SLINGERLANDS — The owner of the land beneath Plug Power’s incentive-laden multi-million-dollar fuel-cell manufacturing facility in Slingerlands has filed suit against the municipalities where it’s located in an attempt to lower the property’s assessed value by about 46 percent.

In two Article 7 petitions filed on July 17 with Albany County Supreme Court, the owner of 125 Vista Boulevard, Campus Associates XI, a limited liability company affiliated with original project developer Columbia Development, requests that its Bethlehem assessment be lowered from $37.5 million to $20.25 million and its New Scotland assessment be reduced from $985,500 to $444,000. 

The petitions state the valuations and assessments of the property had “been made at a higher proportionate valuation than the assessment on other comparable properties located” in each of the municipalities.

These assessments, according to Campus Associates, show that Bethlehem and New Scotland “engaged in a pattern of selective, illegal, invidious and discriminating reassessment of the Property,” because each town’s assessor “established and changed the assessment of the Property without compliance with a town wide revaluation,” which it says is a violation of state law.

Campus Associates asked that the two towns’ “decisions and actions” be “corrected on the merits by the court and that the assessment … be reduced and corrected.” Columbia Development has had success with similar requests in Vista Technology Park in the past.

In 2014, through its Vista Development LLC, Columbia sued Bethlehem to lower the assessed value of nine parcels in the technology park, requesting the collective assessment of the properties be reduced from $5.6 million to $1.7 million. 

Following two more suits in 2015 and 2016, a settlement was reached and the 2014 collective assessed values of the parcels were reduced to about $3.5 million, while subsequent years’ assessments were also dropped: in 2015, from $5.6 million to $3.7 million and, in 2016, from $6.5 million to $3.8 million. 

The Plug Power project went before Bethlehem and New Scotland’s land-use boards in late 2021, and was placed on the fast-track for approval, which resulted in a July 2022 opening.

The $55 million, 350,000-square-foot manufacturing and warehousing facility is located in Bethlehem’s Vista Technology Park but also has a small footprint in New Scotland’s part of the park.

To make the project work geographically, Columbia had to subdivide 129 acres it owned located entirely within New Scotland into 31-acre and 74-acre parcels. The 31-acre property became part of the overall 57-acre Plug Power facility, which required 26 acres be subdivided from 97 acres of 125 Vista Boulevard in Bethlehem. The subdivisions resulted in approximately 17,000 square feet of the manufacturing facility being located in New Scotland. 

Tax breaks and credits

The facility has been the beneficiary of government largesse, but it’s been the project’s tenant and not its landlord that has benefited, as New York state agreed to provide up to $45 million in performance-based green jobs tax credits in addition to Albany County getting in on the act. 

But Columbia Development did make an attempt to obtain government subsidies for the facility with its Vista Development Group applying to the county’s industrial development agency for a series of project-related tax breaks. 

In December 2021, Vista submitted an application to the IDA claiming the project would cost nearly $59 million, and requested $2.5 million in sales and mortgage-recording tax breaks as well as a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement that would be a 100-percent tax abatement for the first two years of the contract, declining by 10 percent each year after. 

Columbia’s description was of an “internal fit-up and equipping of a new facility to accommodate growth that has exceeded current facility capacities,” according to its application. “The facility will house manufacturing and warehouse activities for Plug Power’s GenDrive business unit,” it said, adding that the facility would house 300,000 square feet of warehouse, manufacturing and service along with 50,000 square feet of administrative support.

But by March 2022, it was Plug Power’s name on the IDA application, claiming a project cost of about $15.2 million and requesting only a $1.2 million sales-tax break. In its project IDA application, Plug described its project as an “internal fit-up and equipping of a 350,000 square foot facility with manufacturing, warehouse, service and administrative capacities.”

A call to Columbia Development was not returned prior to publication.