Tie vote dooms building proposal
Neighborhood concerns leads two council members to switch votes
It’s back to the drawing board for officials looking to get rid one of the city’s biggest eyesores after the City Council failed Thursday night to approve a proposal to replace the abandoned Leonard Hospital with mixed-rate apartments.
The council’s vote on an offer by The Community Builders to buy the hospital from the city for $1, then demolish and replace it with as many as 120 new apartments, ended in a 4-4 tie after Councilman John Donohue, R-District 6, abstained because of his part-time employment with Unity House, which had agreed to provide services for some residents who would have lived in supportive housing included in the plan. At least a five-vote majority is required for passage of all city legislation, leaving Mayor Patrick Madden and his administration to mull the next step after seeing a third proposal fall through in the past few months.
“I don’t know what the future holds,” Madden admitted Friday morning. “I’m becoming increasingly skeptical that we’re going to find someone to take it down.”
The council had voted 7-2 in favor of the proposal at its May 24 Finance Committee meeting — with council members and Lansingburgh residents Jim Gulli and Kimberly Ashe-McPherson opposing the proposal — but after hearing from dozens of people at both a special community meeting Tuesday night and the beginning of Thursday’s monthly council meeting, council
President Carmella Mantello and at-larger member Erin Sullivan-Teta — another Lansingburgh resident — switched their votes.
“The Burgh spoke on Tuesday night,” Mantello said at Thursday’s meeting, “and I heard them.”
Under the developer’s proposal, it would have worked with city officials to arrange state and federal funding, mainly through state Low-Income Housing Tax Credits used primarily to entice funding sources to invest in a project. The Community Builders would then foot the estimated cost of as much as $2.5 million 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 1-, 2- and 3-bedroom units, as well as a community room, computer labs and laundry facilities. The remaining apartments would be garden-style 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 both Tuesday and Thursday, 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 the supportive housing units.
In an emailed statement Friday morning, Mantello said city officials need to better seek community input before moving ahead with any future plans for the hospital.
“I have long advocated that the former Leonard Hospital … needs to be torn down and remediated,” she said, “and a future use for the site be determined after seeking community input from the Lansingburgh residents.”
The two other recent proposals for the property fell through largely because of the condition of the building, which the city took ownership up in 2012 through tax foreclosure. With a third proposal now by the wayside, Madden admitted the city — and its taxpayers — may have to bite the bullet and pay for the demolition itself, calling it “the lesser of two evils” when compared to the liability the city faces. Officials said the city currently faces two pending lawsuits filed by people who were hurt in or around the boarded-up building.
“It’s going to be another burden on the taxpayer’s back, but I don’t see another way around it at the moment,” Madden said.
Mantello asked at Thursday night’s meeting, however, if the city needed a partner to apply for state or federal funding to finance the needed asbestos abatement and demolition. On Friday, she also suggested the city take immediate steps to better secure the property.
“I will be calling for a future Finance Committee meeting to discuss future options to most economically tear this building down,” she said. “This will include seeking federal and state grants, deeding the building to the [Troy Local Development Corp.] or [Troy Industrial Development Authority], or other avenues that may be available. Until the demolition can be accomplished, a security fence needs to be put around the site.”
The vote was preceded Thursday night by nearly 90 minutes of public comment on the project, with Lansingburgh Central School District Superintendent Cynthia DeDominick saying district officials estimated the project would mean at least an additional 100 district students. While she said the district has the space to house the extra children, providing adequate staffing and materials to accommodate them would likely mean an increase of about 8 percent in the district tax levy.
“The only other way we can cover that [increase] is to reduce what we offer to all of the 2,400 children in the Lansingburgh Central School District,” she told council members. “Isn’t it in the best interest of all of the city of Trfoy if you do something else with it.”