officer Donald Csaposs.

Since 2008, he has been the chief executive officer of the agency that attracts business and investment in the town through tax incentives. “So nine-plus years,” said Csaposs, and over that time the IDA has needed to vote on an average of less than one application per year.

Over the last one-year period, though, three applications have already come to the IDA: Mill Hollow II; the Crossgates Mall hotel; and, most recently, the conversion of the Best Western Sovereign Hotel into a senior living facility by an applicant known as Albany Place Development LLC, part of Promenade Senior Living.

Mill Hollow II is an apartment complex on Route 20, just off Frenchs Mill Road, in western Guilderland. It was originally set to become a senior condominium project, but developer Buck Construction encountered difficulty getting financing for condominiums or for senior housing. Steve Buck, who owns the construction company, has said that he still hopes, long-range, to turn the project back into senior condominiums. A promise to build a senior center for the town on the site helped the developer get town approval; the senior center, which was originally meant to be the centerpiece of the senior-living community, is now up and running.

The IDA approved a deal to abate the company’s sales and mortgage taxes in August 2015, but Mill Hollow did not apply for a real-property tax exemption, known as a Payment in Lieu of Taxes, or PILOT,  Csaposs said last August.

The two applications before the IDA now both do ask for all three forms of tax incentive, including PILOT agreements.

The IDA is likely to vote on the Crossgates Mall hotel application on May 31, Csaposs said, “unless the applicant chooses to withdraw, which I don’t expect.”

Csaposs said that the Crossgates Mall hotel project has “had a pretty fair amount of public input, which has been pretty significantly in favor.”

Pyramid Companies, the owner of Crossgates Mall, is requesting a total of $2.4 million in property, sales, and mortgage-recording tax exemptions on its proposed hotel project. The hotel would be located on Western Avenue, just to the west of the mall’s main entrance and exit.

IDA agreements generally contain a “clawback provision,” which gives the IDA the opportunity to recoup a prorated amount of the money if a company pulls out or if actual job levels fall far short of the promised levels.

“This, if approved, would almost definitely have a clawback provision in it,” Csaposs told The Enterprise when Pyramid applied for the exemptions in March.

The IDA also has the option of approving certain elements of an application and denying others.

The IDA held a public hearing on May 18 on the application of Albany Place Development for its hotel-conversion senior-living facility. The company is seeking all three forms of tax exemptions on its project. The company has already received a special-use permit and approval of the hotel-conversion project from the town.

The company is seeking, according to its application and its request for PILOT, exemption from $400,000 in sales tax and $250,000 in mortgage-recording tax. It is also asking for its property taxes to be “frozen” at the current rate of $126,000 per year, for 30 years.

“Promenade is committed to the seniors of Guilderland, and we expect our assisted-living facility to be at affordable rates, and because of that we need the PILOT and other forms of relief, to try to make everything work,” Promenade’s chief executive officer, Steven M. Laufer, said this week.

There were several people present, but there were no comments from the public at the hearing for the facility, said Csaposs. He did receive two letters, both “strongly in favor.” One was from Senator George Amedore, and the other was from Assemblywoman Patricia Fahy, Csaposs said.

Csaposs expects to receive IDA applications on two other projects, he said: the two other senior-living facilities that are planned or proposed in Guilderland. One of these, Concordia Senior Living, hopes to build at the corner of Foundry Road and Western Avenue. It received a positive initial review from the town board and planning board and is now working with the Department of Transportation on its review and approval of the access onto Route 20, a set-aside of land for a future turn lane at the traffic light, and the proposed widening of Foundry Road at the intersection.

The other, Pine Bush Senior Living, near the corner of Route 155 and Western Avenue, has been approved as a Planned Unit Development in a new local law that also rezones almost 40 acres of land as open space and dedicates it to the town.

 

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