Cobleskill Village officials are looking into selling their Mineral Springs Road building, which could be the first step in bringing municipal offices back downtown.
But everything would have to work out just right, and even then the sale would be months or a year away, Deputy Mayor Mark Galasso said Monday.
“Right now, we have way more questions than answers,” Mr. Galasso said.
The process started earlier this summer when a local business person contacted former Mayor Mark Nadeau to inquire about buying the building.
That’s pretty much all Mr. Galasso knows right now. He plans to call the potential buyer, find out of he’s still seriously interested, and report at the village board meeting on Tuesday.
If there’s interest from the buyer, Mr. Galasso sees the sale as beneficial for Cobleskill, assuming the purchase price is right.
The logical spot for downtown offices would be the in-need-of-repair Newberry Building, owned by Harry Ioannou.
Stressing that he was speaking hypothetically and admitting that there would be many hurdles to clear, Mr. Galasso said the village and town could rent office space from Mr. Ioannou.
Mr. Ioannou, in turn, would remodel Newberry’s as his village and town tenants would want.
“The key to any renovation is that the owner knows he has cornerstone tenants and a known income,” Mr. Galasso said.
“It’s like a shopping mall with anchor stores. No developer is going to build a mall without signed contracts from anchor stores.”
The move would have several benefits to the village, he added:
•Money from the sale would more than pay for the move downtown.
•Remaining money could serve as a capital reserve fund.
•Newberry’s would become a useful, renovated downtown building. “If this is an opportunity to renovate it, it’s a benefit to the whole community,” Mr. Galasso said.
•And one of the key benefits is that the Mineral Springs Road building would go back on the tax roll.
Built by the Industrial Development Agency, the building has never been taxable property.
“I would say that the taxes from that building would pay 25 to 40 percent of our rental cost (at Newberry’s),” Mr. Galasso said. “But that’s just a guess.”
The village bought the Mineral Springs Road building in September 2000, under the direction of then-Mayor Bill Gilmore.
The village paid $450,000 for the building, and Mr. Gilmore estimated then that would cost another $450,000 to retro-fit it for village offices.
Village officials moved in about six months later, and the offices have been there since. Cobleskill town offices, renting from the village, moved there early this year.
Mr. Galasso plans to contact town officials soon about the potential sale because he “doesn’t want them to be left out in the cold.”
Though Mr. Galasso said the building has served well, he likes the idea of moving back downtown.
“Can we in a financially responsible manner move the town and village offices to downtown?” he asked. “There are benefits beyond dollars and cents.”
But, Mr. Galasso cautioned, “there are still a lot of questions to figure out.”