Developer Michael F. Puntillo wins Nassau IDA tax breaks for 80-room dormitory for NYIT

Nassau County has awarded at least 15 years of property-tax breaks to the developer of a proposed dormitory in Jericho for the New York Institute of Technology.

The board of the county’s Industrial Development Agency voted unanimously last week to give final approval for the tax-aid package to developer Michael F. Puntillo.

He plans to convert a vacant, 80-room Hampton Inn at 120 Jericho Tpke. into housing for between 160 and 200 NYIT graduate students. University officials spoke in favor of the $15.1 million project at the November IDA meeting but declined to comment about it to Newsday.

Puntillo told the IDA last week that the hotel-turned-dormitory will be ready for students to move into by late summer.

In his application for tax breaks, Puntillo said he “would not move forward with the project at full [property] taxes and without financial assistance because the project would not generate sufficient net rental income to warrant the investment.”

Under the tax deal, Puntillo will save on property taxes for 15 years, with the option for an additional five years of savings, if he keeps the promises that he’s made to the IDA. The property tax bill is now $340,197 per year. The tax rate will increase each year by 2% under the deal.

Puntillo also won a mortgage-recording tax exemption of up to $82,500, records show.

NYIT spokeswoman Elizabeth Sullivan declined to comment on the Hampton Inn project.

But Sullivan said the university provided student housing for more than a dozen years on the nearby SUNY Old Westbury campus until the coronavirus struck. For the current academic year, students are living at The Mansion at Glen Cove and 1760 Third Ave. in Manhattan, she said. Besides Old Westbury, NYIT has a campus near Columbus Circle in Manhattan. 

NYIT’s housing office would run the proposed Jericho dormitory, according to the developer’s real estate attorney, Daniel P. Deegan.

He also said the dorm project has been lauded by civic activists who helped torpedo plans to turn the closed Hampton Inn into a homeless shelter several years ago. The shelter would have provided transitional housing to homeless families who were staying at three nearby hotels, according to then-Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.

IDA chairman Richard Kessel said NYIT needs student housing if it’s to be competitive with rivals that have on-campus dorms.

“This housing is for graduate students who will be respectful neighbors,” he said. “They don’t party the way undergrads do.”

The Hampton Inn opened in 2009 in a building that had long been a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge.

The latter received notoriety in November 1974, when pop singer Connie Francis was raped by a knife-wielding intruder in her hotel room after performing at the then-Westbury Music Fair, according to the Newsday archives. 

The assailant was never identified or apprehended. But Francis sued Howard Johnson’s for failing to provide adequate security and won a $1.5 million settlement, the archives show.

By James T. Madore

james.madore@newsday.comJamesTMadore

James T. Madore writes about Long Island business news including the economy, development, and the relationship between government and business. He previously served as Albany bureau chief.