Residents of Clarkstown will be asked if ownership of the Palisades Center should be allowed to alter the mall on November's general election ballot.
The Clarkstown Town Board unanimously backed a resolution to ask residents if the restrictive covenant limiting Syracuse-based Pyramid Management Group from leasing the mall's fourth floor and adding a parking deck should be removed.
The resolution was moved by Councilman Donald Franchino and seconded by Michael Graziano.
"I've been a proponent of this vote since I took office," Franchino said. "The Palisades Center is, in this town, our number one employer, our number one taxpayer and the number one tourist attraction."
"I don't want this to fail," he added.
Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann said he was confident the town board would agree Thursday night to hold a referendum in November over the fate of the Palisades Center in West Nyack.
The town board vote comes one month after Hoehmann told The Journal News/lohud it would vote on the referendum to lift the restrictive covenant, which required support from Assemblyman Ken Zebrowski, D-New City, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature.
The governor signed the bill into law on Thursday.
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“We need to make sure that all of our commercial and retail facilities get through this crisis and continue to thrive for the business owners, the employees, and the tax base,” said Zebrowski, who drafted and successfully pushed through the legislature a bill that reconciled Clarkstown’s election law with state law.
When the Town Council opened the resolution for public comment, a resident by the name of Steve said there is a lot of history behind this referendum and that by Pyramid has cost Clarkstown residents millions in attorney fees.
Developing the fourth floor of the property without the necessary approvals, the Clarkstown resident said, is the sole reason why the restrictive covenant was put into place.
"The voters said no," he said. "They said no twice."
The resident said the planning board will also need to review the state of the fourth floor as it was built without proper approvals.
Pyramid and Clarkstown agreed to the restrictive covenant when the Palisades Center was built in the 1990s. The restrictive covenant prevents Pyramid from renovating or using 250,000 square feet on the mall’s fourth floor and building a parking deck.
EklecCo NewCo, the limited-liability firm that owns the mall and is backed by Pyramid, even brought a federal suit against Clarkstown over the restrictive covenant in 2016.
The Palisades Center opened in March 1998. Clarkstown held a referendum over an expansion of the mall back in 2002 when residents voted to leave the property unchanged.
Mario Marroquin covers real estate and economic development. Click here to see his latest stories. He can be reached at mmarroquin@gannett.com or @mars3vega
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