Ken Regan, VP of Regan Development Corporation, speaks about Maple Commons
In an interview with the Chronicle, the owner of the controversial development answers a number of questions we had about the project.
As anyone who attended last evening’s Board of Trustees meeting or watched it online will know, the future of housing development in Croton-on-Hudson remains a hot button issue. With Maple Commons now a fait accompli, two major new developments, at Parking Lot A and at 1 Half Moon Bay Drive, are now working their way through the village’s approval process. A small but spirited crowd of villagers showed up to protest the speed at which “urbanization” is allegedly occurring in Croton, and some villagers have now started a petition campaign to try to slow it down or stop it.
During the non-agenda item public comments at last evening’s meeting, the Chronicle’s editor, Michael Balter, got up to inform the board that the developer of Maple Commons, Regan Development Corporation, was refusing to answer any questions about this publicly funded project for an update the Chronicle was preparing. As Balter told the Board, this raised serious questions about transparency, even if the village no longer owns the so-called “Katz property.”
We are happy to report that Regan’s vice-president, Ken Regan, got in touch this morning and agreed to respond to our queries.
The first thing we wanted to know was when the new occupants of Maple Commons will be moving in. Regan told us that the two buildings are essentially completed, but that the company is waiting on ConEd to install electricity meters, a process which has been delayed. If that problem is solved in time, Regan said, move-in should be about August 1—although there is no way now to guarantee that.
“We have a lot of people waiting to move in,” Regan told the Chronicle, and it has been “frustrating” both for them and for the company. Regan added that the village of Croton-on-Hudson “has been extremely helpful” and “very positive, probably one of the finer relationships we have had with a municipality.”
Regan confirmed that there will be 32 apartments plus one with a live-in manager. But exactly who is going to move in has not yet been finally determined. Although a housing lottery conducted by the Housing Action Council drew some 5500 applicants, that does not mean that the first 32 winners will get to live at Maple Commons. Far from it. Regan said that the process of choosing who qualifies at the various income levels designated for the project is still ongoing (it is being conducted by Michaels Management of New Jersey) and that it is typical “to go through several hundred applicants to get to 32 households.”
Regan stressed that applicants who do not get into Maple Commons right now “do not lose their place” in the lottery, but that there is no way to know yet exactly who will get the apartments. Regan disputed persistent rumors about how many schoolchildren might be entering the Croton-Harmon district from Maple Commons, and also rumors that a certain number of them would be special needs children. “I can’t imagine how anyone would know about special needs or numbers” given that the selection process is not yet final, Regan said.
Along those same lines, Regan said there was no way to know yet how many people already living and working in Croton would get in. “There was a strong set of applicants” from Croton, he said, and he did take a look at those, which numbered at least 200. (The Chronicle has yet to see any evidence that anyone from Croton will get an apartment, but we will update that reporting as necessary.)
Lastly, we discussed with Regan the current ownership arrangements for Maple Commons. While Regan remains the so-called “equitable” or “fee owner” of the property, in 2022 a special Housing Development Fund Corporation was set up under New York law as the record owner, called 41-51 Maple HDFC. The president of this organization is Nance Shatzkin, who is also president of the Croton Housing Network (CHN.) The HDFC and CHN are on the village tax rolls as the owners of record for Maple Commons.
Regan explained that the HDFC makes it legally easier for the project to generate and flow through tax abatements and other subsidies, such as a large sum from Westchester County that went to buy the property in the first place, and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) agreement between Regan (doing business as 41-51 Maple LLC), the village of Croton, the town of Cortlandt, and 41-51 Maple HDFC. While some in Croton have questioned whether the PILOT, which amounts to $70,000 each year increased by 3% annually over its 30 year lifetime, is a good deal for the village, Regan insists that the village “drove a hard bargain” with his company and that most of the PILOTs for other affordable housing projects it has developed were much lower.
There are many other questions we might want to ask Ken Regan in future discussions, some of which are likely to come up as the housing development takes in our new neighbors and becomes a fixed part of the community. We will update this post as time goes on.
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Great article! Thank you Michael for speaking at the Board of Trustees meeting last night.
Great job Michael! This article further proves that Mayor Pugh chose Regan Development knowing full well that this project would involve government money to purchase the land and then subsequently become a majority affordable housing project. All the necessary complex dealmaking was done before this choice as anyone with a working brain knows there would have been no shortage of development companies that would’ve made this a majority market rate building, with higher taxes than a PILOT. He has apparently done the same with Lot A with the group from Chappaqua as evidenced by the friendly and almost staged Q&A which occurred last night at the board meeting. I can count on Michael to discover that the money required to purchase the existing building next to Lot A will be government money, part of Governor Hochul’s housing plan, which Mayor Pugh seems incredibly enthusiastic to volunteer Croton as a Petri dish.