[CPEO-BIF] Destiny USA's tax credits, Syracuse, New York

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

State agrees to approve pollution cleanup that could pay Destiny USA  
$54 million


By Rick Moriarty
Syracuse Post-Standard (NY)
August 9, 2011


Syracuse, NY -- Taxpayers are about to give the owner of the Carousel  
Center shopping mall about $54 million for a pollution cleanup that  
cost far, far less.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation signed an  
agreement July 18 that retroactively accepts the soil cleanup that  
developer Robert Congel’s company designed and implemented for his  
1.3-million-square-foot addition to the Syracuse shopping mall.

Approval of the cleanup is one of the last steps before Congel can  
claim tax credits on his $540 million mall expansion, called Destiny  
USA, under the state’s much-criticized Brownfield Cleanup Program.

Created in 2003, the program was intended to encourage the re-use of  
sites where pollution was making development difficult. But critics  
blast the program for giving developers of large projects benefits  
that far exceed the cost of any cleanup.


...

For the entire article, see
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2011/08/ 
state_agrees_to_pay_destiny_us.html

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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