P’ville Pays $81G in Tax Refund to Commercial Property Owner
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
The Village of Pleasantville has agreed to pay more than $80,000 to the owner of 1 Campus Drive in a legal settlement of a tax certiorari case.
The Village Board agreed at its Jan. 9 meeting to pay Campus Drive Associates LLC $81,779.81 for overassessments calculated in 2021 and 2022 for three contiguous tax parcels at 1 Campus Drive, located near the Foxwood Condominium complex.
Last September the case was brought to state Supreme Court in Westchester, challenging the village tax assessment, which was based on a prior property value of $11,790,540 when it was owned by Bank of New York/Mellon. Village resident Donald Carey, the current owner, purchased the property in 2021 for $3.5 million, about 70 percent below the previous property value.
On the advice of village attorneys from Keane & Beane, the tax certiorari case was ultimately settled out of court.
The 20-acre property is comprised of four contiguous parcels and includes a 140,000-square-foot, three-story office building, which for many years served as the emergency backup center for the Bank of New York but has been unused since about 2002. A smaller building of about 31,000 square feet at the site continues to be the home of Savin Engineers.
“This tax certiorari case was pretty cut and dry,” said Village Administrator Eric Morrissey. “We’ve been taxing the property as if it was still fully utilized.”
To former village trustee Jonathan Cunningham, the hefty settlement was disturbing. Cunningham attended the Jan. 9 Village Board meeting and criticized the board’s approval of the refund.
“The idea of reassessing this based on a market sale is one I didn’t feel was readily available to the regular homeowner in the state of New York,” Cunningham said. “No homeowner that I’m aware of has ever received a discount cut like that. Ever.”
Defending the settlement was Mayor Peter Scherer who claimed it was difficult to dispute a property marketed and sold at a price far below its assessment.
“We’re now in a circumstance where a very big, well-maintained and very strange property exists in Pleasantville with a 140,000-square foot building with two people working in it for the last 20 years. As it turns out, the owner doesn’t need a big elaborate facility, and as it turns out, no one else does either.”
Cunningham said he would keep his eye out for future tax certioraris for commercial properties.
“As rates go up, it provides the commercial base an opportunity to once again take a look at that income approach and create a situation where certiorari becomes ever increasing,” he said.
Pleasantville Village Assessor Lloyd Tasch said the property is still zoned commercial.
“Unfortunately, in the last few years with the pandemic a lot of commercial properties have taken a huge hit,” Tasch said. “Right now, residential properties are so much more stable than commercial properties.”
Tasch, who also assesses properties in White Plains, said office buildings there are converting to residential use.
“It’s a more stable tax base in any jurisdiction,” he said.
The Campus Drive property remains on the market.
The prospect of changing the zoning code from commercial to residential was presented in a real estate brochure last year by RM Friedland Commercial Real Estate, the company that is marketing the property. The brochure states that the current zoning code allows for petitioning to build up to five residential units per acre.
“This matter makes clear the revival of that property for some productive use is important to us all,” Scherer said. “Among the possible uses that might justify a far higher purchase price for a potential land buyer could become hundreds of thousands of tax dollars to the village, town and school.”
Last summer, some village residents expressed alarm that the Campus Drive parcels could be the site of a major residential development as Pleasantville has experienced development pressures downtown.
Abby is a local journalist who has reported on breaking news for more than 20 years. She currently covers community issues in The Examiner as a full-time reporter and has written for the paper since its inception in 2007. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/
