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?
