Town waits for school rezoning request
Tillson building, sold by Kingston district, to have 32 apartments
ROSENDALE, N.Y. » The plan to convert the former Tillson Elementary School into apartments requires a zoning change, and the town still is waiting for a formal request from the developer.
“We’re waiting to hear from them right now to come back to the Town Board,” Rosendale Supervisor Jeanne Walsh said of developer Fortune 488, which plans to create 32 apartments in the building that was bought three years ago by Apollon Group LLC.
The change, if granted, would shift the Grist Mill Road property from its current R1/R2 zoning designation to inclusion in an Economic Enterprise Overlay Zone and Community Development District.
The developer was granted
a public hearing on the change in November 2015, but State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) approvals for the project took about a year because the developer was required to prove sufficient water quality and volume.
“We just recently finished their SEQRA, so we’re just waiting from them to come to us to [ask] for a decision,”
Walsh said.
The Tillson building last was used as a Kingston elementary school in 1983 and later was occupied by Ulster BOCES until 2005.
The Kingston school district put the building on the market in 2007, initially hoping to get as much as $1.2 million for it. Four years later, district residents voted to authorize the sale of the building.
Apollon ultimately was the high bidder and bought it for $135,000 in 2014.
The building was constructed at 56 Grist Mill Road in 1959. It measures about 27,000 square feet and sits on an 8.4-acre parcel.
Appollon also was the high bidder for the Kingston school’s district’s former Meagher Elementary School on Wynkoop Place in Midtown Kingston, but the district decided to keep that building and now plans to move its administrative offices there from their current home on Crown Street Uptown Kingston.