KOHL'S TO COME BEFORE THE IDA AGAIN

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

03-05-10- 9:52 a.m. - Despite being rejected by the County IDA last month, a PILOT agreement for the proposed Kohl’s store in Greenport is not off the table yet. In fact, the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency has scheduled a special meeting for Friday, March 12, at 8 a.m. in the Board of Supervisors chamber at 401 State Street in Hudson, to discuss granting a PILOT agreement to lure the retailer.

Commissioner of Planning and Economic Development Ken Flood told ccSCOOP that Greenport Commons developer Widewaters will submit a new application for a PILOT that the IDA will discuss at the special meeting. “We are expecting a new Widewaters application for the Kohl’s project. They will be seeking something much more palatable,” said Flood. Flood said he did not know the specifics of what is being requested by Widewaters, since the application has not yet been submitted, but he said he had delivered a message to Widewaters officials in anticipation of the application. “I told them that unless it is something the IDA would pretty much approve of, don’t bother submitting another request.”

During a meeting on February 4 that that drew a standing-room only crowd the 401 State, the IDA rejected a requested 20-year PILOT payment in lieu of property taxes on the proposed store but left the door open for Kohl's to return with a different application. The application before them at that time demanded the twenty-year PILOT that would have kept property taxes to the level of that paid on undeveloped land, abating about $60,000 a year for the life of the PILOT.

Widewater’s lawyer, Marco Marzocchi repeatedly told county officials that without a twenty-year PILOT agreement, Kohl’s would not locate in Greenport.

The Board of Supervisors in January voted to support the PILOT agreement, but a number of area residents and business officials spoke out at the February meeting in opposition to the deal, including David Colby, director of the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce, and the regional manager of Peebles department stores.

Widewaters officials have projected the new Kohl's store would bring an annual payroll of more than $1 million to the county, with 125 new jobs, 30 percent of which would be full time. However, opponents of the plan have questioned those numbers. Sarah Sterling, First Ward Alderman in Hudson, reported that she learned in that the Kohl's in Kingston employs only 50 people.