It was announced by Mr Feiner, in conjunction with the daily newspaper of record for Westchester County, that Greenburgh town officials finalized the $3.5 million sale of the old Frank's Nursery property. He also touted the future opening for a new assisted living facility at the site. Having lost his battle to develop Dobbs Ferry Road into a sports corridor, his carefully worded explanation avoided all hints of the calamity he created with the property.
The 7-acre property on Dobbs Ferry Road had been vacant since the nursery shut down. In 2011, the town foreclosed on the property and took possession. From that point on, Mr Feiner made the property a political football. The property was required by County and State law to be sold as municipalities cannot be landlords. What Mr Feiner tried to do was “gift” the property to his new friends from GameOn 365. So egregious and offensive was this move, it forced residents to organize and form the Worthington Woodlands Civic Association!
He said, “It’s significant because now, for the first time, it’s not town property and it’s back on the tax rolls. The construction of the assisted living facility will start. They’ll start with the remediation of the contaminants.” The remediation was promised by Town Attorney and pseudo-environmental expert Tim Lewis to cost no more than $100k to remediate. And, while Mr Feiner was trying to illegally lease the property to GameOn 365, he had insisted the Town would pay for remediation. In actuality, the Town will be responsible for $1,899,283 million of the cleanup.
During the entire time of this bad behavior by Mr Feiner, he enraged the group of people he should have been representing! Instead, he created a tug of war with the area civic associations and taxpayers for the sole benefit of an out-of-state for-profit company. During this time, secret emails between Mr Feiner and his friends at GameOn 365 were uncovered. One damning statement from GameOn 365 to Mr Feiner was that they should stop the email communications and only discuss things by phone as emails are subject to F.O.I.L. requests and phone conversations are not. They did just that!
After a proposal for a sports and recreation facility fell through, the town reached a deal in 2015 with Capitol Seniors Housing for an assisted living facility. That deal was finalized Thursday with the closing of the sale. The sports facility proposal didn’t “fall through” as Mr Feiner wants the uninitiated to believe. The proposal was out and out rejected by all the residents in the area! Once Mr Feiner and his Board ignored the property beyond 6-months, during which point he could have legally given it away, it reverted back to residential zoning. Since the adjacent residents have a right of refusal, they did just that. As Mr Feiner scrambled to meet with residents individually and in small groups to persuade them to acquiesce and support the GameOn 365 proposal, they stood united!
Mr Feiner said the new facility is expected to generate $500,000 in property taxes. But he doesn’t say if that is yearly, as a lump sum from the sale or how he’s come up with that figure. He routinely throws out figures without corroboration, validation or proof, hoping for the sensational and unsubstantiated reproduction in print newspapers. He also said, "I think it’s going to be a big asset to the town having an assisted living facility at that location. The neighborhood supported it.”
Actually, the neighborhood did and does support it. All along they insisted that the only proposal that could be acceptable at that site was residential housing. He even tried to propose other commercial activities at that location. The civic associations saw what he was trying do. If they said yes to that proposal he could use that to make the argument that there is no difference from placing one type of business over another at that location. The civic associations remained steadfast and eventually won out! It’s this kind of civic involvement that makes for A Better Greenburgh.
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As usual, in regard to “Frank’s", ABG fails to acknowledge facts and history, too often absent in its posts: preferring to rhapsodize here about a civic association in a fire district to which ABG does not belong.
ReplyDeleteFrank’s Nursery closed in 2004 (13 years ago) yet the Town completed its foreclosure action only in 2011 (7 years after) the fact then with imperfect title but eventually cleared.
Its efforts to rid itself of the property followed the Feiner playbook of misconception, misdirection, mismanagement and mendacity. Never mind the train wreck of the patently false "$5 million for Greenburgh (2012, 5 years ago)” malarky (to be paid over 15 years by a developer then with but "5 cents in the bank"), the final injustice in 2017 is the absence of any profit from a sale which provides a net to taxpayers of $0 and maybe even a negative return. Hard to believe (other than Feiner holding the baton) that 7 acres of flatland with water and sewer onsite, 30 minutes from Manhattan and 1/8th a mile from two-way access and egress to a connector highway (NYC and I-287) would not fetch more in proceeds.
After deducting the mitigation cost ($1.9 million), back District taxes, the brokerage commissions (yes plural) and other closing costs: "that's all folks”.
So, Feiner now talks only of taxes to be earned from the planned but unbuilt facility. The $500,000 cited (annually) is in line with the estimate for a similar facility to be built in Edgemont. However, what Feiner does not mention is that, if so, then this $500,000 in taxes should have started a lot sooner (his announcement probably not benefitting taxpayers until 2020, the earliest) had he not fumbled the sale(s).
In regard to the celebration over the anticipated end use of the site, it is interesting how this neighborhood welcomes Assisted Living while in Edgemont such a use is condemned. Those in opposition cite Zoning which was crafted first for yet another Assisted Living location but craftily mostly by an Edgemont lawyer as a trojan horse which Feiner, lacking his usual foresight beyond the tip of his Pinocchioed nose , failed to recognize that this person had hidden Edgemont concerns in mind from the start. And while Overlook Road navigational NIMBY concerns fueled the resulting furor, Overlook is neither the only nor likely direction for EMS vehicles since Greenville and/or White Plains Hospital would not be the only provider/destination of assistance. Not all Greenburgh roads (taken) lead to “ruin”.