March 12, 2004
Move could double KJ's size
Booming population behind bid for takeover
By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
cmckenna@th-record.com
Get ready for the super-sizing of Kiryas Joel.
Plans are under way to annex hundreds of acres of contiguous land into the village, setting the stage for what could be a massive expansion of New York's fastest-growing municipality.
Land owners just outside the Hasidic community have recently received copies of a proposed contract with Vaad Hakiryah, the community's development arm, promising to include their properties in a single annexation petition.
In return, the land owners would pay Vaad Hakiryah an amount based on the apartments that could eventually be built on their land, according to a translated copy of the proposal obtained by the Times Herald-Record. The original version was in Hebrew.
Property records indicate that realty companies controlled by Vaad Hakiryah and private land holders from Kiryas Joel, Rockland County and Brooklyn own hundreds of acres of land on all sides of Kiryas Joel.
All told, the property could roughly double Kiryas Joel's 1.1 square miles, if it were to be annexed into the village from the towns of Monroe and Woodbury.
THERE ARE TWO MAIN reasons Kiryas Joel and its developers would want to expand the village borders.
One is that the population is booming – due to an explosive birth rate – and residents need at least 200 new apartments a year to remain within the community.
The other is that neighboring towns don't allow the sort of high-density housing Kiryas Joel residents favor for economic reasons. Annexing land into the village allows builders to follow Kiryas Joel's looser zoning rules.
A massive property annexation would give the community plenty of room to expand for years, leading to a low-rise, slightly countrified version of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the base of the Satmar Hasidim.
The most recent census estimate put Kiryas Joel's population at around 15,000 in 2002. But with a growth rate of at least 6 percent a year, it could some day become Orange County's largest population center and a political powerhouse.
KIRYAS JOEL Administrator Gedalye Szegedin said yesterday that the push for a collective annexation petition began very recently at the request of community members who live just outside the village.
They want to join Kiryas Joel to pay much lower school taxes, receive municipal water service – instead of relaying on wells – and have garbage collected more frequently, Szegedin said. About 150 Satmar Hasidic households are outside the village borders, he estimated.
In addition, one Satmar neighborhood in Monroe wants to be annexed because of conflicts with one of its few non-Hasidic residents, he said.
What triggered their request, he said, was the announcement that Kiryas Joel developers had just bought a much-coveted, 140-acre farm on the village border and planned to build housing there.
The village's official position on annexation, Szegedin said, "is going to be reserved until the applications land on the government's desk."
But he expressed support for the idea of one joint petition, saying it would be "confusing and overwhelming" to review numerous small applications.
"If there are many property owners interested, then those property owners should work together," he said.
MUCH ABOUT the proposed contract and annexation request remained unclear yesterday.
Elozer Gruber, identified in the proposal as a Vaad Hakiryah representative, did not return calls for comment.
His lawyer, Dennis Lynch of Nyack, said the document was a rough draft that Simon Gelb – a private planner who represents land owners – had written and distributed. Neither Gruber nor Vaad Hakiryah has signed off on the offer, he said.
But Lynch made it clear that the draft is an early stage in what will likely be a collective annexation petition on behalf of numerous property owners.
"It's an open, ongoing discussion about how to move forward for those who are truly interested in the benefits of annexation," he said. "I think the unanimous sentiment is great interest in the annexation process."
Any annexation petition must be put before the governing bodies of two municipalities; the one giving, and the one taking. If both sides approve, the land shift takes place; if both reject it, the petition fails.
But if only one side supports the request, it could take the issue to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court.
IN PAST INTERVIEWS, Monroe Supervisor Sandy Leonard and Woodbury Supervisor Sheila Conroy have both stated their opposition to ceding land. The Monroe Town Board has rejected recent requests from developers to annex town land into the Village of Monroe.
Neither supervisor could be reached yesterday to comment on the behind-the-scenes annexation push in Kiryas Joel. No petition has been submitted to the towns.
It's unclear how long such a request might take to assemble and how many different properties would be cobbled together in the application.
The proposal obtained by the Record said that Vaad Hakiryah owns "several hundred acres in properties within the surrounding towns, and is currently prepared to initiate the legal procedures to annex them into the boundaries of the Village."
The organization will "include in its efforts" the property of owners who sign the pact, according to Gelb's draft.
THE CONTRACT PROPOSAL has aroused some opposition in the Satmar community, mainly because of the price Vaad Hakiryah would charge for annexation – $12 per square foot of planned apartments.
That amounts to a tidy sum. Using conservative estimates of 2,000-square-foot apartments and 10 units per acre, a property owner with 20 acres of land would have to pay Vaad Hakiryah $4.8 million.
The draft agreement justifies the charge by saying that Vaad Hakiryah spends millions building roads, water and sewer systems and other benefits.
It also argues that property owners will pay lower taxes in Kiryas Joel and make more money off their land, since homes can be built at higher density there.
The deals would pour tens of millions of dollars into the Vaad Hakiryah's coffers, while sparing it the high cost of buying its own property.
Critics posted an advertisement in last week's Der Yid weekly newspaper warning landowners to be wary of the offer and urging them to have a lawyer carefully review it.
One Kiryas Joel resident, who owns land outside the village that he hopes to have annexed to Kiryas Joel, said he won't sign the contract because of the charge. He predicted many others would also resist the offer for the same reason.
"I don't want to give them money," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Why should they get hundreds of millions of dollars?"
The payment to Vaad Hakiryah ensures that developers will pass on the cost to apartment buyers and perpetuate an expensive housing market in Kiryas Joel, he said.
He said he wants his land annexed into the village, but he might hold out for a change in leadership next year, when Mayor Abraham Wieder and two trustees face election.
Move could double KJ's size
Booming population behind bid for takeover
By Chris McKenna
Times Herald-Record
cmckenna@th-record.com
Get ready for the super-sizing of Kiryas Joel.
Plans are under way to annex hundreds of acres of contiguous land into the village, setting the stage for what could be a massive expansion of New York's fastest-growing municipality.
Land owners just outside the Hasidic community have recently received copies of a proposed contract with Vaad Hakiryah, the community's development arm, promising to include their properties in a single annexation petition.
In return, the land owners would pay Vaad Hakiryah an amount based on the apartments that could eventually be built on their land, according to a translated copy of the proposal obtained by the Times Herald-Record. The original version was in Hebrew.
Property records indicate that realty companies controlled by Vaad Hakiryah and private land holders from Kiryas Joel, Rockland County and Brooklyn own hundreds of acres of land on all sides of Kiryas Joel.
All told, the property could roughly double Kiryas Joel's 1.1 square miles, if it were to be annexed into the village from the towns of Monroe and Woodbury.
THERE ARE TWO MAIN reasons Kiryas Joel and its developers would want to expand the village borders.
One is that the population is booming – due to an explosive birth rate – and residents need at least 200 new apartments a year to remain within the community.
The other is that neighboring towns don't allow the sort of high-density housing Kiryas Joel residents favor for economic reasons. Annexing land into the village allows builders to follow Kiryas Joel's looser zoning rules.
A massive property annexation would give the community plenty of room to expand for years, leading to a low-rise, slightly countrified version of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, the base of the Satmar Hasidim.
The most recent census estimate put Kiryas Joel's population at around 15,000 in 2002. But with a growth rate of at least 6 percent a year, it could some day become Orange County's largest population center and a political powerhouse.
KIRYAS JOEL Administrator Gedalye Szegedin said yesterday that the push for a collective annexation petition began very recently at the request of community members who live just outside the village.
They want to join Kiryas Joel to pay much lower school taxes, receive municipal water service – instead of relaying on wells – and have garbage collected more frequently, Szegedin said. About 150 Satmar Hasidic households are outside the village borders, he estimated.
In addition, one Satmar neighborhood in Monroe wants to be annexed because of conflicts with one of its few non-Hasidic residents, he said.
What triggered their request, he said, was the announcement that Kiryas Joel developers had just bought a much-coveted, 140-acre farm on the village border and planned to build housing there.
The village's official position on annexation, Szegedin said, "is going to be reserved until the applications land on the government's desk."
But he expressed support for the idea of one joint petition, saying it would be "confusing and overwhelming" to review numerous small applications.
"If there are many property owners interested, then those property owners should work together," he said.
MUCH ABOUT the proposed contract and annexation request remained unclear yesterday.
Elozer Gruber, identified in the proposal as a Vaad Hakiryah representative, did not return calls for comment.
His lawyer, Dennis Lynch of Nyack, said the document was a rough draft that Simon Gelb – a private planner who represents land owners – had written and distributed. Neither Gruber nor Vaad Hakiryah has signed off on the offer, he said.
But Lynch made it clear that the draft is an early stage in what will likely be a collective annexation petition on behalf of numerous property owners.
"It's an open, ongoing discussion about how to move forward for those who are truly interested in the benefits of annexation," he said. "I think the unanimous sentiment is great interest in the annexation process."
Any annexation petition must be put before the governing bodies of two municipalities; the one giving, and the one taking. If both sides approve, the land shift takes place; if both reject it, the petition fails.
But if only one side supports the request, it could take the issue to the Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court.
IN PAST INTERVIEWS, Monroe Supervisor Sandy Leonard and Woodbury Supervisor Sheila Conroy have both stated their opposition to ceding land. The Monroe Town Board has rejected recent requests from developers to annex town land into the Village of Monroe.
Neither supervisor could be reached yesterday to comment on the behind-the-scenes annexation push in Kiryas Joel. No petition has been submitted to the towns.
It's unclear how long such a request might take to assemble and how many different properties would be cobbled together in the application.
The proposal obtained by the Record said that Vaad Hakiryah owns "several hundred acres in properties within the surrounding towns, and is currently prepared to initiate the legal procedures to annex them into the boundaries of the Village."
The organization will "include in its efforts" the property of owners who sign the pact, according to Gelb's draft.
THE CONTRACT PROPOSAL has aroused some opposition in the Satmar community, mainly because of the price Vaad Hakiryah would charge for annexation – $12 per square foot of planned apartments.
That amounts to a tidy sum. Using conservative estimates of 2,000-square-foot apartments and 10 units per acre, a property owner with 20 acres of land would have to pay Vaad Hakiryah $4.8 million.
The draft agreement justifies the charge by saying that Vaad Hakiryah spends millions building roads, water and sewer systems and other benefits.
It also argues that property owners will pay lower taxes in Kiryas Joel and make more money off their land, since homes can be built at higher density there.
The deals would pour tens of millions of dollars into the Vaad Hakiryah's coffers, while sparing it the high cost of buying its own property.
Critics posted an advertisement in last week's Der Yid weekly newspaper warning landowners to be wary of the offer and urging them to have a lawyer carefully review it.
One Kiryas Joel resident, who owns land outside the village that he hopes to have annexed to Kiryas Joel, said he won't sign the contract because of the charge. He predicted many others would also resist the offer for the same reason.
"I don't want to give them money," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Why should they get hundreds of millions of dollars?"
The payment to Vaad Hakiryah ensures that developers will pass on the cost to apartment buyers and perpetuate an expensive housing market in Kiryas Joel, he said.
He said he wants his land annexed into the village, but he might hold out for a change in leadership next year, when Mayor Abraham Wieder and two trustees face election.