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By TONI COLEMAN tonic@leader.net
Friday, January 28, 2000 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE – Mayor Tom McGroarty has said a lot recently about the
Keystone Opportunity Zone, but he didn’t attend Thursday night’s City Council
meeting to answer critics who said the mayor is not being truthful about the
program.
McGroarty had accused Perry Block Partnership, which owns property at
37-45 W. Market St., of falsifying its application for the KOZ. The owners are
not entitled to a $10,000 tax rebate because they falsely claimed their
property was up to housing and building codes – a violation of the KOZ law,
McGroarty said Monday.
Former Mayor Lee Namey, Luzerne and Lackawanna County KOZ coordinator, said
at the council meeting that the KOZ program gives the city the discretion to
require buildings be up to code, but the city failed to make that a
requirement before the applications were turned in.
As a result, Perry Block is in compliance because the city didn’t indicate
the properties had to be up to code, Namey said. He added that it’s because
buildings were not up to code and therefore unattractive to potential
developers that they were placed in the 12-year tax abatement program.
McGroarty, who was out of town Thursday, has also said the Perry Block
group circumvented the city and submitted the application to the state without
city approval. Larry Newman, a consultant to the KOZ program, said the city
had the application since April, but never acted on it despite repeated
requests from the county to do so.
Also, Namey revealed that among the applications the city approved and
submitted to the county on Jan. 10, just two days before the state deadline,
was the Perry Block Partnership’s application.
McGroarty, who had been criticized for holding up the applications, said
the city needed time to verify the properties were up to code.
“As best we understand, you have not inspected any of them,” Namey said,
and Councilman Tom Leighton concurred.
Stephanie Jacobs, president of the Perry Group, was baffled that the mayor
would single out her property for ridicule.
“It makes me heartsick. What do you do when you’re trying to do something
good for the city and you’re attacked and none of it is true,” said Jacobs,
an architect. She and her fiance, Greg Lull, hope to develop the West Market
Street buildings by Christmas into loft housing and commercial space that will
have a historical facade.
Todd Vonderheid, vice president of economic development for the Greater
Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Business and Industry, said either the mayor was
uninformed about the KOZ or he deliberately was trying to hurt someone by
accusing people of impropriety.
“I don’t want to accuse the mayor of a vendetta. I want his actions to
speak for themselves,” said Vonderheid, who said he withdrew his interest in
the property when it became part of the KOZ.
Chairman Mike McGinley said the city would review the KOZ law and decide
whether it wants to stipulate compliance with city codes.