At a Tupper Lake town board meeting on Monday, Franklin County Land Bank Chair Harry Gordon announced the group was awarded a $1.25 million grant from the New York Land Bank Initiative to kickstart their construction.

It came as part of a presentation informing and updating the town board on the land bank’s progress and mission. Formally established in the spring of 2023, the Franklin County Land Bank is one of 31 across the state. Most work within a county, while others serve a multi-county region or municipality within a county.

John Gillis, a Tupper Lake town board member and chair of the county Land Bank’s property management committee, said having a local focus as independently-functioning entities is important.

“What’s cool about it is everyone does things a little differently,” he said. “They’re hyper-local because the problems we have in Franklin County aren’t the problems they have in Warren County or Dutchess County. They’re all very different needs.”

Land banks were created to help address the affordable housing crisis throughout the state by reclaiming abandoned properties that have been foreclosed, and restoring them — either through renovating the existing structure or demolishing and replacing it with a new one — to a habitable state.

Gillis said the abandoned properties are often sold at auction for rock-bottom prices just for the new owner to improve the property in any way and cease paying taxes — returning the property to the auction block as it remains dilapidated.

“These properties that go into foreclosure for the taxes, they’re so often cyclical,” he said. “It happens a lot and there are other properties in town that are like that — they went to auction a couple cycles ago and they’re going to be right up at the auction again.”

Although they were established by and frequently collaborate with, land banks are separate entities from governments — including at the state, county and local levels. They were first created under the New York Land Bank Act in 2011, with Franklin County’s becoming the 27th in the state — with a maximum of 35 allowed at a time.

Under the law, land banks must exist as not-for-profit organizations. Gordon said this enables them to sell the properties for the “best outcome,” not the highest price.

The law also affords land banks special privileges that enable them to direct their funding to that mission. Among those are not being required to pay property taxes while the land bank holds and improves the property. Although Gillis said that upon the eventual sale, the Franklin County Land Bank will pay the county back the back taxes that were owed, $31,147 at 92 Wawbeek Ave., prior to the land bank’s acquisition of the property.

The land bank also receives the municipal rate at the transfer station, reducing tipping fees throughout the construction process, and does not have to pay the prevailing wage — something that impressed the Tupper Lake Town Board during the presentation.

Gordon said that the money saved during the renovation process helps the land bank achieve its goal of selling its properties at below-market value for the community’s betterment.

“We can approve sales based on what’s the best outcome, not the highest price,” he said. “If we’re trying to make sure that teachers and health care workers and police officers have places to live and they can’t afford the real estate in the community because it’s too expensive, we can help them. And that’s what we should be doing. That’s our goal.”

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Careful selection

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Currently, the Franklin County Land Bank possesses the deeds to two properties: 92 Wawbeek Ave. in Tupper Lake and 13 Williamson St. in Malone. The properties, which both had a long history of foreclosure and abandonment, were transferred to the land bank by an act of the Franklin County Legislature after the land bank had reviewed a larger list of potential properties that were up for auction. The properties were up for possible consideration but did not want to bite off more than they could chew at once, with much of the land bank’s work reliant upon volunteer time and limited resources.

“We refined our search,” he said. “We don’t want vacant lots, there’s lots of those in the county and we don’t really need to acquire those. And rental properties that are occupied — if we’re really trying to make affordable housing and there’s people already living in them, then maybe that’s not our best target. Maybe we should be looking at places where people can’t live (at the moment).”

Gordon said the land bank had consulted with a number of local experts when reviewing possible properties to ensure what they ultimately requested and received from the legislature aligned with their goals.

“Our goals are to create more workforce housing, remove blight from the neighborhoods and return things to the tax rolls,” he said. “We consulted with knowledgeable people throughout the county — people who knew something about neighborhoods. We had some of the people who were quite knowledgeable say ‘You know, that’s a good property but it’s in a bad neighborhood. (You should) look elsewhere.'”

Being a relatively new organization, Gordon said another reason the properties at 92 Wawbeek Ave. and 13 Williamson St. — which are both single-family homes — were chosen was for the learning experience they could provide as the organization navigates the process of returning properties to viability.

“(Gillis and I) know a lot about building,” Gordon said. “We’ve both done it our whole careers. But we don’t know a lot about working with these programs. So we picked one property (13 Williamson St.) that we felt we could renovate and one property (92 Wawbeek Ave.) that we were pretty sure we would have to take down and replace. Two very different paths and we figured we would learn something from each of those.”

Gordon said the land bank hired Saranac Lake-based Northwoods Engineering to perform an inspection to make sure demolition made sense.

“He said he didn’t think this property should be renovated,” Gordon said. “The amount of structural change that would need to occur was so extensive that it would be better to demolish it and replace it.”

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Next steps in Tupper

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Gordon said that securing the $1.25 million grant from the state’s Land Bank Initiative was a major victory, securing the funding necessary to begin renovating in Malone and demolishing and replacing in Tupper Lake. Gillis said that Franklin County Land Bank would not need to attempt to enter into any cost-sharing arrangements to begin the projects.

“It’s fully funded by the land bank,” he said. “We have the money to do it. The whole shot.”

With the state grant money, however, Gordon said there was a list of regulations the land bank needed to draft plans demonstrating an ability and willingness to be in compliance of.

“In order to be able to use any of the funds for improving the property — what they call capital funds — we have to get some approvals from New York state with respect to environmental considerations,” he said. “This is kind of a broad category. It includes everything from state historic preservation office to the environmental protection of wetlands. There’s about 10 or so different categories that we have to provide documentation for demonstrating that we are not adversely affecting any of those categories.”

Gordon said this was his first time completing this paperwork and was unsure how long it would take to receive approval, adding that the land bank did not have any control over the approval process, once submitted to the state.

As is often the case when renovating or demolishing older buildings — the 92 Wawbeek structure was built in 1904 — Gordon said during the presentation that hazardous materials are often present, and need to be dealt with in a safe manner. He and Gillis had found lead-based paint when they performed their initial property inspections, adding that it was something they expected to find.

“We’re going to have to take steps to abate the lead-based paint,” he said. “And demolish in a manner that’s safe and in compliance with New York state regulations for demolishing buildings that contain hazardous materials.”

Gordon said he would have a better idea of the demolition and rebuilding timeline after the state approves the plan.

“We’re pretty far along in the game in terms of thinking what we will do as soon as we can do it,” he said.

Gillis said they had bid packages ready to go out once they are approved.

“We’ve contracted with Northwoods Engineering to do a scope of works and everything so that we have bid packages ready to go out, so everyone gets the same bid package,” he said.

After the demolition, Gordon said they intended to install a modular home at 92 Wawbeek, noting their success at the Fawn Valley housing project in Lake Placid.

“John and I believe that is going to be our most expeditious way to be able to construct the replacement unit.”

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Going forward

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Gordon said they have not yet finalized the framework under which they will sell the house. He said it will be tied to area median income, with upper-level restrictions meant to ensure the housing remains affordable.

“If people have more income than a certain level, they wouldn’t be eligible to purchase the house because we’re trying to make this available to people who have, frankly, not as much financial means,” he said. “That’s kind of the whole point of being able to put workforce people in these houses.”

With that, Gordon said deed restrictions would also be implemented. These would legally preclude the new future owner from converting the house into a rental property or selling it at a substantially higher value than the below-market rate they will have paid for it initially.

“There will be deed restrictions so that we prevent the property from being turned into a short-term rental or something else and … we’ll have deed restrictions that cap the amount of gain that the purchaser can have when they resell,” he said. “The goal of that is to maintain it as workforce housing in perpetuity.”

Gordon said the land bank would not provide financing to any potential buyers.

As the Malone and Tupper Lake properties progress, Gordon said the land bank will begin looking for future acquisitions “We’re looking for properties that we think could be the next ones that we could work on after we have done these,” he said. “We’re excited about that and we want to have our footprint all throughout the county.”