ALBANY — The town won an ongoing battle with the owners of Colonie Center over how much the mall at one of the busiest intersection in the Capital District will pay in taxes.
According to the Albany Business Review, the mall’s owners, KKR & Co., out of New York City sued the town in the hopes of lowering its assessed value from $65 million to between $43.7 to$48.7 million for the tax years 2017 to 2019.
A lower assessment would lead to lower taxes paid by the Capital District’s second largest mall. Last year, the school tax bill was $1.74 million and the town tax is about $860,000.
KKR owns about 759,000-square-foot of the 1.3 million-square-foot mall while the two anchor spots, the one now occupied by Macy’s and the one formerly occupied by Sears, are independently owned.
A bench trial was held in September, according to the newspaper, and on June 25, Albany County Court Judge Margaret Walsh ruled the request to lower the assessment was “against credible evidence.”
According to the ruling, the town and school estimated the effective gross revenue in the three years was $19.1 million to $19.4 million, and the net operating income was $12.2 million to $13.6 million — all amounts greater than what KKR claimed in its lawsuit, according to the newspaper.
KKR also has a pending lawsuit against the town for the years 2020 and 2021. That includes a time when the mall was closed because of COVID-19 and many of its tenants could not do business.
The mall opened for business in 1966 on 96 acres of land that was once home to a golf course.
Charter tenants included Macy’s and Sears as well as Mack Drugs, Suburban Girl and the Barnsider Restaurant.
In 1988, it underwent a $68 million renovation that added the 305,000-square-foot Macy’s store and a new 80,000-square-foot space that became home to Steinbach.
Steinbach left in 1995 and, after a retrofit, Boscov’s department store opened in the space in 1998.
In 2005, then owner Feldman Mall Properties, out of Great Neck, spent $100 million to renovate the mall’s interior.
