Town wins tax case with Colonie Center
Owners had sought lower property taxes, claiming lower valuation
The town of Colonie has beaten back a lawsuit by the owners of Colonie Center mall to lower their property taxes going back three years.
KKR & Co., which owns much of the mall, had gone to court against the town as well as the South Colonie school district seeking to reduce their assessments for 2017-19.
But last month, State Supreme Court Justice Margaret Walsh in Albany ruled that the owner’s argument was “unpersuasive.”
KKR contended that their 2019 assessment should have been valued at $40 million rather than $60.2 million.
“That’s why we fought it,” Colonie Assessor Ron Monfils, said of the case. The court’s decision was first reported in the Albany Business Review.
They also wanted their 2018 assessment to be $43.7 million rather than $65 million and the 2017 assessment to be at $48 million instead of the $65 million value the town placed on it for tax purposes.
KKR owns 759,000 square feet of the 1.3 million-square foot mall. The section housing Macy’s and the former Sears area, which now hosts Whole Foods, is under separate ownership.
Monfils said the owners had argued that competition from the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland and a national slump in mall traffic in some locations had decreased Colonie Center’s value.
But attorneys for the town argued that Colonie Center remained healthy, with a good income stream, regardless of what was happening in Guilderland or nationally.
“You don’t have some of those things that are happening at other malls,” Monfils said.
He added that KKR is also contesting its 2020 valuation, set at about $60.1 million. They will likely argue that the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent drop in foot traffic lowered the property’s value.
Last year, the valuations yielded about $1.68 million for the school, $342,000 for the county and $244,000 for the town.
Crossgates last August also said they were seeking to cut their $7.5 million property tax bill in half, due to losses attributed to the pandemic.