Southeast Mulls Renovating Town Hall vs. Moving

By Holly Crocco

The Southeast Town Board recently revisited a conversation about relocating town hall, versus renovating it.

“This building is in pretty dire need of a facelift, if we plan on staying here,” said Supervisor Nick Durante at the May 15 Southeast Town Board meeting.

Durante recently toured the building that houses the Hudon Valley Cerebral Palsy Association, at 15 Mount Ebo Road, which his currently for sale. “I’m not a realtor, I’m not a banker, but I definitely think it’s something we should look at,” he said.

The supervisor brought up the idea of buying that building and only occupying one floor, and renting out the remaining space.

“This is a big piece of land,” he said, explaining that the town could put a playground or dog park out front.

“The cost of the building is pretty high,” noted Councilwoman Wendy Lewis. “We would not be utilizing a whole lot of the building, and then we would be reliant on renting the space.”

She said the prospect for commercial real estate is dwindling, adding, “I don’t know that I’d want to rely on revenue from renting the building.”

Councilman Eric Larca said that while the Mount Ebo building is an attractive space, it is also 58,000 square feet more than what the town currently occupies. “I don’t think the financials are very good,” he said. “This seems like a lot for us to bite off.”

To buy that property, the town would have to go to residents and ask for permission to take out a bond, according to Larca – who noted that the residents voted down a recreation center a while back.

“Bonding is expensive,” he said. “I don’t know that I’d be comfortable going to the town (residents) and saying, ‘Hey, we’d like to take out this big mortgage to pay for this building with risk associated to it,’ and I don’t know that it’s going to provide more for them.”

Discussion then moved toward the option of improving the existing town hall building.

Larca said there’s still a plan to potentially consolidate the town and village courts in the heart of the village, which would open up a lot of space at town hall. He said the town could then sell the building at 1 Main St., and move the building, accounting, and recreation departments, and the planning board office to town hall.

“You could theoretically move all that up here,” he said. “I think that would be minimal cost.”

“To fix this building would be way cheaper than any new building or construction,” added Durante.

Lewis agreed. “From a financial standpoint, that would be our best option,” she said.

However, the septic system would need to be updated, and the parking lot may need to be expanded, which could cause a problem.

According to town attorney Willis Stephens Jr., the dirt parking lot that extends off the paved lot belongs to New York City as part of its watershed protection program, “and they would never let us put a septic system back there… And you can’t put gravel back there,” he said.

However, Larca said that if the courts were moved to the village, that would free up a lot of parking at town hall.

Stephens agreed.

“I think anything you were to do here at this site, if you were to continue here and to develop this as town hall, it would require that the courts be relocated somewhere else,” he said.

Councilman Alex Mazzotta said it would behoove the town to look at all its options.

“We just have to always know what our core mission is, in government,” he said. “And that’s our focus – that’s our baseline for what we need.”

“I think we have a lot of options in front of us,” added Lewis.

Discussion on the matter is expected to continue.