The New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency approved a request from Capelli Enterprises to modify their agreement with regard to Trump Plaza of New Rochelle, clearing the way for a deal with Sound Shore Medical Center to lease 23,000 square feet in the largely vacant space on the first two floors of the building.

The lower two floors comprise 140,000 square feet of space. The New York Sports Club has leased 45,000 square feet. With final negotiations underway with Sound Shore Medical Center for 23,000 square feet and a second potential tenant considering 11,000 square feet, the day when Trump Plaza's lower two floors would be more than 50% occupied is now visible on the horizon.

The purpose of this article is not to say that there have been no benefits whatsoever to the development of New Roc City, Trump Plaza or the Avalons and other projects. There have been some benefits.

The purpose of this article is to give critics of the Idoni-Bramson vision for New Rochelle a language with which to articulate their opposition to specific completed projects, a reason to celebrate the demise of LeCount Square and the apparent demise of the Echo Bay Project and a basis upon which to demand a true, full cost-benefit analysis of imagined future projects like the Main Street Corridor and David's Island. It is not to be "against virtually everything" to demand that any proposed tax-payer funded government intervention in our local economy is made to consider the "unseen" costs of the projects, the possible unintended consequences of a project and be based upon an independent, verifiable cost-benefit analysis that is then used as a benchmark to check and recheck progress on a particular project at each phase in the development.

Talk of the Sound asks what a 19th century French economist and political philosopher can teach us today about men like Noam Bramson, Tim Idoni, Louis Capppelli and the Ratner Family.

The Times Herald-Record is reporting that Louis Cappelli of Cappelli Enterprises has resigned from the company's board.

...the company announced that Concord owner Louis Cappelli resigned from the board in December to pursue other business interests. Cappelli was a one-time partner of Empire Resorts in a $1 billion resort plan at the Concord. The plans fell apart when the economy went sour.

Jeremy Schulman has been removed from his role managing the New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency and replaced by Development Commissioner Michael Freimuth in the wake of a damning audit by the Office of State Comptroller which found that NRIDA failed to evaluate and monitor tens of millions dollars in tax breaks given to developers.

In a thinly-veiled attempt at damage control, Michael Freimuth (above left) asked Chuck Strome (above center) and the IDA Board to pass a resolution creating a new position of Assistant to the Secretary of the Board then asked the board to appoint him to that newly created position so he could have legal access to NRIDA documents while avoiding the necessity of formally taking away and assuming Schulman's title of Executive Director.

During his radio show on Tuesday, Mayor Noam Bramson commented publicly for the first time on the findings of the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) Audit of the New Rochelle Industrial Development Agency, first reported by Talk of the Sound.

To listen you can download the 3 minute audio file here (3.7 MB .mp3 file)

The Mayor said the OSC issues audits like this for IDA's all the time. He said they are often quite similar in their content and cited a "recent or contemporaneous" audit of the Yonkers IDA that had many of the same conclusions.

A check of the OSC web site shows there is no such recent audit of the Yonkers IDA.

The most recent audit of the Yonkers IDA was made public on February 23, 2009.

Talk of the Sound has obtained a copy of an IDA Audit Report of the New Rochelle IDA (NRIDA) which is expected to be released by the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC) next month. The document is meant to be public, has been circulated within City Hall but is not on the agenda for the IDA meeting scheduled tomorrow. A brief review of the summary shows why the IDA would prefer to kick the report down the road into the summer months when they hope less people will notice -- it is a devastating report which confirms what many critics have long contended about an IDA with no defined process for approving projects, no effort to monitor ongoing projects and a generally sloppy, make-it-up-as-you-go approach while doling out tens of millions of dollars in bonds, tax incentives and other goodies to politically-connected developers with no particular concern over whether the projects deliver upon promised results.

Entertainment Properties Trust just released the following statement (below) which, as it bears on New Rochelle, says that Capelli and EPT did a swap where Capelli gets City Center in White Plains and EPT gets New Roc City and every one agrees to make nice with everyone else.

Missing is the retraction Capelli had demanded last week but all in all this is good news and good news for New Rochelle as it clears the area both over a key parcel in the City and frees up Capelli to focus on other things like finding retail tenants for Trump Tower.

ENTERTAINMENT PROPERTIES TRUST AND LOUIS R. CAPPELLI ANNOUNCE RESTRUCTURING OF INVESTMENTS AND SETTLEMENT OF CLAIMS

Kansas City, MO. June 18, 2010 — Entertainment Properties Trust (NYSE:EPR) and Louis R. Cappelli today announced that they have closed a series of transactions that significantly restructure EPR's investments with Mr. Cappelli and settles all outstanding claims between the parties.

In general, the material terms of the restructuring include: