SamPratt.com

Hudson gateway property sells at auction

An unknown buyer has purchased the triangle of land and abandoned building in Greenport which serves as the unofficial entrance to Hudson, at the dangerous intersection of Route 23B and Columbia Turnpike.

The price, according to Lisa Brightly of the County Attorney’s office, was the minimum bid set for last week’s auction of foreclosed properties: $5,000.

The goofy rendering above (created by Morris Associates) was circulated in April 2011 by a group of Hudson and Greenport politicos and developers, who proposed demolishing the dilapated building creating an “entry park.”

One Greenport insider speculated that the likely buyer might be accountant and County GOP ringleader Richard Koskey, who was listed as one of the proponents of the plan in this Register-Star article from the time. The other proponents were then-Mayor Richard Scalera, then-Mayor’s assistant Carmine Pierro and County engineer David Robinson,  gravel king Paul Colarusso, then-Greenport Supervisor Ed Nabozny, along with Guy Apicella, Mary Mazzacano, Daniel Kennealley, and Cathy Bucholsky of the Greenport Garden Club.

County estate sells for reported $10-11 million

Local realtors have been buzzing about one of the biggest private real estate deals in years: the reported $10 or $11 million sale of a 322-acre estate off Harder Road in Claverack and Hillsdale. The listing, now marked sold, is still online at this link.

Marketed by Old Ghent Realty as “completely private and unseen from anywhere except the air,” the property features Catskill views, a trout strea, and a 400-acre lake with exclusive access for the new owner. On maps, the lake is marked as “Philmont reservoir.”

According to sources, the buyer owns a Chinese diaper manufacturing business. (Clearly there are lots of diapers to sell in China, even with their one-child-per-family law.)

The standard commission on a sale of that size would be in the $500,000-$650,000 range. Nice work if you can get it.

$500,000 paid for Allen Street School

Last week, this site reported that property owner Eleanor Ambos was selling the Allen Street School to Eric Galloway, and was also rumored to be negotiating to sell some or all of her other properties as well. Ambos disputed the report, but did not respond to a request to specify about it she deemed incorrect.

There is, however, no longer any question that Ambos has sold the Allen Street School. The document pictured above turned up during this site’s periodic review of public sales records (RP-5217s) at the Columbia County Real Property Department.

This document clearly demonstates that the Galvan Initiatives Foundation paid $500,000 for the property, with T. Eric Galloway and attorney Mark Greenberg representing Galvan as its agents. The transfer was recorded on May 30th, 2013.

Hudson Bits & Bites

Photo: New York Locations

• In addition to the Allen Street School, controversial developer T. Eric Galloway is said to be closing in on a deal for at least one other Eleanor Ambos property in Hudson: the vast Pocketbook Factory. Ambos also owns the former Elks Club (the large Italianate building at Union and 6th, which used to have a bowling alley in the basement). There is some indication that she is liquidating her local holdings.
• Title insurer Jim Monahan told this site today that contrary to some reports, the title work he has done for the City of Hudson was performed at no charge; and that until very late in the process he was never asked to answer questions about the Standard Oil site. Rather, Monahan says that his brief from the City was relatively narrow, and that he had been unaware of debates taking place at meetings and online over the status of the Standard Oil site until his pro bono work came under fire. He added that in conversation with Crawford & Associates, he was told that they had “not even started” their environmental review of the proposed acreage; and that he does not have an opinion at this point on the ownership of the 4.4 acres identified by The Valley Alliance as likely being owned by the City of Hudson, rather than by Holcim. 
• Work on Food Studio, a new Asian-influenced restaurant in the 600 block, continues steadily, with hopes of a summer opening.
• Four properties owned by artist David Deutsch, who at one point was contemplating an ambitious northside redevelopment plan with architect Teddy Cruz, hit the MLS recently. These include the former Nicole Fiacco gallery (once the VFW), the cinderblock across from the Opera House (formerly Mark McDonald’s 330 gallery, and before that Harold’s Lounge), and the two empty lots between them, which look like one lot. The asking price for all four is $1.6 million.

More on Hudson youth, and rents

In a comment on the previous post here about Hudson getting younger, 3rd Ward Alderman John Friedman noted that:

One problem that I hear from younger Hudsonians and those aspiring to be is that the cost of rental housing in the city has climbed precipitously (is that an oxymoron?) in the last year or so and make finding a decent place to live difficult for this particular demographic. The City is trying to figure out ways to stimulate a market response to this demand but that usually takes 2 years or so...

Speaking as a former Young Person, I can attest that every generation thinks that The Rent Is Too Damn High. But since complex issues like this require more than cursory analysis, below are some examples and considerations that might be taken into account:

1. In the documentary film Two Square Miles, recently screened at Basilica Hudson, a local resident complains that landlords are asking “six, seven hundred dollars" for an apartment, calling these prices “crazy.” It is suggested by some that “those people” are trying to “push all of us out.” Now, that interview was shot almost ten years ago. A decade later, I still see that same interviewee daily, walking his dog on Warren Street. He’s still here; he didn’t get pushed out, in spite of the alleged “craziness” of Hudson rents. 
2. Today, one can readily find on Craigslist listings such as this: a newly-remodeled three-bedroom apartment in uptown Hudson for under $1,000. Three young people could share it and pay just $325 each per month. (Does unsubsidized rent get any cheaper than that anywhere in the Hudson Valley, unless you’re prepared to live in a free-fire zone in Newburgh?) One can find many similarly-priced options on Craiglist; while offerings from local realtors tend to be more of the luxury variety.
3. If rents do need ameliorating, the main way the City of Hudson can help is to get its budget and taxes under control, since rents correlate closely to taxation here. Overall, private investment has been a great benefit to Hudson: derelict structures are saved, delinquent properties go back on the tax rolls, contractors get work doing renovations, and formerly-closed-up apartments go back on the rental market, increasing supply. But if a landlord is paying taxes that exceed their montly mortgage payment, that is going to add substantially to what they have to charge in rent just to hold onto their building. Few if any landlords will take a loss on a rental, and high taxes will lead to high rents.
4. Another strategy that could moderate rents would be for the City to encourage or require un(der)used properties to be activated again. One example is Galloway’s apartment building on the corner of Warren and 2nd street: it was cleared of tenants at purchase time nearly a decade ago, and inexplicably has remained empty ever since. Ditto the former “Apartments of Distinction” building at the corner of Union and 5th Street, formerly home to multiple families, There are many other examples of “warehoused” residential space all over town—I recall seeing a figure of as much as 15-20% of housing stock being empty here in one recent report. Get those apartments back on the market, and rents will surely come down, if the law of supply and demand is not an economic fiction.
5. As far as rents going up, it’s worth trying to sort out anecdotal reports from the actual situation before officials take any major action. If a couple of folks’ rents go up, and they talk a lot about it at a local bar frequented by young people, it becomes easy in a small town to jump to the conclusion that everyone’s rent is exploding—even when those two examples are exceptional. For example, just yesterday I went to watch football at the newly-purchased house of a Hudson “young person.” (That in itself is, anecdotally, a good sign.) There were about seven of us hanging out—two of whom had just moved to Hudson to work at a local business. They had been crashing on friends’ couches in search of place to live, and literally during the Patriots/Seahawks game, one of them got a call and they left to move into their new apartment. So what is the reality? Are rents going up too high, or are young people finding apartments? If rents are so problematic, why are young people moving here at a rate unheard of a decade ago? In short, the City might first want to try to collect some rigorous data to find out what is really happening on the ground, rather than acting in haste based on sketchy info.
6. It remains that Hudson has a tremendous amount of subsidized housing, per capita—certainly higher than any other municipality in the County. This subsidized housing stock has not diminished in the past 10-15 years. And it probably also ranks in the top five in the region in terms of providing affordable housing (again, per capita). In the Terrace apartments, for example, if your situations qualifies you, you can get an apartment at a rent which is pegged to your actual income: you only pay what you can actually afford at any given time. This is not something that most towns offer.
7. In that context, it would be useful to determine how Hudson rents compare to rents in other towns and small cities nearby. Is it more expensive to rent an apartment in Hudson than, say, Philmont? Kinderhook? Catskill? Albany? If one thinks that rents are too high in Hudson, where else would one go—and what would one be passing up by moving, in terms of either job or lifestyle opportunities? If you move to a place where rent is cheaper, will there be any work or anything to do after work in that place, or would it be cheaper precisely because it is dead? If housing is really hard to come by in Hudson, it must be even harder elsewhere; and to that extent, rental pressure is a New York State or American problem.

Our American capitalist system is an unfair one, and one that needs fixing. Even former Alderman Quintin Cross (a past master of divide-and-conquer local politics) acknowledges toward the end of Two Square Miles that it is “not the fault” of people who have embraced Hudson’s potential that our society remains full of economic and social ills. With that in mind, it would be good for City officials to consider ways to address the most catastrophic rental situations—such as when a building sells, and longtime renters are given minimal time to move out. Renters ought to have the right to a lease, and a reasonable amount of time to find new quarters if owners change. 

Like every place inhabited by humans, Hudson has some greedy landlords, some slumlords, as well as some elitists whose rental rates are calculated to enact some sort of social engineering. And like every place inhabited by humans, some people latch onto shallowly-understood buzzwords such as gentrification, deploying it as a social pose or way to assuage their own guilt over being privileged, without ever backing it up with actual data or acting meaningfully upon that concern. Gentrification is common in our society; people interested in really understanding and addressing are rare. If anything, thanks to Hudson’s situation, its resources, its walkability, its building stock, and most of all its people, the City may be better positioned than most rural towns to address with the profound flaws of that system.

As noted by that film’s co-producer Sven Huseby at Basilica the other night: if you visit similar towns around the country, one quickly realizes that Hudson’s survival and slow, steady improvement is not merely exceptional in America today, it is almost unique.

Hudson Alderman buys Taghkanic house

Over at The Gossips of Rivertown, Carole Osterink reported a widespread rumor that “Carmine Pierro, longtime aide to Rick Scalera in and out of the mayor's office and now an alderman from the Fifth Ward” may move out of Hudson, having recently purchased a house in Taghkanic.

Public records in the Columbia County Real Property Department office demonstrate the truth of at least the second half of that rumor.

As previously discussed here, the County keeps public files of RP-5217 forms, which are one-page documents filed whenever a piece of property changes hands. Such documents record basic info on real estate transactions including the buyer, seller, the prices paid, the attorney of record, and the like—and are available to anyone to inspect.

And sure enough, an RP-5217 turned up in the file which shows that Cappy Pierro and his wife purchased a house in Taghkanic on the 6th of July for $450,000. Pierro’s attorney for the sale was Jack Connor, who also is one of the City of Hudson’s lawyers. 

For now, the couple appears to still own two houses in Hudson’s 5th Ward—one in their own names which is assessed at 1/3 that price ($151,000), the other via a charitable trust in their names ($167,000). Both properties had their assessments reduced slightly in 2012 (by $2,000 and $6,000, respectively). 

Pierro continues to serve as a Hudson Alderman, chairing a Common Council meeting this week in Don Moore’s absence. Other sources claim that the couple is in the process of selling their Parkwood properties, and may have already found buyers for both... However, the County’s records show no sales having closed yet on either, and neither appears in the Columbia County MLS listings. (Note: There are a few realtors in the County who don’t belong to the MLS.)

Or maybe the Pierros just want to scent some country air—though at more than twice the price of both of their existing houses combined, that’d be some pricey air.

Pierro could in theory continue to represent the 5th Ward even if he did not have his primary residence there—he has several relatives in the Ward, who presumably might agree to maintain a room for him, even if he sold his local properties. In the past, various Aldermen, such as former 4th Ward Council member Alan Keith, managed to retain their position well after moving out of town; and there have been periodic claims that current 4th Ward Supervisor Bill Hughes does not bunk down in Hudson all that often.

Any flagrant falsification of residence might in theory result in legal action, or even invalidation of votes taken by the Council if an Alderman’s weighted vote was improperly cast. But ultimately such matters are usually taken care of by voters, who tend to want their representatives to be bona fide residents.

Real property: What Galvan actually owns

Q: How many properties does the Galvan Initiatives Foundation actually own in the City of Hudson?

A: Just one—the Hudson Library building.

Assessed at $528,300, the current Library building at 400 State Street was transferred for $0 to the Foundation as a donation from a for-profit limited liability corporation, Galvan Partners LLC, less than two weeks ago.

Assuming that GIF is eventually approved as a charitable organization by the IRS, that $528,300 will presumbably be written off the LLC’s taxes, with Library building staying off the local tax rolls since GIF is listing the address as its offices. (Where the Library will wind up remains an open question.)

RP-5217 form for Galvan transfer

I had posed the above question to GIF’s newly-minted director, Tom Swope, in a public online forum last week. Mr. Swope—who previously oversaw numerous applications by Galvan to the Historic Preservation Commission and also millions in property tax grievances brought before the Board of Assessment Review—either did not know the answer, or was too busy to reply, or perhaps did not wish to share this public information.

So I researched it myself at the Columbia County Real Property Department, performing both a computer search and a hand-review of transfer forms (RP-5217s) since December 2011, when the Foundation was incorporated at the State level by Eric Galloway and Henry Van Ameringen.

The for-profit Galvan LLC still owns 35 other buildings in town, according to these records, including one home purchased in late December. Unless the Foundation and LLC have neglected to file their real estate paperwork in a timely way, the number of holdings of the latter is, again, just one.

The question and answer was interesting, among other reasons, because Hudson Mayor Bill Hallenbeck had alluded to what he termed “facts in regards to the Galvin [sic] Foundation and properties which have been purchased renovated, and provided to a lot of important City entities.” The Mayor also stated that he “happen[s] to appreciate what the foundation has accomplished here in Hudson.”

However, the facts on file at the County Real Property Department do not actually support that allusion. The Foundation has acquired a grand total of one building, and has yet to accomplish much except issue a press release, make a controversial proposal, and attack the integrity of three aldermen. One can only assume the Mayor was confusing the for-profit Galvan Partners LLC’s activities, rather than the Foundation’s. Either way, many locally have expressed reservations about or even opposition to the supposed “accomplishments” of either entity.

Tomorrow I expect to have some other real estate news gleaned in the course of this research.

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.