by Robert Lynch, August 17, 2021; additional reporting, August 18, 2021; 1:40 AM
“I’ve been waitin’ two years for this,” Newfield’s Dave McKenna told his County Legislative colleagues Tuesday.
“I’m going to up you a little bit, Dave,” answered Dryden’s Martha Robertson. “I’ve been waiting 20 years.”
But for us, the public shut out of County Government’s biggest secret, that two year wait may have been more than long enough.
Without referencing the long-running secret negotiations that brought them to this point, the Tompkins County Legislature Tuesday (Aug. 17th) approved the purchase of two downtown buildings adjacent to the County Courthouse as the likely preferred site for a new County Office Building. It comes at a total cost of $2.8 Million.
The 12-2 vote, which followed only a quarter-hour of lopsidedly-favorable discussion, saw lawmaker Amanda Champion and Legislature Chair Leslyn McBean-Clairborne vote against the purchase. Both lawmakers said later that the County should not be spending the money since it had already bought another site one block away two years ago as the office building’s initially-intended location.
Under the approved Resolution, the County will buy the Key Bank Building at the corner of North Tioga and East Buffalo Streets for an expected $1.7 Million and the adjacent “Professional Building,” better known as the Wiggins Law Offices, for $1.1 Million.
Environmental documents, approved as part of a companion measure Tuesday, call for the two buildings, along with the County-owned “Building C,” currently housing the Assessment Department and the Board of Elections, to be razed and a new office building constructed, one perhaps five stories high. The County has set no timetable for the office building’s construction.
“I think this is a really positive move for us as a Legislature and for the County,” said the Ithaca City’s Rich John, his opinion reflective of the Legislature’s generally positive spin. “Having looked at this issue for a very long time, this is really a positive option.”
Newfield’s McKenna, whose Downtown Facilities Committee has long steered the Legislature’s purchase with ample help from County Administration, said it was “good news” that negotiations succeeded for the acquisitions, and that now, in his words, we can “authorize people to go ahead and get the building going.”
But not so fast: As the only complication to what appeared to be a hurried, rubber-stamp approval that consumed a mere 15 minutes of a nearly four-hour meeting, Danby’s Dan Klein Tuesday proposed amendments which stripped away Resolution language that made it appear office building construction on the new site—and more specifically, the demolition of Building C—was a foregone conclusion.
“That’s a possible outcome, but it’s certainly not been decided by anybody if that’s to be the plan,” said Klein. “It’s important to me that the message we’re sending out is that we have not made any plan at all… zero.”
Klein’s amendment passed eight-to-six, but not before a pair of legislators pushed back. And their opposing comments made clear how heavily—as rumored—County Administration, specifically former Administrator Jason Molino, had become invested in this change of location and how heavily he and his staff placed their hand to the wheel.
“I think this site is more desirable,” said Robertson. “I think it’s not just true in my mind, but on many peoples’ minds. The County Administration had advised us that [the purchase fits with the County’s ‘strategic plan’],” she continued. “In the interest of communicating to the public that our staff has advised us that this is a desirable site and it’s well worth buying even though we have further down the block on Tioga Street purchased property, I would like to leave that in there,” namely the Legislature’s preference of the new site over the old.
“County Administration and County staff have made a determination that this is the desirable site,” echoed legislator Deborah Dawson, “that it’s more desirable than the other available one.”
In April 2019, the Legislature voted to buy a partially vacant lot at 408 and 412-414 North Tioga, purchased at the time for the office building. Tompkins County paid the seller $1.8 Million. Plans had called for demolishing one building, sparing another, and constructing a new three- or four-story office structure on the site.
Then suddenly, with no public explanation, committee meetings got canceled and legislators began huddling in mysterious closed-door sessions, known now in retrospect to have involved the alternate site’s protracted purchase negotiations.
Committee chair McKenna has said very little to explain the secrecy. But when he addressed the Enfield Town Board August 11th—after the story had broken—McKenna argued that the talks demanded confidential treatment so as not to tip off competing bidders.
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“This is a difficult one for me,” said Legislature Chair McBean-Clairborne, before casting her dissent Tuesday, one of only two that night on the purchase Resolution. “It has been no secret that I have been opposed to it, buying property when we had property and got rid of it.”
McBean-Clairborne referenced the Old Library, labeled surplus by the Legislature and sold to a housing developer in 2017 for a mere $925,000. The developer demolished the building, but has yet to complete the housing. McBean-Clairborne was one of only three legislators who opposed the 2017 sale.
“A few years later, here we are,” said the Legislature’s Chair Tuesday night, viewing the offloading of the Old Library as an opportunity lost. Nonetheless, McBean-Clairborne acknowledged the prospect of a new building on the newly-purchased site could be “exciting.”
The night’s other dissenter, Champion, waived off comment on her reasoning. “It’s too late,” she said, noting the hour. The Ithaca Town lawmaker said only that the County doesn’t need to spend the $2.8 Million when it holds other land available for use.
But these were minority views. Perhaps Ulysses-Enfield’s Anne Koreman best spoke the prevailing opinion: “It’s about time.”
For a much different reason, those she and her colleagues represent might say the same thing. Thank Heaven that after two, long years the Legislature’s Big Secret is finally out.
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