The town of Greenburgh is turning to an environmental consultant in hopes of driving up the asking price for the former Frank”™s Nursery property by easing concerns over soil contamination at the site.
Greenburgh had planned to auction off the property to the highest bidder Nov. 13, but that auction was canceled when the town”™s hired auctioneer warned that interested parties would either hold back their bids or bid low due to uncertainty about the cost of needed environmental cleanups of the site.
Potential buyers had estimated that the cost for potential cleanup could reach millions of dollars, even though last year Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, a Democrat, said they pegged the remediation more in the $100,000 range. Feiner told the Business Journal last week that further environmental reviews were necessary to get proper value for the property, which the town took over in a foreclosure proceeding.
“Our goal is to provide potential bidders with a comfort level that if they purchase the property they will be able to build on it,” Feiner said. The town was looking to meet with state Department of Environmental Conservation representatives to discuss potential plans for guidance on their likelihood of approval, he said.
Feiner also said Greenburgh would seek state grants or federal funding that could reduce any cleanup costs for the property. Although the supervisor had hoped that the auction could be rescheduled for January, the uncertainty of costs is unlikely to be resolved by then and with the holidays weeks away it would be a difficult task to coordinate meetings with consultants and regulators during the next two months.
Anthony Catalano is a senior partner with Woodard & Curran Engineering, the environmental consultant with an office in White Plains. That firm had previously conducted an analysis of contamination of the property and found an oil tank in 2001 spilled 200 gallons of No. 2 fuel into the ground and had “some impact” on groundwater there.
Catalano told Greenburgh Town Board members at their Nov. 18 work session that revisiting that contamination issue and meeting with DEC representatives could allow for potential bidders to better estimate what their costs would be if they buy the property.
“Certainly addressing the spill and any potential impacts would increase the marketability of the property,” he said. Catalano noted that different plans could call for different amounts of excavation, which meant it was difficult to issue a blanket estimate as to what environmental remediation costs would be for a developer.
The town acquired the land in a 2011 tax foreclosure and received an offer from Game On 365 LLC, which offered $1.7 million for the land and promised an additional $1.3 million over 13 years. Town officials announced they had agreed to that deal at a press conference in May 2013.
But the deal drew opposition, with critics saying the phrasing of the deal didn”™t properly ensure the $1.3 million would be paid. Some residents said the town should have accepted a competing offer from Ardsley-based House of Sports, which had jumped in with a $3.5 million cash offer for the property “as is.”
A month after announcing the deal with Game On, the town offered the property to House of Sports instead. Both companies threatened lawsuits if Greenburgh contracted with the other, leading to the town putting off the sale. Both companies wanted to build a sports facility.
Game On project manager Martin Hewitt said at the time that an open bidding process is the fairest option. “It”™s the cleanest way that the town can avoid a lawsuit,” he said.
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