GUILDERLAND — Residents on Tuesday asked members of the Guilderland Industrial Development Agency to let precedent be their guide when it comes to granting $5.8 million in tax breaks to the developer of 256 market-rate senior-living apartments on the site of the former Hiawatha Trails golf course.

The Aug. 24 public hearing was for the IDA to listen to comments about whether it should grant about $4.1 million in sales- and use-tax exemptions, approximately $664,000 in mortgage-recording tax exemptions, and $1.06 million in property-tax exemptions to the $70.8 million project. 

At the start of the hearing, Donald Csaposs, the IDA’s chief executive officer, said the agency would consider the developer’s request at its Sept. 28 meeting, adding that questions or comments regarding environmental, planning, zoning, design, and related issues to the project were outside the scope of the public hearing.

Michelle Kennedy, an attorney with Whiteman Osterman and Hanna, appeared on behalf of Hiawatha Land Development, and was joined by Tony Carrow, whom she described as “a partner in the project who has been involved since the initial planning stages.”

Carrow was the project’s original developer. 

In an Aug. 23 letter to the IDA, it was noted that project developer Hiawatha Land Development LLC, based in New York City and owned by Isaac Markowitz and Abraham Strulovitch, had purchased 6025 and 6051 State Farm Road Geoffrey and Michelle Van Epps. The three parcels of land, which total about 43.8 acres, associated with the deal sold for $3.25 million, according to the deeds on file with the Albany County Clerk’s Office. 

Kennedy hit the high notes of the project in her brief presentation, stating that more than half of the land would be dedicated as open space to the town of Guilderland. She also said that the project responds to a critical need — senior housing. 

There are over 7,000 Guilderland residents over the age of 65, Kennedy asserted, a number that is expected to increase by 30 percent over the next 10 years. A project like Hiawatha Trails would allow those seniors to stay closer to home. 

“The requested financial assistance in comparison is a small fraction of the total $70-million investment,” Kennedy said. 

 She said seven permanent and 280 temporary construction jobs would be created by the apartment facility. 

Engineer Daniel Hershberg then spoke a little more about the project.

According to the approval from the planning board, Hershberg said, the project will have to be developed in two phases — 130 units will be built first. 

And the developer can’t start the second phase until “significant progress is made” in renting the first 130 units, he said. But Hershberg thinks there would be a market for the rental units and believes there would not be a delay between the first and second phases.

During the public-comment period, fewer than a half-dozen people spoke and, in a rare feat for a public hearing, their comments were quite germaine to the very specific matter before the agency.

Christine Napierski, a candidate for town board and resident of Dutch Hill Terrace, which is close to the project, said the goal of an IDA is to attract development, prevent economic deterioration, and help create jobs for the town.

“I noted that it wasn’t till the very end that [Kennedy] mentioned it was a mere seven permanent jobs that this project would bring to Guilderland,” Napierski said, three of which have salaries of about $50,000 and another four that are between $15 and $20 per hour. 

Napierski also pointed out that the project no longer has the same owners and that Carrow would only be the local face of a project now owned by two men from New York City. 

Carrow said to Napierski that he had retained a small percentage of the project’s ownership, she told The Enterprise on Wednesday. 

“If we lower the bar to a mere seven permanent jobs for this type of tax exemption. Then this is going to open the door to all types of businesses requesting tax exemptions. Is [there something] special or unique about this project?” Napierski asked.

“I understand that they offered to provide the town with this land,” she went on. “But as you members of the agency know, your job is to evaluate the economic impact of this project. And those issues regarding preservation of open space are really not material.”

She continued, “This senior housing is designated simply for people over 55; it is not long-term care or memory care. It’s not affordable housing for people with low or moderate incomes. There are no units set aside for handicapped, or disabled people; there are no units set aside for veterans. These are needs of the community, which this project does not address at all.”

Napierski also noted rejecting the request would be consistent with previous IDA decisions. 

When Pyramid sought $1.5 million in exemptions for its 222-unit apartment-and-townhouse complex on Rapp Road, the board in its denial decision said a “mere six jobs just wasn’t enough to qualify the project for tax exemption,” Napierski said.

Frank Casey, a Jefferson Court resident who has lived in Guilderland for 40 years, cited Csaposs’s memo to the IDA on the Rapp Road project, in his argument as to why the tax breaks shouldn’t be given. Csaposs had written:

— One-hundred-and fifty short-term construction jobs would be created by the 222-unit Rapp Road apartment facility, which does offer a “meaningful short-term benefit”;

— The long-term impact would be limited to six permanent jobs, “all of them at moderate levels of compensation”; 

— Whether or not “the proposed project is likely to be completed in the absence of incentives from the I.D.A.”; and 

— Whether the “project responds to a significant unmet need within the community.” 

Casey said the IDA concluded in 2019 that Pyramid’s request for tax relief did not “align with the IDA’s mission.”

Casey was also concerned that Hiawatha Trails could end up like another senior facility in town. 

“It’s concerning to those of us who live nearby that this development could go the same route as the Mill Road [Mill Hollow] apartments, just down the road that originally were to be exclusively market rate for seniors, a goal that the owner said could not fail and then the owner obtained permission for occupancy by all ages,” he said.