Business owners fighting mad
Peekskill blight study creates concern among merchants

 

Several business owners join forces in downtown Peekskill yesterday (Tuesday) to show opposition to study.

by Adam Stone
Peekskill business owners hammered city officials at Monday night's Common Council meeting, accusing the Republican majority of trying to hatch a secret plan behind closed doors that could lead to the seizure of their property.

In an attempt to sneak their plan through without much fanfare, business owners said, the council vote held earlier this month to approve a downtown blight study was scheduled without public outreach.

One business owner, Arne Paglia of the Division Street Grill, submitted 1,435 signatures to the council Monday night, with all the petitioners protesting the blight study.

"This is a national trend," Paglia, first to speak Monday night, told the council. "It does not work."

He added, "I don't understand how (this) was an open process," also telling city officials that eminent domain is a "repugnant" affront to "individual rights."

"The blight study empowers them to do eminent domain," Paglia asserted outside the meeting hall chambers during a break in Monday night's action. "It's insidious."

"I don't think eminent domain should ever be used for economic development," added Paglia, who noted the signature collection process, led by various business owners, only began last Wednesday, underscoring the widespread opposition to the study and how sloppily the council has handled the matter.

"It disenfranchises people," Paglia, owner of the Bank Street building where El Trigal restaurant is located, also maintained.

"The minute you start talking about a blight study, that's like putting a shotgun to someone's head," said Marty DiCola, co-owner of Main Street's Peekskill Paint & Hardware.

"I don't like the way the process has begun," added DiCola, estimating 30 to 40 businesses will be directly impacted by the study. "There was no public notification. None whatsoever. Your property value becomes nothing. You can't sell it. The council lost a lot of trust from business owners."
"They've created an atmosphere of distrust," offered Jeannette Phillips, executive vice president of Hudson River HealthCare on Main Street. "We should have been involved earlier in the process."

On May 8th, with Republicans pulling rank, the blight study measure passed 4-3, allowing the city to hire the Long Island-based Cleary Consulting firm for $8,500.

The Northport-based firm, according to the resolution opposed by three council Democrats, will study the four-block area bounded by Bank, Brown, North Broad and Main streets.

With the same vote the council authorized the city to enter into a contract with Warshauer Mellusi Warshauer Architects for $75,000. The Hawthorne-based firm is to prepare a conceptual downtown revitalization plan.

Cleary Consulting, expected to complete its review in less than two months, is to study a 20-acre area that includes a vacant lot, a city parking garage, the Crossroads Plaza shopping center and Hudson River HealthCare.

The study will investigate potential overcrowding, crime, street deficiencies and other potential municipal flaws that could result in a section of the city being designated as "blighted."

For Peekskill's $200 million waterfront development project, the city conducted a study that found property blighted, but never executed eminent domain proceedings, Republican Mayor John Testa pointed out.

If the downtown area is deemed blighted, business owners worry, the city would condemn their property through eminent domain proceedings.

Testa claimed the anxiety bubbling up from the business community is speculative and tenuous, with council Democrats shamelessly stirring emotions for political gain.

"On May 8th a majority of the Common Council voted to begin a new initiative to study the feasibility of redeveloping the eastern portion of the downtown area," Testa told a long line of business owners and other concerned residents who streamed into City Hall Monday night to air their grievances during citizen recognition.

"Since that date," Testa added in a prepared statement read before the start of the public comment session, "an organized campaign of misinformation, scare tactics and outright lies has been waged to build a partisan opposition to the initiative."

Democrats quickly fired back, telling Testa and the raucous audience in the packed chambers that they, along with the community, were kept in the dark by Republicans.

"It was not on a public agenda," Democratic Councilwoman Drew Claxton fumed at the Monday night meeting after Testa issued his statement.

"There is no topic relating to downtown revitalization on any Committee of the Whole or executive session agenda posted for the public," Claxton again stressed yesterday (Tuesday). "The consultants came in the week prior to the passage of the resolution."

"Now we are finally starting to focus on the downtown, but to purposely choose a government driven urban renewal process, pushed through without the inclusion of the very businesses that we should be working to support and strengthen, is simply unconscionable," Claxton, in an e-mail, stated separately yesterday.

Claxton's Democratic colleague, Councilman Don Bennett, said, "I don't think it was fair to push this through so quickly without some discussion on top of that."

"The process…put the merchants and property owners at the end of the process, not at the beginning, not even in the middle as far as I'm concerned, but at the end," he continued.

Testa distributed an April 14 memo to the City Council and the Planning Department that discusses his revitalization initiative, but it remains in question when the blight study proposal was first specifically raised.

"This is a bold idea, but one that I feel needs to be pursued," the memorandum stated.

In speaking with business owners, Testa stated, he said he has found that "many appalling lies have been spread."

"Business and building owners have been told that their buildings will be torn down and their business will close - absolutely not true," the mayor said in his statement.

"Bank Street businesses were told that the street will be closed off and the buildings removed - absolutely not true," continued Testa before listing a litany of other alleged rumors spread by Democrats, such as street-talk that the health center has been told it will have to close and another rumor claiming a developer has already been selected.

When the city met with the consultants a week before the vote, no opposition was voiced by any council member, Brian Havranek, Peekskill's director of planning and development, stressed during an interview.

"We haven't even signed the contracts yet with the consultants," remarked Havranek, labeling concern about eminent domain not just premature, but irrelevant to the commissioning of a blight study.

To clear up some of the confusion, Havranek said he plans on attending a May 31 Business Improvement District meeting to be held at Main Street's Neighborhood Center.

"I can only think someone is putting bad news out there," said the city employee, though he declined to peg council Democrats as the culprits.

On Monday, May 1, there was a verbal presentation about the study and by that Friday council members had received related contracts in their packets, but on May 8, when the vote was held, an hour-long work session before the public meeting was not enough time to deliberate on the matter, Bennett and the Democrats argued.

"That gave us no time for discussion," he contended.

The broader eminent domain debate has gained national attention, with the United States Supreme Court weighing in last year. Traditionally, eminent domain has been reserved for major public projects, such as highway construction.

But in Kelo v. City of New London, a case brought before the Supreme Court in February of 2005 and decided in June, a 5-4 majority held that "the city's proposed disposition of this property qualifies as a 'public use' within the meaning of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment."

Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, stated local governments should be afforded wide latitude in seizing property for land-use decisions of a local nature.

"The city has carefully formulated a development plan that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including, but not limited to, new jobs and increased tax revenue," he wrote.

Redevelopment of Peekskill's downtown, Testa stressed, would also reap significant economic benefits, but the mayor distanced himself from the ideological underpinning of the court's ruling.

He said the Supreme Court decision "is different because it allows you to go straight to eminent domain without a blight study."

Without a blight study, Testa asserted his downtown redevelopment plans are less likely to be achieved.

Testa said the Kelo ruling "played no role at all in our process," but believes the media attention given to the case helped foster some of the outrage circulating in the community.

"If the Kelo case never happened, there would not have been as much of an uproar," the mayor theorized. "I'm not a fan of eminent domain. I hope we never have to use it."

But, Testa added, "I think the discussion of eminent domain is inevitable in the process, but it should not be in the forefront of the discussion."

Republican Councilwoman Catherine Pisani, responding to a comment at Monday night's meeting, reflected on Peekskill's last try at urban renewal in the 1960s.

"I agree with your statement about not knocking down buildings," she commented.

The study that will take place is only designed to begin the process of gathering information crucial to moving forward and developing a plan, Testa stressed.

"It's unfortunate that the word blight is used since it has negative connotations," he remarked. "Certain people are spreading that a blight study must end with a condemnation of property. This is simply not true. This study is simply the necessary first step for a comprehensive redevelopment plan to be put in place as defined by state and federal law in order to allow property owners to take advantage of economic incentives such as tax breaks and grants."

But the property owners don't want to hear it.

They say they're not looking to cause trouble, just seeking to protect their rights.

"This is merely a community coming together out of mutual respect - respect for the individual, respect for law, and the respect for process, in contrast to a misguided and overreaching government," Paglia said. "How much public input will there be when at the outset of the process there was none? Once declared 'blighted,' all rights are gone…The lack of forthrightness fosters rumor, undue influence, unfair advantage, intimidation, coercion, economic loss and divisiveness."

In the end, Testa believes, the community will come to see his vision as being in the "best interest of the citizens of the City of Peekskill."

"Again, this administration has been very proactive and open in its approach to revitalizing Peekskill and will continue that focus," he concluded.

Richard Segnit, the owner of Specialty Welding Custom Trailers on Park Street, isn't convinced.

"We're not very happy," Segnit complained. "We'd like to see Peekskill rejuvenated, but the city shouldn't do that through taking things away from people. To get something taken away and not get fair value just isn't fair."