City protected if center not completed
Documentation submitted by developers of the Irish Cultural Center now sufficiently protects the city if the project is not completed, the city planner says.
Suzanne Cahill said the developers have removed references to an expiration date of an established $200,000 bank letter of credit as insurance.
The documentation originally indicated an expiration date of one year. Cahill said that wasn’t good enough.
“We are asking that the letter for the line of credit be amended because it has a firm expiration date,” Cahill said in early June.
This past week, Cahill said the documentation has been changed to have no expiration date.
“They changed the language,” Cahill said. “It won’t have an expiration unless we, the city, OK it.”
Cahill has said she does not believe the original action was taken intentionally and that the developer has cooperated with the city regarding the letter of credit being amended.
Normally, Cahill said, the city accepts a letter of credit, performance bond or cash to be used to “secure a site” where planned work goes uncompleted. The city usually has access to those funds until a certificate of occupancy is issued.
If the project is done properly, the funds are returned to the developer.
Cahill said the city has accepted letters of credit from banks for “a multitude” of projects in the past.
She said she worked with Rondout Savings Bank to amend the Irish Cultural Center letter because, with the current letter, “we (the city) are not protected sufficiently.”
The Irish Cultural Center received final approval from the Kingston Planning Board in April, and work has begun on the Abeel Street site, overlooking the Rondout Creek, where the building will stand.
The approval came slightly more than six years after the group Irish Cultural Center Hudson Valley first appeared before the Planning Board.
The 16,213-square-foot facility is to include a 171seat theater on its ground floor, which would be built into the hillside facing West Strand and the cityowned Company Hill Path. There also is to be a 70-seat pub.