Council committee backs tax relief for apartment building improvements
The Finance Committee of the Kingston Common Council has endorsed a payment-inlieu-of-taxes request from Landmark Preservation for the company’s planned renovations of the Gov. Clinton and Yosman Tower apartment buildings.
The requested tax relief would cover 35 years, but the amount of the relief being sought by Landmark was not available.
City Assessor Daniel Baker said the current annual property taxes for the two buildings is $172,007 each.
Landmark says in its application for a paymentin-lieu-of-taxes, or PILOT, deal that it plans purchase the 92-unit Gov. Clinton building at 1 Albany Ave. from Ver Noy Kill Development and the 104-unit Yosman Tower at 295 Broadway from Granada Buildings before the end of the year. The application states the combined purchase price would be about $17.9 million.
The purchases are to be followed by a $10.8 million project to update kitchens in the apartments, put new roofs on the buildings, install new boilers, replace windows, repair facades and improve fire and safety systems. The application states the projects will be completed by the end of 2018.
Project co-principal Brian Raddock said work in each of the units would take about five hours per day for up to nine days each, and that residents will be offered another place in the building to live temporarily if they do not want to stay in their apartments while workers were present.
“They’ll always have access to their apartments, but if the work’s disturbing them, they can move into a hospitality suite for those few hours,” Raddock said.
Francine Kellman, the other co-principal, was not sure if Landmark would undertake the improvements if the tax plan does not win final approval.
“We would obviously have to discuss that,” she said. “I don’t think we can answer that right now.”