Update: Former Cara Nurseries lot to become self-storage facility, with Nassau tax breaks

2060 Linden Boulevard. (Photo: Courtesy of Google Maps)

Here is a tentative timeline of construction progress:

December 2014

March 2015

An industrial development agency in Elmont, Nassau County on Long Island, unanimously agreed to give a prospective self storage facility a sales tax exemption. The exemption consists of $258,750 and $20,475 off the mortgage recording tax. Also, the property tax bill will be frozen for three years. After that, it will slightly increase over the next 12 years.

The proposed facility will be in Elmont located on Linden Boulevard. It will have 116,000 square feet of space and will be three stories high. The estimated cost of the project is $10.4 million.

Critics were not happy with the tax break that the business will be getting. They feel that the valuable tax incentive should be reserved for companies who have a large employee base. (The new facility will have four full-time employees that would earn between $40,000 and $50,000 without benefits.)

Daniel Baker, an attorney for the developer indicated that this developer was the only person interested in the property. People consider the area ‘blight’ so nobody was interested in building there. He also indicated that there was an unmet need for self storage facilities in the area.

Elmont is in the northwest corner of Nassau County. It borders the borough of Queens in New York City. It is considered a suburban bedroom community on Long Island.

The population in Nassau County is over 1.3 million people. That breaks down to about 4,655 people per square mile. These statistics indicate that there is substantial base for a self storage facility.

Baker also indicated that the developer couldn’t afford to build his self storage facility unless he got the tax breaks. This is a ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch your back’ situation. If the developer gets the tax break, he can build his facility. His back is scratched. This will remove the blight from the community so the community’s back is scratched.

Joseph Kearney, the industrial development agency director, said that this project would generate $3.5 million in taxes over 15 years. If the land sat vacant, Elmont would not get any of those tax monies.

Critics expressed concern about how the company (who is getting 15 years of tax subsidies) will give back to the community. Those critics need to be informed about all of the humanitarian projects that self storage businesses do to help out their local communities – from collecting winter wear for the indigent to supporting Toys for Tots to raising monies for hospitals and medical research.