Kohl’s comfort

Hudson business owner Stefan Friedemann of Ornamentum has submitted the following letter to the local papers about the latest attempt by Kohl’s and Widewaters to secure a PILOT tax abatement plan from the IDA. Below is a preview of his piece for readers of this site. Their next appearance is this Friday (March 12th ) at 8 am at the County office building, 401 State Street.

MY VIEW
Stefan Friedemann, Hudson


I am a local business owner, and have an apartment that I rent out.

Where my business is concerned, I take for granted that if I don’t invest to make it interesting and appealing, I will lose customers.

The same is true with my rental apartment. I take for granted that if I don’t invest to make it attractive, I either won’t be able to find a tenant, or I will have to lower the rent until someone takes it.

But watching the folks running the Widewaters development, I have come to realize that there is another option.

It seems my business could have been a lot more lucrative if had followed Widewaters’ business plan. If I only I hadn’t built out my business in a unique and attractive manner, investing my own hard-earned capital to grow a customer base from far and wide… If only I hadn’t made the investment to create a cozy and energy-efficient apartment in order to attract a renter to help offset the ridiculously high tax burden of small, locally-owned businesses… If only I had created a generic business plan that made my business look like all the other cookie-cutter retail shops across the country, and kept my rental apartment unappealing to prospective tenants…

Had I only followed that path, I then could have gone to the County powers-that-be and demanded that they help make my business profitable. They would have helped me find a tenant by giving me tax subsidies. They would have increased the burden on other businesses and landlords that have similar products and the landlords that were silly enough to do the work without public assistance. This would have really given my business an edge in this economy.

I realize now that instead of working hard and investing my own money, I should have counted on the wisdom of Roy Brown and Art Baer instead. After all, they have come up with other such great ideas such as moving DSS away from the people who need it, or creating a transitional housing shelter in one of the county’s few historic hotels (in the heart of a growing and steadily developing small business district).

I know now that I should have relied on these leaders to pressure the Industrial Development Agency to divert the public’s tax dollars to making my substandard plan viable, even though it has nothing to do with Industrial Development. I only needed to threaten the County with the potential loss of imaginary career-building jobs and housing stock, and they would have fallen right in line (perhaps after a bit of wining and dining).

Widewaters had the chance to create something interesting – to create a shopping environment that was different from all the vacant mall spaces littering our American landscape. They could have gone the extra mile, as so many small business owners across the countrydo in order to stay afloat. They could have attracted business to sell products that are not already in the county – and in the case of Walmart, were already down the block.

Instead they chose a plan that was devoid of any character, just another strip mall development that will make Greenport look exactly like all the other badly planned towns across the country.

And they want us, the taxpayers and business owners of Columbia County to pay a little extra so that their rental properties are more desirable to prospective tenants, even after they repeatedly lied and threatened their way to the IDA meetings. So now Widewaters comes before the IDA again this Friday to ask once again for the tax breaks that they promised not to ask for. They come for a PILOT for Kohl’s, which they say will lead to another PILOT for TJ Maxx, which we can assume will lead to a third and fourth PILOT to help them fill other vacant properties.

That’s why I join the Chamber of Commerce in asking the IDA to once again reject tax breaks from Widewaters. Send them a message that there will be no further consideration of these applications, whether for 20 years, 15 or 5.

And if they aren’t able to find tenants for their rental properties, they should do what any other business owner in the country does: adjust their business plan to make their properties into something more desirable for tenants, without the benefit of unfair tax advantages taken from the pockets of other business owners and private citizens of Columbia County.