Why would metroplex pay these guys so much, they are tax delinquents.  I would bet that if you looked up the addresses that either of these guys own alone as well as together, and then contacted the county or city, whichever, you would find that collectively they owe far more than that in delinquent property and school taxes

Cause you can bet that the plex has a developer already lined up to buy this building from the plex for $1. Add to that all of the grant money the plex will give the developer for facade's, asbestos clean up and God only knows what else.

We will have to see exactly who that developer will be. Galesi?

Quoted Text

Stories from Schenectady residents and business owners.
Foster Building to be sold to Metroplex…
March 12, 2010 at 1:20 pm by Matthew Winans





…for a quarter mil.

I’m glad to see somebody finally stepped up to the plate on this building. Architecturally, it’s a real asset to Downtown. This acquisition and subsequent associated projects should, finish off the work needed to be done to “polish” the 400-600 blocks of State Street.

What’s everyone think of this?



Posted in General | 13 Comments
13 Comments »
The “somebody” is the County taxpayers. Again. Metroplex has no history of rehabilitating anything. More examples of the ridiculous over assessment Downtown. Maybe they should rent out Clinton Square before taking on more projects?

Comment by  snooki — March 12th, 2010 @ 3:06 pm

Is it owned by the Schenectady now? If so, fine with me. That will get taxes being paid on it and it being kept up. Abandoned buildings are the worst things to have because they bring the area down.

Comment by  Michelle — March 12th, 2010 @ 3:37 pm

Uh, Michelle, NO, it will NOT get taxes paid on the it.

First of all, WHO is going to pay more than a quarter million for it AND invest over a million to fix it up?

You know darn well, and don’t deny it, it will be our hard earned tax money that will reward someone. They will be given oodles of our tax dollars while the infrastructure in the city gets worse, while the streets get more dangerous, our property values go down, and while the our taxes go up and up and up.

And to Michelle and all the cheerleaders for increasing our taxes, just read the next comment, it is an eyeopener

Comment by  Barbara S — March 12th, 2010 @ 4:59 pm

This is a mixed issue.

Finally, the building was wrestled from it’s current owners. However, Metroplex should have not been paid anything for the purchase, not one penny should be paid to the owners.

If anyone disagrees with me, I want you to explain what your logic is to a person buys a building for $50,000, fails to pay taxes on the building AND fails to pay taxes on most of the other properties owned in the city, and upon purchase promptly chooses to ignore it and chooses to cause much damage to the building by choosing not to turn the heat on in the winter, just a mere four little months after purchase. This owner purchased the building in Sept 98 and just four months later the pipes burst because of the neglectful action of it’s owner, flooding the building, resulting in the need to use city services at taxpayer expense–the fire dept. The owners deliberate neglect caused a million dollars in damage according to the other local newspaper.

So this owner pays $50,000, never pays taxes, doesn’t pay the heat on the building, causes over a million in damage, neglects the building, and then sits back, refusing to budge on turning the building over to the city, metroplex or whatever, until he gets whopping 500% profit! FOR SHAME!

There is not a home in this city that has increased in value five times in ten years! Actually, the official full value in 2006 was only a mere $72,000 according to official records with the city and county of Schenectady. In this recession and property values all over going down, how does anyone come up with a figure that this building increased in value four times in just three years?

Only one guy purchased the building originally, Alsdorf, whose name was faithfully in the paper every year for all the properties he owned for being tax delinquent. He also was president of the Schenectady Slumlords Association too..............Continued.......>>>>......Read more..............>>>>.......................http://blog.timesunion.com/schenectady/foster-building-to-be-sold-to-metroplex/773/#comments

Last piece of the puzzle, LOL! Last piece of the hypocrisy of Gillen's Economy to bankrupt County Taxpayers....

Schenectady is keeping property values inflated so the residents have to pay higher taxes to support the city/county wasteful spending habits.

Quoted from Shadow

Schenectady is keeping property values inflated so the residents have to pay higher taxes to support the city/county wasteful spending habits.

I thought it was Moodys at the encouragement of NYS??????

Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
City may borrow up to $2M for cleanup
BY STEVEN COOK Gazette Reporter

    The city could soon borrow up to another $2 million to complete removal of thousands of tons of contaminated soil at its new Foster Avenue public works facility.
    Commissioner of General Services Carl Olsen asked the council for the extra funds Tuesday night at a committee meeting. The issue is expected to be considered again soon with more precise numbers.
    Olsen said he expected final numbers for the amount still needed to come in at $1.6 million or $1.7 million.
    The additional borrowing would bring the cost of cleaning up decades-old contamination at the Foster Avenue site to around $4 million, Olsen said.
    The total project cost for the public works facility, originally budgeted at about $21 million, is to come in at about $25.5 million.
    Despite the clean-up work, contractors have taken an already tight construction schedule and brought it in five months ahead of schedule, Olsen said. Work is expected to be complete by Jan. 1, saving time and energy costs that would have been spent on older buildings, he said.
    The contaminated soil came from gas tanks that leaked on site decades ago. The city used the area as a public works facility.
    The final amount of contaminated soil removed came to about 41,000 tons.
    F o r c o m p a r i s o n , O l s e n pointed to published estimates of contaminated soil removal from the Golub Corporation Headquarters project on Nott Street.
    The amount of contaminated soil removed from that site, once part of the former American Locomotive Company site, came in at 10,000 tons, a quarter of the city’s public works site.
    “We knew that there was some contaminated soil,” Olsen said. “We had no idea of the amount of contaminated soil that existed.”
    And they couldn’t know that, Olsen said, until they started digging.
    Mayor Brian U. Stratton noted that the extra costs came from taking down a 75-yearold building and reclaiming a former brownfield. .....................>>>>.................>>>>......................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00904&AppName=1

Where does the contaminated soil go? What gets done with it? just curious....do we bury it?

I know that when a company in Albany contaminated soil with gasoline they had to pay $900 per tractor trailer load to truck the soil to a hazardous waste dump in Kingston to get the soil decontaminated and in a couple of years the soil can be reused. I'm sure the price to have this done now is a lot more money that 15 years ago.

There is a chemical/heat process of sorts that is outrageously expensive. If we decided to clean up every yard of contaminated soil in America, it would quadruple the national debt after we did 20% of it. Doing this is like scooping a bucket of water out of the Mohawk river, putting it through a reverse osmosis, and throwing back the cup of pure water you produced in the river, at a cost of two million. Then of course liberal democraps will get more undying devotion from uninformed environmental nuts like the notoriously uninformed, unpractical and dogmatic left-wing radical group, the League of Women Vultures. That is the kind of group who does their witchlike handy work along side the unions during election season. If anyone does the homework on this, your head would explode, but this all coincides with the death of common sense in America due to the iron-clad political control of the far left communist democrap party.

Quoted from GrahamBonnet

There is a chemical/heat process of sorts that is outrageously expensive. If we decided to clean up every yard of contaminated soil in America, it would quadruple the national debt after we did 20% of it. Doing this is like scooping a bucket of water out of the Mohawk river, putting it through a reverse osmosis, and throwing back the cup of pure water you produced in the river, at a cost of two million. Then of course liberal democraps will get more undying devotion from uninformed environmental nuts like the notoriously uninformed, unpractical and dogmatic left-wing radical group, the League of Women Vultures. That is the kind of group who does their witchlike handy work along side the unions during election season. If anyone does the homework on this, your head would explode, but this all coincides with the death of common sense in America due to the iron-clad political control of the far left communist democrap party.

couldn't argue with that.....

[quote=1][/quote]

Wrong thread.

Hotel Foster building (on State st)  vs a city owned Foster Ave building

Quoted Text

Historic Schenectady building undergoing renovations
The Business Review
Date: Friday, March 18, 2011, 12:04pm EDT

A historic six-story building in downtown Schenectady, New York, has been cleaned of nearly 300 tons of material as part of an effort to renovate and restore the structure.
Known as the Foster Building, the property at 508 State St. was purchased a year ago by the Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority.
Since then, the Metroplex has worked with Environmental Remediation Services Inc. (ERSI) of Rotterdam and Bonacio Construction Inc., of Saratoga Springs to remove asbestos, stabilize the building, replace the roof and preserve the structure. The Metroplex said 256,050 pounds of contaminated material have been removed, and 340,000 pounds of demolition material taken out............................>>>>....................>>>>.......................http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/news/2011/03/18/historic-schenectady-building.html