November 20, 2012

RKG

Pushed off another week? 

5 comments:

Jahn said...

Front and center in todays T&G is the proposed demolition of the Central Building on Main St, opposite Mechanics Hall.

Now I do not know everything that goes on behind the scenes with these things but if I owned the Central Buuilding I would be looking at everything that goes on in downtown and all the subsidies that the Hand It Over Theatre gets, that City Sq gets, that the old Palson Buildings gets, that the WBDC gets, and others get I can not even think of and I would say to myself WTF........how can I as owner of the CentreL BUilding compete.....screw it I will just raze the place and be done with it.

This is so analgous to what also happens to 3 decker owners who get snuffed out by non prifit govt funded builders of Low income housing which non profits build apts costing anywhere from $275,000 to $500,000 per unit.

The owners of the Central Building say at one time there was the possiblity of a tenacy from Quinsig Comm. College, but that evidently is no longer an option. Why is this not an option.... well becuase the govt funded WBDC is looking to rehab the old T&G BUilding on Franklin st with zilions of $$$$$ of govt money and then lease it (maybe sell it?) to QCC.

Again I am not privy to all that goes on with these dealings, This entire situation has the appearance of govt money to other favored Worc Players ending up snuffing out the life of the old Central Building....and I might add to favored non profit players with excessive executive compenstion.

Enough with the socialization of downtown Worc commercial real estate and the bastardiztion of privately held downtown commercial property. Maybe the Central Building should pull a "Hand It Over Theatre" move and form a non profit holding company to beat the real estate taxes. I figure the Hand It Over Theatre beats the city out of about $800,000 in real estate taxes each year, all by virtue of their non profit status.

David Z. said...

Jahn,

The Hanover Theater is assessed @ 534,600 dollars and their tax bill for 2012 is 15,546 dollars.

Signman said...

They are working on stopping the developer at Dodge park...

Jahn said...

David, The Hand It Over Theatre was a $32.8M project and that was at cost levels about when???... 2003 or so?....give or take a year or two.

But now after exponential rises in real estate values over the last decade or so The Hand It Over Theatre somehow is now valued FOR RE TAX PURPOSES at a mere $1/2 million. Once agian to hijack anothers adage....ya cant make this stuff up.

How does one Spend $32M rehabbing an old theatre that is now assessed at only $1/2 Million?

Because The Hand It Over Theatre is tax exempt, I suspect what you're seeing on the city website for taxable valuation for the Hand It Over is possibly some small part of it that for whatever reason is not tax exempt.

Again, I cannot be sure exactly what this taxable valuation of the Hand It Over Theatre is all about, but to further support my position, the old Plymouth Theatre, now the Palladium(?), is valued at $2.2M (4x the Hand It Over Theatre).....Yet, per the assessor, The Hand It Over Theatre is in excellent condition vs the Palladuim rated in Average condition.

Additionally, the assessor lists the replacement cost of The Hand It Over Theater at about $4M. I guess this also begs the question how does $32M get spent rehabbing the place to have it end up with a replacement cost of only $4M ten years later? How very low income, non profit built housing-esque.

Also, the poor step child Palladium Theatre has seen a whooooping 400% increase in assessed value in the last 12 years ...vs....The Hand It Over Theatre assessement going up a mere 25% over the same 12 year period....the same period $32M was spent on this money pit.

Lastly and agian I am not sure whats is happening here, but the $1/2 million valuation for the Hand it Over is not the entire picture. I checked to see if it's their proposed restaurant site, but it is not, as that is listed separately. BTW, they cant even pay their mere $30,000 in real estate taxes on that site and they even haD A $5,000 downward adjustment to these real taxes in the current fiscal year.

I stand by my statement the city got hosed when the Hand It Over Theatre after begging for zillions in taxpayer funding stiffed the city of 100's of thousand in lost tax revenue by going non profit. Now it may not be the exact $800,000 that I cited above, but is is huge.



Jahn said...

So here's poll question. Should the City pay to Take this dev'ers land by eminent domain?

I might also add thsi is all for a park addition which existing park is reportedly under used/not used?

Wait until across the street from this propsed dev'ment someone converts the old Odd Fellows Home to more Low Income housing. Will Dr Phil also suggest a taking of that site for a another addition to Dodge Park?