Glen Cove IDA, LEA to vote on $120M in bonds, tax breaks for Garvies Point project

The Glen Cove Industrial Development Agency and Glen Cove Local Economic Assistance Corp. hold a special meeting Thursday night to vote on more than $120 million in bonds and tax breaks for the developer of the $960-million waterfront project.

A public meeting on the proposal was held June 22, so no public comment will be allowed at Thursday’s meeting, said Mayor Reginald Spinello, chairman of the two quasi-municipal agencies.

RXR Glen Isle Partners LLC, whose majority investor is Uniondale-based RXR Realty, plans to build 1,110 condominiums and apartments, public parks, marinas, restaurants, and retail and office space along the city’s formerly industrial waterfront.

The $97 million in bonds and the millions of dollars in interest on them are to be paid by future tax revenue from the project. Michael Zarin, the city’s White Plains-based attorney for the project, said bondholders, not the city, shoulder all the financial risk. An estimated $24 million in tax breaks would come from exemptions from sales, use and mortgage taxes. A still-to-be-determined amount are to come from property-tax breaks.

Amy Marion, the Sea Cliff attorney for 105 area residents seeking to block Garvies Point, criticized city officials during Tuesday night’s City Council meeting for not releasing all of the numbers associated with the project, including the assumptions and analyses used to predict hundreds of millions of dollars in future tax revenue. She said a vote on the financial assistance shouldn’t take place until the information is released and another public meeting is held.

Spinello said Wednesday that “all of the questions [from the June 22 public meeting] we believe were pertinent and significant were answered” and posted on the IDA website. Financial experts developed the assumptions and analyses, he said.

The meeting begins at 6 p.m. in the second-floor conference room of City Hall.