HARBOR
SQUARE: It Ain't Over Yet
THERE'S
STILL TIME TO DO IT RIGHT ON THE OSSINING WATERFRONT
On June 11, 2014 - eight years, four months and two weeks after the
first groundbreaking ceremony on February 28, 2006 - Westchester's taxpayer-subsidized
luxury developer Martin Ginsburg and a coterie of compliant local officials held another groundbreaking ceremony
at Harbor Square. This time, it was a private ceremony - by invitation only - held two
months after the yeoman efforts of Mayor William Hanauer and Trustee John
Codman helped provide Ginsburg another massive tax break for the project with its designation as a Westchester County Industrial Development Agency
site.
The latest tax break gave an immediate taxpayer subsidy of $780,000 in mortgage taxes alone as it closed on its construction and other mortgage financing on April 11. This financing, totaling $60,000,000.00 (SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS) is also taxpayer subsidized through the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency.
Click to view news reports of the 2006 groundbreaking:
The latest tax break gave an immediate taxpayer subsidy of $780,000 in mortgage taxes alone as it closed on its construction and other mortgage financing on April 11. This financing, totaling $60,000,000.00 (SIXTY MILLION DOLLARS) is also taxpayer subsidized through the Westchester County Industrial Development Agency.
At
the April closing, the village also made substantial amendments to
the original Land Acquisition and Disposition Agreement, including
the approval of an additional 38 units, for a total of 188
apartments, and the release of Cappelli from the project, among other
concessions.
At
the time of the first groundbreaking – February 28, 2006 – the
developer (then a joint venture between Ginsburg and Cappelli) was
served with papers in a lawsuit which claimed that a large part of
the project – the former Maue Oil site – had been dedicated as
parkland by the Ossining village board and thus could not be sold by
the village without the approval of the New York State Legislature.
That suit was dismissed when the plaintiff – Don DeBar – missed a
settlement conference in November while his wife was undergoing
chemotherapy. Although DeBar appealed to the Appellate Division of
the state court system, the suit was dismissed, but there was no
ruling on the merits of the case. That claim – that the sale of
the land was an illegal alienation of parkland and was, consequently,
void, still stands. Both Ginsburg and the village have had ample
notice of the claim and the facts underlying it.
Ossining
taxpayers should know that the village sold the Harbor Square site to
Ginsburg and Cappelli in September, 2006 for $2,279,000. THREE MONTHS
LATER, the developers obtained one mortgage in the amount of
$10,500,000, and, in October, 2008, another in the amount of
$3,900,000, for a total of $14,400,000. Since banks generally only
loan up to 75% of the appraised value of land, it appears that the
village undercharged the developers by about $16,921,000 for the
land.
Nevertheless,
the developers were not satisfied with this generosity. In September,
2007 – a year after they bought the land and nine months after they
mortgaged it for $10.5 Million, they filed a lawsuit against the Town
of Ossining Assessor, seeking to reduce their property taxes to 10%
of what the town, school and village had billed, claiming that the
land was only worth 10% of the assessment, or less than a million
dollars. They filed similar suits in the following two years, and
ultimately, the taxes were reduced by about 25%.
Last
year, the developers filed another suit to reduce their assessment,
again claiming that the land was worth less than a million dollars.
Mayor Hanauer and Trustee Codman worked furiously over the past year
to obtain further tax relief for the developers and, within hours of
the only hearing on the matter, got the county IDA board to approve
yet another tax break.
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