SamPratt.com

No Ian

Every third person I ran into this weekend in Hudson breathlessly told me the “hush-hush” rumor that Ian Schrager had bought the Warren Inn here. Striking me as dubious, the rumor (after some casual investigation) appears to be wholly untrue.

Instead, an existing Warren Street property owner who has explored hotel ideas here before is said to be in negotiations with the Inn’s owner.

But the 700 block does seem to be a hotbed of real estate activity lately... Just up the street, a buyer is said to be discussing purchase of the Ackerman's building, possibly for conversion to loftlike condos. Meanwhile, renovation of the former Keystone building from an antiques store to a farm-to-table restaurant appears (from what one can see by pressing noses against the glass) to be progressing rapidly.

By the way: It may be useful for readers to know that real estate transactions are entirely public information. Just go to the Columbia County Real Property Department, which is located on the second floor in the back of the D.M.V. building on the corner of 6th and Warren. The County maintains books of monthly transactions which anyone can inspect. They also post online, but only once a year, a summary of all sales within the County. The current file (click here) includes sales from July 2010 through June 2011. 

 

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NOTE: The well-known Warren Inn sign, pictured above (thanks to Lisa Durfee’s Tainted Lady Lounge site) is one at which I raised an eyebrow way back in 1997, in my weekly column for The New York Post. I’ve heard it claimed that for a while, these official-looking historical markers were available to most anyone who paid the State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (a/k/a OPRHP) a modest fee to defray the cost of production—back then about $100. In theory these were supposed to be carefully vetted by historians, but many typos, inaccuracies and frivolities seem to have slipped through...

RP-5217

Anyone who's seen the movie Chinatown knows that if you really want to suss out what's going on behind the scenes in any given place, you'll need to do some digging at the Real Property Department.

So recently, this site paid a visit to the Columbia County version of Los Angeles' Hall of Records to leaf through some stacks of recent RP-5217s.

An RP-5217 is a one-page document filed whenever a piece of property changes hands. It memorializes transaction info such as the buyer, seller, prices paid, the attorney of record, and the like. Here's some things learned just from a casual review of 18 months worth of Hudson RP-5217s:

• A whopping $5,350,000 was the sale price in August of last year on LB Furniture Industries LLC, to formalize the sale of its manufacturing site to Grossinger Management Inc. of Delancey Street in Manhattan. (To the extent that Grossinger or its partners may already have owned most of LB, this price was probably largely nominal.)

• In another large sale, this one for $2,750,000, Eight Iron Buildings Inc. (which uses the offices of Dick Koskey's accounting firm at 502 Union Street as its legal address) purchased One Hudson City Centre in July 2010 for far less than its assessed value of $6,220,100. It had been reported a year previously that Columbia County would purchase the building as a resolution of the Department of Social Services/Ockawamick controversy -- but the seller to Eight Iron was First Niagara, not the County.

• The City acquired five properties in November 2010: 253 Columbia Street, from Barry Kang; 11 Columbia Street from Earsel Napier; 24 and 212-214 Tanners Lane from Carl Ramm; and 518 Washington Street from Timothy Warren, all “pursuant to a court order in tax foreclosure action.”

• The City sold 69-71 North Third Street, a property which had been off the tax rolls for most of the previous decade, for $275,000, more than $100,000 less than its assessed value of $381,800, to a corporation called Second Ward LLC, which does not turn up in State records, searchable here. An even better bargain for the buyer: The City also sold 325 and 327 State Street, assessed separately at $109,700 and $109,500, in February of last year for a combined $33,630 to Housing Resources of Columbia County.

A number of prominent Hudson players have been moved recently to transfer ownership of property from their own names into trusts or corporations, transfers which are commonly done for either tax or liability reasons. For example:

• Two of the more active filers of RP-5217s over this period have been the Mayor's assistant, Carmine Pierro and his family members. For example, Pierro and his wife transferred ownership of 13 Parkwood Boulevard into the Carmine A. Pierro Revocable Living Trust and Leitha A. Revocable Living Trust. Cappy and Louis Pierro, one also learns from these records, are trustees of something called the Antoinette Shallo Irrevocable Trust.

• Linda Mussmann and Claudia Bruce recently have formed a corporation called Paperplay, named for one of their early theater productions, and have transferred ownership of some of their dozen or so properties (including 304 and 312-314 State Street) from their own names to Paperplay for $0. According to the New York State Department of State's Division of Corporations, Paperplay LLC was incorporated on January 6th of this year as a domestic limited liability company.

• The co-directors of Time & Space Limited acquired these properties for what appears to be a great deal less than their assessed value. 312-314 State, assessed at $75,000, was purchased by Mussmann and Bruce for $10,000 from the Estate of Eleanor Simmons. Mussmann (without Bruce) also acquired 304 Columbia, assessed at $93,000, for $20,000 from David and Edward Staats in April 2010. Each was subsequently transferred to Paperplay this year.

• The attorney of record on these transactions: Cheryl Roberts, who works for the City in a legal capacity, and is the principal architect of the (deeply flawed) draft Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) set in motion when Mussmann chaired the City's Waterfront Committee.

Other intriguing property transfers, whose purposes are not immediately obvious to the casual observer, crop up in these records. For example:

• On December 3rd of last year, cartoonist Lawrence Katzman (father of Richard, President of Kaz) acquired 14 and 17 Montgomery Street for $0 from the City of Hudson Industrial Development agency, then immediately sold it back for $0 to the Hudson Development Corporation.

• Why HDC didn't simply acquire the properties directly from CHIDA, rather than going through Katzman, is not obvious. But it again may have something to do with taxes: about seven weeks after these transfers, the Register-Star reported that “a resolution to write off interest and penalties, not to exceed $2,955.37, associated with the donation of the Kaz Inc.-owned warehouses at 14 and 17 Montgomery St. to the Hudson Development Corporation.”

• And lastly, at the end of 2009 the City transferred for $0 a passel of parcels in the North Bay to the State's Office of General Services said to be “Lands Under Water of Hudson River,” though several of the locations are east of the railroad tracks. Interestingly, the City has firmly avoided exploring what lands in that same category might be present in the South Bay, claimed to be owned by Holcim...

Now, don't you want to pay your own visit to the Hall of Records, and see what's happening in your own town?

Real Estates

Rumor is that Kirsten Gillibrand and her husband Jonathan have accepted an offer on their Greenport home, which they bought c. 2005 so that she could run for Congress in the 20th Congressional District (but where the future Senator spent little time)... Note of course that accepted offers do not always result in final sales.

Blue Storage

After barely a year of operation under new ownership, and less than six months after being nominated for a Chamber “Crystal Apple” award, Blue Stores is closed again. Realty signs sprout from uncut grass on the Route 9 and Route 31 sides of the building, though the outdoor furniture is still in place, and flags still flutter as the traffic whips by at well over the 40 mph speed limit.

To be honest, something felt “off” about the new Blue Stores from the get-go.

The previous management kept things simple and no-nonsense. Probably a minor makeover was overdue. But the new owners clearly overspent on renovating the once down-home but perfectly functional interior. The glossily-painted main dining room seemed like something out of an overpriced Chinatown tourist trap, and contrasted sharply with the Ye Olde Taverne atmosphere of the bar area. Looking around, one tended to wonder if someone had a bunch of cash they needed to park somewhere in a hurry.

Still, the place was often packed on weeknights (a rarity around here), rollicking with live acts and karaoke singers. It seemed to be a new favorite venue for various civic organizations to host their banquets and meetings, and also a handy place for people in the south-central part of the county to catch a playoff game on TV, or just catch up with neighbors at the bar.

Unfortunately, the new Blue Stores was plagued by generic food, straight off some bland food service menu, made even less appealing by frequently amateur service.

It was clear to anyone who has ever bussed a table, scoured out a soup pot, or taken an order (this writer included) that most of the staff had little if any restaurant or bar experience—and the management was failing to train or supervise them. A lot of socializing was going on instead of attending to customers with their hands in the air, trying to order another round. Plus when a bartender doesn’t know what goes into a bourbon and soda or a waitress seems so high that she has to come back three times to clarify what you ordered, that’s eventually going to drive your bottom line into the red.

Ultimately that’s not the fault of some 17-year-old who’s landed his or her first real job; it’s the fault of management. In so many service businesses today, ownership forgets to invest in their staff, teaching them the ropes of the business so that they can excel and move up. (Bar/restaurant work is all about tips, so without that leg up few newbies will make a decent living.) Despite the strong support of the community, from the looks of things this venture was never likely to serve enough drinks or chicken parms fast enough to make back all the dough its backers poured into it.

Let’s hope this historic site gets snapped up by someone with a little more restaurant background, and maybe some hotel experience as well—something like a more affordable version of the Madalin Hotel in Tivoli. Given the history and the prime location, it ought to be a goldmine for the right person.