Woodbury hotel up for $1.5M tax break

News
Woodbury hotel up for $1.5M tax break


By Chris McKenna
August 25, 2006
Times Herald-Record
The developer planning a Hampton Inn hotel near Woodbury Common would save at least $1.5 million in property taxes over 10 years under a generous new tax abatement Orange County is dangling to attract high-paying employers.

With days to go before a public hearing on the proposed tax break, no one has released an official estimate of how much the Monroe-Woodbury School District, Woodbury and the county would lose in taxes, because no one knows how much the assessor will decide the proposed 136-room hotel is worth.

But you can calculate the bare minimum by taking the assessment of the 127-room Hampton Inn in Wallkill, translating it into Woodbury property values and plugging in current Woodbury tax rates.

By that yardstick, the discount totals $1.5 million — if tax rates remain where they are now until the abatement runs out.

The estimate is highly conservative because the Woodbury Hampton Inn will be larger than Wallkill's and because taxes will undoubtedly rise, even before the hotel opens.

Developer Martin Milano's Hampton Inn is one of the first projects in line for a juiced-up tax break for new businesses that the county adopted in May. The county's Industrial Development Agency — its economic development arm — created the incentive to compete with neighboring counties and states for big employers with high-paying jobs.

According to the agency, four or five businesses have already applied for the abatement, which waives property taxes for one year and then phases them in at 10 percent increments. The total savings over 10 years is 55 percent.

Hotels are explicitly excluded under the tax break, but Milano — the owner of a Hampton Inn in Newburgh and a Hilton Garden Inn that will soon open in the same town — is seeking to qualify as "tourism-related," one of many industries the policy targets.

Local officials are on the warpath because both the town and the school district eliminated a smaller, state-imposed tax break years ago but have no say over this new one.

Whether Milano gets it will be up to the Industrial Development Agency. Its seven-member board will hold a hearing on the proposal at 1 p.m. Monday at Woodbury Town Hall. The board is expected to make a final decision in September.