Typically Ithaca.
Town, city land dispute simmers
Engman suggests short-term market lease
By Krisy Gashler •
kgashler@gannett.com • December 10, 2008
Town of Ithaca Supervisor Herb Engman suggested Tuesday that if the city and town can't come to a speedy resolution on Steamboat Landing, perhaps the city and the Ithaca Farmer's Market should sign a short-term lease extension while the city/town property dispute is resolved.
Representatives from both the city and the farmer's market said that after a year and a half of negotiating, and with the current lease expiring Dec. 31, they want to get a long-term lease settled so the market can continue plans for improvements and expansion.
Meanwhile, carcinogenic coal tar near the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment plant may pose a liability for the Towns of Ithaca and Dryden if they decide to accept the City of Ithaca's offer to transfer the land into joint ownership.
In the 1950s, when the City of Ithaca purchased the waterfront property along Route 13 that now hosts the joint sewer plant, no one had any idea about the danger of residual coal tar left over from energy production, said City Attorney Dan Hoffman. Coal tar is now one of few known cancer-causing agents.
The coal tar, which exists in the soils primarily east/northeast of the sewer plant and within the sewer plant fence, is also left from a predecessor of New York State Electric and Gas and NYSEG is responsible for cleaning it up, Hoffman said.
NYSEG is currently in the process of excavating coal tar from the Court Street block that houses the Markles Flats building.
NYSEG made “a very informal suggestion” to the city that they would clean up the coal tar near the wastewater plant in 2010, or after they finish the cleanup at Court Street, Hoffman said.
“The question which the towns would have to answer is, do they bear any risk in acquiring lands now that they know are contaminated,” Hoffman said. “I would think not because it's been determined that NYSEG is the responsible party, but I don't know that for a fact.”
Engman said the coal tar does weigh into his view of the land's worth.
“If the land that is agreed upon between the city and the town is beyond the current sewage treatment plant land, then it probably makes it worth it for us to be co-owners. If it is just the current footprint, then it becomes a question of, do we really want to be an owner or not because we would be in the line of liability for that coal tar. But we haven't really looked into that very much because we don't know exactly where all this is going,” Engman said. “But then there's the issue of, well the city already has our $400,000, which is now worth close to a million (including) an inflation factor. Do we get our money back?”
The city and town disagree about how much land the city should have transferred into joint ownership when the city and Towns of Ithaca and Dryden built their joint sewer plant 27 years ago. The land transfer never occurred and no one noticed until the city discovered the problem during negotiations with the Farmer's Market this year.
In letters over the last two weeks, Engman and Mayor Carolyn Peterson have indicated in no uncertain terms their convictions about the Steamboat Landing property. The city and town provided each of the letters to The Journal.
In a Nov. 26 letter to Peterson, Engman wrote that “unless the City is willing to agree that joint ownership with the Town of Ithaca includes both the current plant site and the Steamboat Landing site — and the City begins immediate action to effectuate that joint ownership — the Town of Ithaca is prepared to file Notices of Pendency since the title to real property is in dispute. Please respond immediately as to the City's willingness to change its position.”
In a Dec. 4 letter to Engman, Peterson responded that “your letter presents a partial account of the events of the past eight months, making it incumbent upon me to set the record straight for the Common Council and Town Board members who have now been drawn into this issue.”
After a visit to the Town Board from the city's Attorney and Acting Mayor Monday night, Engman suggested Tuesday that if the city and town can't come to an agreement on Steamboat Landing before the Dec. 31 Farmer's Market lease expires, the city should look at “other options.”
“They could extend the lease for a year,” he said. “There's a bunch of other things they could do. It's not like there's a drop-dead date on these things.”
Jan Rhodes Norman, the liaison between the farmer's market and the city and the chair of the lease re-negotiation committee, said a temporary lease would leave the market in limbo and make it virtually impossible to apply for grants.
The market hopes to create an expansion or a new building to host vendors year-round, she said.
“For the last couple years, as we've been coming so close to the end of our lease the response (from grant funders) has been, ‘After you get your lease in place, let's talk about this,'” Norman said. “We've been talking for over a year and a half and we're quite anxious for this to be settled.”
The Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Plant, center, is seen next to the Ithaca Farmer's Market, right with the outlet of Cascadilla Creek in the bottom in this May 2008 view looking Southwest. A problem with the ownership of the land where the treatment plant is situated is jeopardizing a renewed lease agreement for the Ithaca Farmer's Market. (SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo)