Covert Avenue Fire Property

As previously reported, the owner of the Covert Avenue fire property, The Hillcrest of Floral Park LLC, received the Nassau County approvals required in order for the Village to issue the building permits. We look forward to this project getting under way and, most importantly, we look forward to its completion which will be a positive addition to the Village for years to come.

Several weeks ago, the Village was informed that The Hillcrest of Floral Park LLC would seek financial assistance through the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency (IDA) in connection with their financing of the project.  Financial assistance through the Town of Hempstead IDA involves granting the owner relief from sales taxes and building materials and also involves Payments-in-Lieu-of Taxes (PILOTs) in place of the payments of real property taxes by the owner.

There is limited ability by local governments within these laws, such as the Village, to oppose granting tax benefits by the IDA to the property owner.  Nonetheless, the Village Board, administration and the special counsel that the Village hired for this matter (Spellman, Gibbons, Pollizi, Truncale & Trentacoste, LLP) worked over the last several weeks to secure a Host Community Benefits Agreement to protect the revenue for the Village that could be anticipated from this project and which will be necessary to pay for the property owner’s fair share of Village services going forward.

Under this proposed Agreement, in addition to the PILOT payments that the Village will receive from the Town of Hempstead IDA, we will receive payments directly from the property owner. These combined payments will roughly equal over the term of the PILOT the Village tax payments projected for this property.  In this way, under the Host Community Benefits Agreement, this project can move forward towards completion while, at the same time, this development will bear its fair share of the costs for essential services it receives from the Village.

While there may be some debate as to the positive and negative aspects of these IDA projects on the larger county-wide level, in the Village Board’s opinion there is very little question that, for the community in which the IDA project is located, there are very real costs for providing essential services to the development.

The Town of Hempstead IDA will be holding a hearing at the Floral Park Village Hall to take comments on The Hillcrest of Floral Park LLC’s IDA Application as a whole on April 30th at 10:00 am.