Columnist’s view
Chris Churchill has advice for owner of the Central Warehouse in Albany./c1
Evan Blum continues to insist he will transform the city’s biggest eyesore into a massive center for the arts. Just wait, he says. It’ll be great.
The Central Warehouse, Blum tells me, will become some combination of MASS MOCA, the big museum in the Berkshires, and Art Basel, the too-cool-for-school festival held in Miami.
The plan, Blum says, will put the building and its North Albany neighborhood on the international map.
It all sounds dandy. There is, however, one problem: We’ve seen no evidence that Blum, the owner of a downstate architectural salvage business, can make his dream real.
Quite the contrary, actually. In the four years since he bought the warehouse, there has been no outward sign of progress — no indication the
building has been touched with even a drop of paint. Blum has accumulated a $514,000 tab stemming from unpaid taxes, and in April he was hit with a $78,800 fine in Albany City Court for failing to address code violations.
“The deterioration of this building continues with every passing day,” wrote Judge Helena Heath, “and it is in the interest of the community for the city to move forward to a more responsible ownership.”
Albany County, rather than the city, is attempting to do just that. Citing the delinquent taxes, it put the building up for auction last month and hopes to transfer ownership out of Blum’s hands. A team that includes two local developers — Columbia Development and
Redburn Development Partners — has come forward to say it wants the warehouse. (A second bidder has yet to be revealed.)
That could be great news for the city, and for a warehouse that has long been one of the biggest puzzles in local real estate. Built a century ago for cold storage, the building has so much obvious potential but a pragmatic reuse has been far less obvious. Given its issues with asbestos and other factors, a skeptic would call it a money pit.
And these guys want to take it on? Great.
The bad news: Blum is throwing up a roadblock with a bankruptcy filing that he calls “an antitheft device.” Despite his unpaid taxes, Blum insists he’s the victim, stymied by soulless bureaucrats who fail to see the grandeur of his vision.
“I’m being treated very poorly,” he told me. “They don’t want me to succeed.”
It’s worth remembering Blum paid just $1 for the 500,000-square-foot building when, under the name Phoenix of Albany LLC, he bought it from Sunmark Federal Credit Union. Any chap with 20 Pepsi cans could have paid just as much.
But Blum got the building for what amounts to spare change because he was supposed to pay the delinquent tax bill — about $273,000 at the time. He never did. Nor has he paid his annual property tax bills of roughly $10,000. His daunting current tab is largely due to late charges and accruing interest.
“I intended to do it and I got derailed,” Blum told me when I asked why he never paid the back taxes. “What do you want me to say?”
I have a soft spot for dreamers, for people who can look at something as ugly as the Central Warehouse and imagine splendor. I want to root for the little guy with big plans. And maybe Blum is right that the city hasn’t been as helpful as it could. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But it would be easier to sympathize with Blum if his struggles didn’t echo what happened in New London, Conn.
There, Blum bought a long-vacant downtown building and promised an exciting transformation. But after a decade, code officials and neighboring businesses grew tired of unshoveled sidewalks, zoning violations and the building’s deteriorating condition, leading the city to file suit in 2017 — the very year Blum bought the Central Warehouse.
Speaking to The Day, the local newspaper,
Blum sounded themes similar to what he says now. He claimed the city of New London did him wrong and stood in his way.
“I understand they’re frustrated. I’m frustrated, too, with the way I’ve been treated,” Blum said then. “I had to navigate my way through a mine field. Most places I go, they roll out the red carpet. Not there.”
Not in Albany either, apparently.
Partnering with Redburn and Columbia in the bid for the warehouse are SEFCU; health insurer CDPHP; Chet Opalka, co-founder of Albany Molecular Research; advertising executive Ed Mitzen; and the owners of the Warehouse at Huck Finn.
That’s quite a group, certainly eclectic. And while the team has yet to detail what it has planned — other than to move Huck Finn’s Playland nearby to land on the river — there’s little doubt prospects for the warehouse would be better in its hands. There are no guarantees, of course, but there would be cause for optimism.
It would be so much better for Albany, then, if Blum let the building go, if he didn’t use the bankruptcy courts to prevent progress, if he accepted that the warehouse is an extremely challenging property that requires hands more experienced than his. It might be hard for Blum to walk away, but it would be the right thing to do.
I tried to make that case when we spoke, but I didn’t convince him.
Blum vowed to keep the warehouse and make it something special, despite all that’s happened.
“I went in there with grand intentions and they beat me up,” he said. “Something’s wrong here. Something’s very wrong.”