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SCHENECTADY
Businesses join to tackle eyesore
Burned-out building will become parking lot
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    For two years, the owners of the Aveda hair salon and Northeast Management Realty have tried to ignore the burned-out, boarded-up building sitting between them.
    But removing the blight has become so important to them that they agreed to pay nearly $40,000 to get rid of the structure at 1755 State St.
    “It really handicapped the business,” explained Aveda owner Ralf Torkel. “When my customers see that burnedout building, they do not want to park in the back. There could be homeless people in it, or anything.”
    The two-story apartment building burned down in January 2007. The fire nearly spread to Aveda and left the apartments uninhabitable. The windows have been boarded up, but large holes can still be seen in the roof and pieces of the building flap in the wind.
    “When people saw that, our reputation went lower. We lost business,” Torkel said. “We’ll be happy to resolve the eyesore. We would be happier if the city would go through the process quicker. It’s been two years!”
    The city has just now concluded a complex negotiation with the out-ofstate, hospitalized owner of the building. In the end, the city took the property in foreclosure and convinced American Tax Funding to sell the delinquent tax liens for $5,000 — far less than the $35,000 that ATF paid when it bought those liens from the city.
    The city then convinced the adjacent business owners to pay not only the $5,000 but also the current school taxes — roughly $3,000 — and the full cost to demolish the building. That’s estimated at $30,000.
    “They will demolish it and use it as a parking lot for both their businesses,” said Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden, who called the arrangement a “new model” for dealing with such situations.
    The city couldn’t afford to knock the building down — it has demolition funds, but only for blight that will be replaced with houses. City officials also didn’t have any budgeted funds to buy back the liens they sold to ATF.
    But ATF couldn’t break even by foreclosing, demolishing the building and selling the vacant land. That’s why ATF agreed to sell the liens for far less than their original value.
    “They had little motivation to take the property, so there’s room to negotiate,” Van Norden said.
    In the past, the city paid ATF the full lien price for properties it decided to demolish. But that strategy has clearly changed. Van Norden said the city will now negotiate to pay ATF part of the money it spent on liens.
    “We’re trying to come up with creative ways to deal with liens that ATF in good faith bought from us,” Van Norden said, but he added that ATF paid the city more than it should have for certain property liens.
    “ATF has been buying, at a premium rate, what can only be called toxic assets,” Van Norden said.
    On April 16 he will meet with ATF to negotiate sale prices on a lengthly list of such properties, he said.
    In the meantime, the owners who will ...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00701