KINGSTON – Residents and officials voiced concern over the proposed 25-year, $30.7 PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) for the Kingstonian multi-use building project and parking garage in midtown Kingston. The PILOT was the subject of a public hearing Thursday evening conducted by the Ulster County Industrial Development Agency.
The almost $54.9 million project would create luxury, middle and affordable housing, commercial use properties, a park, and a parking garage to hold over 400 vehicles, as a source of solving the parking issues in Kingston.
Although the project has had a positive reception from the city and the Kingston business community, county officials and residents questioned why it hasn’t had an independent impact study conducted for it and what the PILOT’s potential impacts on City of Kingston School funding during an IDA public hearing, Thursday evening.
County Legislator and chairwoman of the Ways & Means Committee, Lynn Archer, claimed to be speaking on behalf of several county legislators. She said they are not explicitly against the project, but believe it’s inappropriate to rely on the developers of the project for speculation on potential impacts and that a third party should evaluate the project before the IDA rules on whether, or not, to approve the PILOT.
“We are currently relying on the people benefitting from the project to provide the projected cost of the project without validation from an independent, third-party who has the knowledge of these types of complex endeavors. This is a multi-use, multi-prospective project that is extremely complex,” said Archer. “We believe that we all have a judiciary responsibility to the residents of Ulster County, in that, an independent review should be undertaken,” she said.
President of the Kingston School Board, James Shaughnessy, agreed that an independent review was necessary, his point being it seems as though the city could build the parking garage for a lower cost than the developers can, but that possibility has not been evaluated.
“The developers are assuming a four percent interest rate on the $17 million cost of the garage. The City of Kingston could probably finance $17 million on a two percent municipal tax-free rate. The difference in that over 25 years is more than $5.5 million. That money is not going to go to the developer; that’s going to go to the banks,” said Shaughnessy. “This is why there needs to be independent analysis of the proposal,” he said.
Kingstonian Project Consultant Dan Ahouse, countered, saying this could be the last chance the city has to mitigate their parking issues.
“I believe, without a doubt in my mind, that this is the best and possibly last chance to solve our uptown parking problem and to do it in a way that signals to investors, both inside and outside of Ulster County, that we are open for business, that we will work with community-minded private partners to find creative solutions to challenges our business and residents face,” said Ahouse.
Shaughnessy added that he was not speaking on behalf of the school district but has personal concerns about the tax exemption of the project with regards to its effects on school funding. A majority of the Kingstonian’s tax exemption, $28.9 million, would be in real property tax. He said he is concerned, especially given the financial troubles from the COVID pandemic, with losing that much tax revenue that could benefit the district. He said the Kingstonian’s new housing would add more students to the district, but none of the families living there would be contributing property tax for 25 years.
The Ulster County IDA will be accepting written public comments for the next two weeks on the topic of the Kingstonian Project’s PILOT. The deadline for public comment will be 5 pm on October 14.
