Thornwood gasoline-industry operator Sammy Eljamal seems to have been moved by conflicting business interests when he blocked a potentially profitable land deal last year that would have brought a Costco Wholesale Corp. store to Yorktown.
The approximately 152,000-square-foot Costco warehouse that Long Island developer Wilbur Breslin wants to build at 3200 Crompond Road beside the Taconic State Parkway also would include a Costco gas station, where pump prices could be as much as 40 cents to 45 cents below retail prices at other stations in northern Westchester County.
Eljamal and partners in New York Fuel Holdings L.L.C. in 2010 acquired all Shell Oil Co. stations in the county. Eljamal, owner of Wholesale Fuels in Thornwood, also has personal or family interests in Mobil and other stations in the area.
He and his partner in the Yorktown land deal, Majed “Mitch” Nesheiwat, president of Gasland Petroleum Inc., a Kingston fuel distributor, in early 2009 signed a $7-million purchase agreement with Breslin, president and CEO of Breslin Realty Development Corp. in Garden City, for the property, the largest of three adjoining parcels assembled for the project. The partners in 2006 paid $3.8 million for the site, where a motel building that more recently housed a Westchester County homeless shelter stands abandoned and falling into ruin.
Eljamal, however, refused to close on the deal last year as the developer began the town approval process for the project. Five months after his company”™s $43.3-million purchase of Shell”™s metropolitan-market stations, Eljamal went to state Supreme Court in Westchester seeking to void the contract with Breslin, claiming he was told the developer planned to bring in Lowe”™s, the home-improvement retailer, and that he only learned of the Costco plans nearly 18 months after signing the agreement.
Eljamal”™s lawsuit followed by about one month his partner”™s lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Dutchess County, in which Nesheiwat wants a judge to compel Eljamal to sign over the property title and stop interfering with the project. The feuding partners”™ cases this year were merged in state Supreme Court in Westchester.
Nesheiwat told the Business Journal that Eljamal was aware of the plans for a Costco store and gas station when he signed the agreement. Eljamal did not return a call for comment.
Meanwhile, Breslin, whose company is a defendant in the Eljamal suit, and Yorktown officials are waiting for the legal dispute to be resolved.
The Yorktown standoff spawned another lawsuit in June, when commercial broker Jerry Gershner, owner of Gershner Realty Services in Ossining, filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in White Plains against Eljamal, Eljamal”™s and Nesheiwat”™s land-purchase company, Best Rent Properties, and NY Dealer Stations L.L.C, one of the companies formed by Eljamal and his investment partners in the Shell deal. Gershner claims he is owed $320,500 in commissions in the stalled Yorktown deal and an additional $22,500 for his brokerage work that led to Eljamal”™s March purchase of an Elmsford service station.
The stalled Yorktown deal has had a ripple effect that crosses state borders.
Leon Silverman, a partner with Eljamal in both New York and Connecticut service-station and fuel-distributor companies, in a complaint brought in July in state Supreme Court claims Eljamal pledged $1.5 million from the sale of the former Yorktown motel and land as part of his additional $5-million capital contribution to their Fairfield County businesses. Silverman, a prominent commercial landlord based in White Plains, claims Eljamal has defaulted on their agreement and seeks to oust him as managing member of their companies and take over his defaulting partner”™s interest.
In September, Eljamal”™s attorney in the related lawsuits, Albert J. Pirro Jr., asked the court to order Silverman”™s and Eljamal”™s Connecticut companies to pay up to $200,000 for his legal services from his White Plains office.
This could take years of litigation. What is so insulting to residents is most recently you had elected officials standing on the vacant land telling residents they are creating jobs.
Assembly Member Katz and his Republican cronies are an embarrassment holding press conferences on land which is being used for speculation and will most likely be flipped and will take another decade by the town to decide what to do with it.