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| 3/2/2010 12:12:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
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| Recorder file
The former Mohawk Furniture Mill, 5 Mill St., Broadalbin is shown in March 2009. |
| | Assessment settled out of court | BROADALBIN - The town of Broadalbin and the Texas Torah Institute have tentatively settled out of court for the former Mohawk Furniture Mill's assessment.
The assessment was reduced to $310,000, said town Supervisor Joseph DiGiacomo, though he was unsure if the agreement was official.
"The last I knew we were waiting for all parties to sign," he said.
Attempts to reach administrators at the Texas Torah Institute were unsuccessful.
The three-story building, located at 5 Mill St. in the village, is on a 12-acre site with approximately 88,000 square feet of gross building area, including a detached two-story office building and warehouse.
The institute filed a petition against the town's assessing department in Fulton County Court with claims the $700,550 assessment was in excess of fair market value.
The Broadalbin assessing department reduced the original $950,000 value after being reappraised in the spring 2009, said Assessor Joseph McDonald. The petition, filed in August, indicated an appraisal company hired by the institute assessed the building at $110,000.
"The building is a big white elephant," said DiGiacomo. "I know the building was once on the market for $265,000, and is on 12 acres in the village. I know there's a lot of wetlands, so if [$310,000] is what they settled for, I don't have a problem with that. I'm not happy with the legal fees we incurred, but happy that it's settled."
The litigation files indicate the institute acquired the mill in September 2008 "as a charitable transfer." The deed shows the institute paid $10 for the mill.
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Developer walks away from mill project
Heather Nellis
Recorder News Staff
BROADALBIN - Long Island developer Uri Kaufman said Monday he will not be rehabilitating the former Mohawk Furniture Mill in the village into luxury loft-style apartments, and will not be tearing it down to build houses, either.
Instead, the mill, owned by the Texas Torah Institute in Dallas, is now on the market for $75,000, and will be sold as is. The listing was entered Feb. 14.
Richard Kessler Commercial is listed as the broker. The three-story mill is listed as having 70,000 square feet, and an office building measuring 6,600 square feet, "both in need of rehab," and an 11,000-square-foot warehouse "ready to use."
"The owners told me they were going to look in that direction," Kaufman said of the building being on the market. "With that being the case, we're assuming our job is complete."
Kaufman had an option agreement to purchase the building, located at 5 Mill St., and had plans to develop the old mill like Harmony Mills in Cohoes.
The roof of the Broadalbin mill, however, collapsed under the weight of heavy snow in March 2009. The village had applied for $2.5 million in RestoreNY Initiative grants, but received notice Sept. 3 the applications were not approved. Kaufman planned to use $300,000 of the grants to fix the roof.
"We basically got there too late," Kaufman said, attributing the grant denial and decrepit state of the building to his decision to walk away. "There's just not much left. The former owners didn't do a good job of maintenance."
After notice of the grant denial in September, Kaufman said there was a possibility the building would be torn down to make way for residential homes to be built on the 12 acres of property.
But now, "with the economy being the way it is, no one is building new houses," Kaufman said.
Broadalbin village Mayor Eugene Christopher said Kaufman has not contacted him with the decision to walk away from the project, and only heard the building was on sale because someone notified him the building was listed on the Internet.
"I called him a week ago because someone left a door open on the building, but I never heard back from him. I called his maintenance man in Cohoes and he came up to fix it. I asked him about [the building being for sale] and he said he didn't know anything about it," he said.
While Christopher said he's disappointed the plans fell through, he's optimistic someone will buy the building and put it to good use.
"Before, [Texas Torah Institute] wouldn't sell it because they wanted to have it not-for-profit so they wouldn't have to pay taxes on it," Christopher said.
Texas Torah Institute is a not-for profit educational institute. Attempts to reach administrators were not successful.
Christopher first announced Kaufman's intentions for the building in December 2008 at a monthly board meeting.
The village held a public hearing in April to allow residents to air concerns about the potential development and efforts to attain the aforementioned grant funds. Some of the concerns included Kaufman's absence from the hearing and lack of a "definite commitment," and questions about Kaufman's integrity because of an observed reliance on grant money instead of investing his own funds.
"That's the type of person he is," Christopher said at the hearing. "He gets the government to pay for it."
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Contact Heather Nellis at heather.nellis@recordernews.com.
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