Empire State Development Application Deadline Approaches for Establishing Land Banks

 

New York's Land Bank Act authorizes one or more governmental entities that possess the power to foreclose on tax liens to create a Type C not-for-profit corporation whose purpose is to facilitate the return of vacant, abandoned and tax delinquent properties to productive use. Once established, a land bank will possess broad authority to acquire tax delinquent, vacant and/or abandoned properties within its jurisdictional boundaries and ultimately transfer such properties to third-parties for a variety of public and economic development purposes, including, but not limited to, the creation of public spaces; affordable housing; retail, commercial and industrial activities; and "such other uses … as determined" by the foreclosing governmental entity (or entities) that create the land bank. 

 

Land banks possess considerable flexibility in managing, holding and transferring title to their properties, and thus they have been used successfully in other states (most notably, Michigan) as a tool to combat blight associated with high rates of vacant and abandoned properties. Of course, many communities in Western New York have struggled with high inventories of such properties, and the Act specifically cites the estimated 17,000 vacant lots and structures within the City of Buffalo as evidence of an abandoned property "crisis" within New York State. The purpose of the Land Bank Act is to create a tool to aggregate many of these properties within a discrete geographic area in the hands of a single entity whose mission is to return those properties to productive use.

 

However, New York has tread somewhat cautiously into the land bank arena, and the Act limits the number of land banks that may exist in the State at any one time to ten. Because a land bank, once created, can enjoy perpetual duration, New York may reach its statutory limit quickly, and communities that delay in seeking to create a land bank may be more....