By GREGORY ZELLER //
A local IDA has taken regional workforce housing by the horns.
The Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency this week approved two tax-benefits packages, both for residential developments in the Hamlet of Baldwin, each with profound affordable-housing and economic-impact potential.
PGD Baldwin Commons LLC, a partnership of the Community Development Corp. of Long Island and Rochester-based builder Park Grove Realty, is planning a 33-unit, $16 million workforce-housing complex on a Merrick Road site currently blighted by a vacant diner and an old auto-storage yard.
That project – and the 215-unit apartment complex Garden City-based Breslin Realty affiliate Baldwin Jaz LLC is looking to build on a 1.8-acre site at the southeast corner of the Grand Avenue/Sunrise Highway intersection – line up with the town’s long-sputtering plans for urban renewal along the Grand Avenue corridor.
Commons denominator: Construction jobs, increased tax revenues and much-needed workforce housing all factor into the Baldwin Commons proposal.
While several come-and-go proposals through the years have “failed to progress,” according to the Hempstead IDA, these two workforce-housing projects “will provide multiple benefits to the town,” noted Hempstead Industrial Development Agency CEO Fred Parola, who checked off boxes ranging from eyesore removals and much-needed rental housing to new jobs and tax revenue increases, even with IDA tax breaks in effect.
Baldwin Jaz’s $106 million Grand at Baldwin project will demolish a former car-storage facility in favor of a new 59,342-square-foot, 5-story building containing 47 studio apartments, 132 one-bedroom apartments and 36 two-bedroom units, along with 5,000 square feet of ground-floor restaurant and retail space and parking for more than 250 vehicles. Ten percent of the housing units will be reserved at workforce-housing rates.
The developer is also planning a “public/private park” linking Grand Avenue with Sunrise Highway, all part of a project slated by the IDA to create 350 construction-phase jobs and, ultimately, seven full-time-equivalent jobs.
Fred Parola: Catalytic conversions.
Baldwin Commons is shaping up as a 32,504-square-foot, four-story building with 27 one-bedroom units and 6 two-bedroom units, plus a fitness room, a laundry facility, rental and maintenance offices and a ground-floor community room. The residences will be available at 60 percent of the Area Median Income, with roughly one-third of the units reserved for seniors.
Both projects received sales and mortgage-tax recording exemptions from the IDA. Baldwin Jaz also earned a 30-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreement, while Baldwin Commons received a 20-year PILOT with an IDA option for a 10-year extension, based on performance metrics.
Both developments, however, will ultimately prove to be tax-revenue winners, according to the IDA. Tax payments over the life of Baldwin Jaz’s proposed PILOT add up to $34.4 million, easily besting the $5.2 million that would be generated by the current property, while tax payments on the Baldwin Commons site will climb steadily over the next 30 years, ultimately increasing over current levels by more than $56,000 annually.
Those revenue increases, combined with a bevy of other socioeconomic benefits, cleared the path for the progressive IDA assistance, according to Parola.
“In addition to serving as a catalyst that will bring much-needed change to Baldwin and increased economic activity in the community, [they] will remove longtime eyesores, alleviate a shortage of rental housing in the town and provide increase revenues to the various taxing jurisdictions,” the CEO added.
