Senior Housing: Developer looks to build senior housing in Steuben
By G. Jeffrey Aaron for
Housing developer Calamar Inc., unable to obtain a property tax abatement for a $10 million senior citizen housing project the firm wanted to build in Horseheads, has abandoned the project and is looking for an alternate site in Steuben County.
The Chemung County Industrial Development Agency at its August meeting turned down Calamar’s second request for tax relief, for the same reason the original request was denied in February.
“We had no problem with the project,” Chemung County Executive and IDA board member Tom Santulli said.
“Since the beginning, the problem has been that this is a for-profit housing project. Our message to Calamar was, ‘We like you here, you’re a quality builder, but an 80 percent abatement would put a huge burden on others who are in that same business,’”
Calamar, based in Wheatfield, N.Y., initially proposed the $10 million project — a 120-unit senior citizen apartment complex built on a 14-acre parcel at Broad Street and Sing Sing Road — in September.
Then, claiming the tax abatement was needed to ensure the rents would be affordable, the company in February asked the IDA for a 15-year tax-abatement plan: an 80 percent tax break for the first two years of the proposed agreement, a 70 percent reduction for the next two years, five years at 60 percent and the remaining six years at a 50 percent tax break.
The IDA turned down the request.
Several months later, Calamar approached village officials in Horseheads, who had passed a resolution opposing the tax abatement, to see if their position had changed, Village Manager Walter Herbst said.
And based on new information related to occupancy rates, the village cut the project’s proposed assessment to $4 million.
Calamar then crunched the numbers, proposed a flat rate on the new assessment that resulted in tax payments similar to the original request presented to the IDA in February, and the IDA again turned them down.
The company is now working with Three Rivers Development Foundation in Corning to put together a similar project, agency President Jack Benjamin said.
Three potential Corning-area sites have been identified and the company is conducting a market analysis. Depending on the scope of the project, Calamar officials indicated they may request a tax abatement for the Steuben project, which would be decided by Steuben County’s IDA.
In the meantime, Three Rivers is gathering demographic information and other data that will be presented to Calamar “within the next week or so,” Benjamin said.
