Note: The transcript records the meeting date as Tuesday, May 26, 2026, while the instruction specifies May 31, 2026. This summary uses the provided date but flag the discrepancy.
Welcome to the peakscale industrial development agency meetings. It's Tuesday, May 26, 2026 and 710 p.m. Start off with the correspondence. Is there any correspondence? No correspondence. Okay, we have a public hearing tonight on 41 North Division Street pilot application. And do you want to start us off? Yes. The 41 North Division Street, a pilot application. The project sponsor is Children's Village. And they are proposing to adaptively reuse the building, which is a very major accomplishment for us and Children's Village, because it's been dormant for almost 15 years, and it's a crucial location and a crucial building. And there have been a number of projects that have been floated for that building in terms of redevelopment. And they all come up sort of as economically not viable because of the peculiarities of the building, the size of the building, the construction of the building, the location, the lack of parking. So we it's been sitting there, and it's really the unique vision of what Children's Village has for that's really bringing it uh this far along. Um it's been through the um uh the Planning Commission through the zoning board of appeals, uh, and um it's gotten those approvals. It's gotten uh uh uh uh a very interesting and creative stack of uh publicly subsidized uh funding, uh which is what's making it really possible, you know, the lack of of uh predominance of debt that has to be serviced. Uh and uh so we're very fortunate in that regard. And it's also very innovative use of the space in that we're going to have 22 units of housing which are filling a real niche uh here in Peaks Hill for a type of housing which consists of well that's getting into your details, Jeremy, so I'll I'll leave that for you. Um but the uses are very very unique and very beneficial. Uh the council has um approved the project in uh in the sense of us demanding the city to move forward uh with it, uh moving the uh wanting the IDA to move forward with it in terms of the public hearing tonight. And um I think that where we're going to go with it is that um this pilot is particularly uh uh uh unique in a way because the nature of children's village and of the tenant, which is going to be the prime tenant, which is going to be the library, uh, are both nonprofits, so the project would be nonprofit, it would be a non-tax paying project. So the idea of the pilot, and I'll end with this one key point, is that it's a temporary pilot, short-term pilot for I think it's written in six years, and um and the purpose of that is that one of the capital sources is going to be the historic tax credit. Uh and that's gonna actually yield approximately four million dollars in the capital stack, so it's a crucial piece of the funding. And but in order for the tax credits to be monetized, property has to be owned by a private sector entity. So there's going to be a temporary transfer of ownership to the private sector entity for the period of time that the tax credits need to be applied, uh, and then it'll be uh put back into the ownership of Children's Village, uh, and uh we'll proceed from there. So really I think that's enough of me. And Jeremy, why don't you say all the things that I wasn't going to say, but also everything else you want to say? Well, uh thank you, Matthew, uh Chair, uh members of the committee, members of the public, thank you for the opportunity. If I may, um I know you've seen pictures, but if I could just walk you through a quick deck, um let's see. And um I regret um to mention uh to mention at the start that the final uh building would look a little different. Uh Shippo came back to us and said that the fence does not conform to the historical uh standard, so they've uh asked us to make some modifications which we have. I think you know that our architect is Joe Thompson, a local resident. Um just a little bit about us out of Westchester. We here in Westchester we have 114 units of housing in Dobbs Ferry that we built. Um but what drives us uh is this idea that um you know we we have plenty of data in the United States that says one thing that uh let me see this is not moving. Um is it? Oh yep. That um, you know, where you live and where your children go to school is the best predictor of second generation success. That's about 70 years of solid data, both rural and urban. And uh 15 years ago, our board asked us to go outside Westchester. We built our first uh taking a bit a little bit of time for it to load, but uh we built our first building in Manhattan at 126th Street and Adam Clayton. Here we built 60 homes, 12 for young people, and 40 for um uh 38 for families. The studios rent uh start at 165 a month, the one bedrooms are 850, the two bedrooms a thousand fifty, and then uh the commercial space is actually managed and owned by Children's Village for nonprofits, and we have 18,000 square feet there. Our more recent project was the Eliza, um, where also in Manhattan, Northern Manhattan, in uh let's see, in Inwood, where we uh build 22,000 square feet for the New York Public Library, a community uh center with a teaching kitchen, a STEM space, a performance space, a sensory room for children and families dealing uh with uh autism. The entire roof is a garden, uh one bedrooms. Uh I know the mayor just and uh Mayor Mamdani announced uh deeply affordable today. Well, we that's deep, that's the only deeply affordable building that he can point to. We have studios for 360, two bedrooms for 585, three bedrooms for 1,300, um 75 apartments, 80,000 applications. Um gives you a sense. And coming back to PeakScale, we were looking for a property.