(Updated- 6 p.m.) Triple Five Aviation Industries has finalized its purchase of the 105-acre Brookhaven campus of Dowling College.
The closing took place on Friday, Triple Five spokesperson Stuart Bienenstock said Sunday.
Attorney Sean Southard with the NYC law firm Klestadt Winters Jureller Southard and Stevens, which is representing the college in its bankruptcy proceeding, yesterday confirmed the sale.
Triple Five Aviation Industries bought the site for $14 million, pursuant to a June 19 order of the bankruptcy court.
Another Triple Five affiliate is the managing partner in Calverton Aviation and Technology LLC, a joint venture with Luminati Aerospace that is seeking to purchase 1,643 acres of vacant land from the Riverhead Community Development Agency inside the Calverton Enterprise Park for $40 million.
Triple Five “sees the two sites as working hand-in-hand, with EPCAL being the ‘epicenter’ of [the company’s] plans,” Bienenstock said in a prior interview.
The Brookhaven site will give Triple Five “the opportunity to display in a small way what the company can do,” Bienenstock said. “It will give Riverhead an opportunity to see what kind of opportunities we can bring to the table,” he said.
The Calverton sale remains pending, with Riverhead officials delaying a decision on the deal until after the town ethics board makes its decision on a complaint filed concerning Councilwoman Jodi Giglio. Giglio had a private meeting in New York City on March 12 with Triple Five officials and former Riverhead Community Development Agency director Chris Kempner during the pendency of a public hearing on the deal. The ethics complaint was filed April 17 by a civic coalition faulting Giglio for taking the meeting and demanding that she recuse herself from voting on CAT’s application.
Closing on the Dowling site was delayed by agreement between the parties at the request of Triple Five, according to bankruptcy court documents. Bienenstock told RiverheadLOCAL last month the company did not expect the real property tax assessment to be as high as they learned it was. The Town of Brookhaven sets the market value of the site at nearly $21 million, according to town records. Triple Five has filed an appeal with the town assessor’s office seeking a reduction in the property tax assessment of the site, according to the Town of Brookhaven.
The Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency approved Triple Five’s application for financial assistance, including exemptions from sales and use taxes and a real property tax abatement, at the conclusion of a public hearing held at a special meeting Aug. 29.
Triple Five sought approval of an agreement cutting the current property tax bill by nearly half in the first year of a proposed 13-year tax abatement. Triple Five’s proposed payments in lieu of taxes would reduce the existing property tax bill from $708,856 to $368,747 in year one of the agreement to $935,320 in year 13.
The PILOT schedule proposed by Triple Five was not implemented by the IDA pending the resolution of the pending tax certiorari with the Brookhaven assessor’s office. The IDA board may approve that PILOT at a future meeting without the need for a new public hearing, according to meeting minutes posted today on the agency’s website.
Triple Five plans to spend $2 million to renovate and upgrade an existing 65,000-square-foot building on the campus, which is located adjacent to a Brookhaven Town-owned airport. It was previously used by Dowling for classrooms and offices for the college’s school of aviation and a dormitory facility.
“Our goal for the site is an industry-university research and development center for advanced transportation technology and [to] propel the Long Island ecosystem and the William Floyd corridor to a leadership position in advanced technology, similar to Silicon Valley,” Bienenstock told the Brookhaven IDA board, according to a press release issued by the agency late this afternoon.
The fate of the Calverton deal may depend on the resolution of the pending ethics complaint against Giglio — although the councilwoman has reserved judgment on whether she will abide by any recommendation that she recuse herself from the vote. Giglio vehemently denies any wrongdoing in taking the meeting at the invitation of Triple Five chairman Nader Ghermezian. She maintains she was simply doing “due diligence” research into the qualifications of the prospective purchaser. Since the March meeting, Giglio has been a proponent of the deal. Before the meeting, she voiced opposition to it and voted against approving the contract of sale, against scheduling a hearing on the purchaser’s qualifications to buy and develop the site and against a resolution changing the location of the hearing to a larger venue.
Councilman James Wooten is a strong supporter of the sale and has said he believes it’s clear that Triple Five is a “qualified and eligible sponsor,” as required by state law before the town can sell or lease an asset without a bid or appraisal.
With Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith and Councilwoman Catherine Kent voicing opposition to the application, arguing that Triple Five has not made sufficient financial disclosure to serve as a basis for the board to act, Deputy Supervisor Tim Hubbard may have the deciding vote — assuming Giglio votes on the application and supports it.
Hubbard declines to say whether he supports the application. He previously joined Jens-Smith and Kent in requiring Triple Five to submit additional financial information to the town before being willing to make a decision on the application. Triple Five submitted additional information, but the town board has not publicly discussed the additional submission and it’s not clear whether board members agree they have sufficient information and documents on which to base a decision.
The previous town board at the last meeting of 2017 voted 3-2 to approve the contract of sale to Calverton Aviation and Technology, in furtherance of a letter of intent with Luminati Aerospace entered between the town and Luminati in April 2017. Two of the three board members voting in favor of the contract — former council member John Dunleavy and former supervisor Sean Walter — left office at year’s end. Wooten is the only current member of the board who voted to approve the contract. But board members say the town’s legal counsel has advised the board the contract terms were set by that vote.
“The contract is the contract. It was voted on in December and for any changes both parties will have to be willing to do so,” Hubbard said at the Sept. 18 town board meeting, responding to questions from Riverhead resident John McAuliff about the town’s ability to change the contract’s provisions to ban certain future uses.
McAuliff said he has heard from “a political person in the district who believes the objective [of the developer] is gambling.”
“That’s false,” Hubbard interjected. “Some people make comments when they honestly don’t have a clue.” And things get repeated and “snowball,” he said. “If we could keep the fallacies out of the equation we could make a good decision.”
Local residents have questioned the stated intentions of Triple Five for the former Grumman site because the company, an international conglomerate, is best known for its development of huge retail and entertainment complexes. It developed and operates the two largest malls in North America, the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada and the Mall of America in Minnesota. It is completing development of a third mega-mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey — a project that two previous developers started and abandoned. It is scheduled to open in spring 2019. Triple Five is also planning a giant retail-entertainment complex in Miami, Florida and is developing another huge project, the Mall of China in Chongqing, which is scheduled to open in December 2020.
But Triple Five has a host of other business and development interests, according to its marketing materials and Bienenstock said the company has no intention of doing anything with the property other than what the town’s redevelopment plan for the site calls for.
“We truly believe that the reuse plan for this site is perfectly in line with our strategy
here,” Bienenstock said.
The Dowling campus, he said, is “extremely synergistic with Calverton.”
Editor’s note: This story was amended post-publication to add information about Triple Five’s application for economic incentive benefits made available by the Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency late yesterday afternoon that was not provided in response to previous email and phone inquiries.
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