LUSJ and Buffalo News reporting the GLDC has made a final offer on Settling the Metropolitan debt.
Greater Lockport Development Corp. offered Thursday to drop its litigation against Peter Calieri, owner of the former Metropolitan Bar & Grill, if Calieri will pay the city $150,000.
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Corporation Counsel John J. Ottaviano said the city has received several settlement offers from Calieri, but none as large as $150,000. The largest one publicly disclosed was $70,000.
Ottaviano said the development corporation’s loan committee decided to discount one of the loans, for $131,250, which would have been converted into an outright grant if the Metropolitan had stayed in business at least three years. It lasted 14 months.
Ottaviano said the city has a list of Calieri’s assets and has appraised some Florida real estate that Calieri owns, as well as two other businesses here: the Village Eatery, one of Lockport’s most popular restaurants, and the Davison Road Banquet House.
The corporation counsel said the $150,000 offer “was based on what we thought we could recover. At some point, if you push too far, you push the [debtor] into bankruptcy, so you’ve got to know where to draw the line.”
Original Post on Subject
5 comments:
But he really owes the taxpayers 500.000.00? No one with all that collateral should get off so easily. Why are they not taking the buildings and investment he has? He should have to have a laywer take of his affairs like they do during the housing/building court for delinquent homeowners who do not fix up their places and pay their bills. They take the guys rents and pay his bills and fix the place up. They need to take his financial affairs and put them in to a lawyers hands so the taxpayers get their money. He owes the taxpayers of this city. WE know he is making money. Just nonsense.
So, we should run him out of town on a mule cart because a group of people decided to give him loans that they probably should not have? Or we should spend money on lawyers and court time to get back pennies on the dollar (after figuring in all legal fees, court time, etc).
The story should be why the IDA gave so much in low interest loans w/o securing equity, or for a restaurant (which has a high rate of closure in the first 2-3 years).
I never got around to posting about the settlement last month.
http://www.lockportjournal.com/archivesearch/local_story_029023537.html
Sounds like the best deal to be had. I don't see the benefit of closing the other businesses, putting people out of work etc. There would be a bigger loss for a small monetary gain.
I just want it to be perfectly clear that the GLDC is a totally seperate entity from the City. City tax dollars do not fund the GLDC.
"The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program is a federal program that provides funding for housing and community development. In 1974, Congress passed the Housing and Community Dvelopment [sic] Act, Title I, which authorized the development of the CDBG Program. The program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, consists of two components, an entitlement program that provided funding directly to urban areas and a Small Cities Program which funds communities with populations under 50,000."
-from http://elockport.com/city-community-development.php
In 2009, they list $3,482 from "Federal subsidies / grants", and $520,213 from "Municipal subsidies / grants". And spent $53,658 more than it brought in.
-from http://www.abo.state.ny.us/annualreports/PARISBudgetReports/FYE2010/LDC/GreaterLockportDevelopmentCorporation2010.pdf
So although you are technically correct in that tax money collected by the City of Lockport does not fund the GDLC (although I wish PARIS reports stated what grants were received), tax money collected by the federal gov't (maybe even by the county and state? the grants are not listed) paid for it. It is not a privately funded, nor a self sustaining organization. Tax money is tax money, regardless of where it comes from.
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