CITY TO PAY TO RAZE OLD HOSPITAL
Council agrees to borrow $2.5M after rejecting development proposal
TROY, N.Y. » A month after rejecting a proposal by a private developer to demolish the former Leonard Hospital and convert it into an apartment complex, the City Council on Thursday night agreed to instead have the city foot the $2.5 million estimated cost of demolishing the long-abandoned eyesore.
By matching 7-2 votes, the council agreed to issue bonds to pay to remove asbestos from the nearly halfcentury-old hospital and tear the building down, as well as to transfer more than $160,000 from the city’s contingency fund to pay to secure the site.
Deputy Comptroller Andy Piotrowski said the city plans to issue the bonds early next year so payments on the debt wouldn’t begin until 2019 or 2020 and also giving the city eight months to find other funding and lessen the direct burden on local taxpayers. Meanwhile, the $160,000 would be used to better secure the property, which has been a frequent target of squatters, vandals and other trespassers and has led to several lawsuits filed against the city by people who have been injured after illegally entering the building. Most recently, a 17-year-old girl was critically injured in July 2016 after she fell 20 feet from a ledge outside the building.
Steps the city plans to take include placing jersey barriers at the existing entrance to the property from New Turnpike Road, fencing the perimeter of the property, adding lighting around the outside of building and funding additional police overtime to allow officers to maintain a greater presence in the area. In fact, Deputy Mayor Monica Kurzejeski told the council Wednesday night that the city already incurred some police overtime to keep an eye on the property over the July 4th holiday.
The two votes against
the proposals came from council President Carmella Mantello and District 2 Councilman Mark McGrath, but each stated different reasons for their opposition.
Mantello said she felt the city should issue the bonds immediately so they could also be used to pay for the added security, adding that the city would be able to begin repaying the debt sooner if the state provides assistance to level out the city’s cost for paying down bonds issued more than two decades ago to bail it out of financial woes that threatened to leave the city insolvent.
“I would like to see if we could bond sooner to avoid this $162,000,” she said.
Deputy Comptroller Andy Piotrowski reminded Mantello, however, that funding, approved in May by the state Financial Restructuring Board in response to a review of the city’s finances requested by thenmayor Lou Rosamilia in 2015, is not guaranteed. He pointed out that board said the additional funding would be released if the city continues prudent budget practices adopted under Mayor Patrick Madden.
“I deal in facts,” Piotrowski explained. “I don’t think it’s fair to present something that isn’t in existance.”
For McGrath, however, his vote was one of principle, he said, chiding council members who voted against the proposal for giving in to what he called prejudice by neighbors of the proposed apartment complex.
“On principle, I’ve got to vote no,” he said. “I just can’t believe what this council did. We had someone offer to take this down for us, and now, we’re going to put $2.5 million on the backs of the taxpayers.”
With a 4-4 vote last month, the council rejected an offer by The Community Builders to demolish the hospital after neighbors expressed concerns with the mixedincome apartment complex the developer proposed for the site. The Community Builders, which just completed renovating a River Street furniture warehouse into Tapestry on the Hudson, a similar mixed-income apartment building, would have worked with city officials to arrange state and federal funding, then foot the bill to safely remove asbestos from the property, which opened in 1970 but was shuttered in 1996 as part of a statewide effort to consolidate health-care services.
Once financing was in place and demolition completed, the plan was to replace the building with a four- or five-story building that would house 60 to 80 apartments, including one-, two- and three-bedroom units, as well as a community room, computer labs and laundry facilities. The remaining apartments would have been gardenstyle units, possible townhouses, with as many as 40 planned for a separate building on the 6.40-acre lot.
Opponents of the plan offered a host of concerns, including the impact of additional traffic on the neighborhood, how the Lansingburgh Central School District would handle an expected influx of school-age children and potential trouble from the recovering addicts, people with mental health issues and others who would live in supportive housing units within the complex.
Those concerns led Mantello and at-large representative Erin Sullivan-Teta to withdraw their initial support for the plan.
The Community Builders’ proposal was the third city officials had received over the past year, with the first two being abandoned after developers saw the extent of work needed to either renovate or demolish the building. The city, which took ownership of the property through tax foreclosure in 2012, will now bear the demolition cost itself and prepare a shovel-ready, 6.4-acre lot to be developed for a project more in line with the surrounding residential neighborhood on the Schaghticoke town line.
The council also unanimously approved an additional $9.5 million in bonding, including $8.1 million to complete a project to upgrade about 7,750 linear feet of seawall between State Street and the Troy Downtown Marina behind the Hedley Park Place building on River Street and repair damage caused in 2011 by Tropical Storm Irene. The city already bonded for $9 million for the project in 2014, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency has provided more than $14 million in federal funding for the project, which would help to better protect the downtown area from future flooding.
The remaining $1.4 million in borrowing, meanwhile, would pay for various other pieces of the city’s capital plan, including the purchase of new public works and public safety equipment and vehicles, emergency demolitions, renovation or reconstruction of the city’s Department of Public Works facilities and upgrading parking meters.