City Project Holds Promise

(Democrat & Chronicle)

The local building trades are lending developers $10 million in pension fund money to finance the project, located a short walk north of the Little Theatre.

The city has also agreed to share in the liability and cost associated with needed environmental cleanup and protections at the site.

Both are firsts for the area.

So is the project's likely use of a graduated, nine-year tax abatement program that the city established in May as a way to encourage owner-occupied housing downtown. That part of the deal still requires approval from the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency.

The Charlotte Square development has been in discussion at least five years, but construction should get under way in 2008.

City Council on Tuesday voted 8 to 1, with City Councilman John Lightfoot opposed, to approve the sale of 1.11 acres to developer Christa Development Co. The $240,000 sale price could be reduced to offset environmental cleanup and related expenses. Lightfoot said he would have preferred that developers seek an outside grant for those costs.

Charlotte Square — bordered by Charlotte, Scio and Pitkin streets, and Haags Alley — is important to revitalizing downtown, officials say. Construction promises to create 40 to 50 jobs, and the 40 condos could eventually generate $420,000 in annual property tax revenue for the city. But there also is a sense that this could be the start of something bigger.

There are just five unions involved in Charlotte Square: Bricklayers Local 3, Sheet Metal Workers Local 46, Plumbers Local 13, Laborers Local 435 and Electrical Workers Local 86. If the partnership works and the development generates an appropriate return, there could be a push to draw in other unions, from Unite Here to the teachers union, to tap into local labor's estimated $750 million to $1 billion in pension funds.

"You could leverage this money into a larger fund that could be used for local development," said Ken Warner, incoming executive director for Unicon, the labor management group of unions and union contractors and developers that helped broker the investment deal.

Christa is not required to hire union workers or subcontract only with firms that do, though Warner said that is the general understanding. Pat Tobin, vice president at Christa, said Tuesday that it was premature to discuss details.

The developers also get first dibs on vacant, city-owned land at 90 Charlotte St. for a possible second phase of development. The slightly smaller parcel is appraised at $160,000. The area has had many industrial uses over the years, and a dry cleaning business used to adjoin the site on East Main Street.

"We've never been able to get anybody to develop the property because they wouldn't assume the environmental liability that comes with it," said Thomas Richards, the city's corporation counsel.

Most of the contaminants are in adjacent land but threaten to migrate into the site. Christa will do some on-site remediation, some of which already is complete, Richards said.

The city will share in the cost of installing vapor barriers under each residence, and the condos will sit above street-level garages to limit exposure.

"We've agreed to share the responsibility in the future, should something ... go wrong," Richards said. "We take some of the responsibility for the conditions that exist, and the developer takes the responsibility for the work."

Charlotte Square condos will be priced between $220,000 and $400,000, said City Council member Carolee Conklin, chairwoman of the Housing and Community Development Committee, which received the Charlotte Square proposal.

Conklin praised the partnerships that finally put the project on track.

"A lot of work went into this," Richards said. "But the point of it is this: It's an attempt by us to see if we can't do something with the properties that we've been stuck with. If we can't figure out some way to deal with this ..., we're going to have an awful lot of property that we can't do anything with."

In other business Tuesday: