Akiko Matsuda

amatsuda@lohud.com

ORANGEBURG - The Orangetown Town Board might sell 60 town-owned acres at the former Rockland Psychiatric Center to a yet-to-be revealed data-center developer.

The price for the 60 acres is subject to negotiation, and the identity of the buyer will be disclosed at a Town Board meeting Tuesday, during which officials will discuss the matter, said town Supervisor Andy Stewart.

"Myself and the town council feel strongly that data centers are a great fit for this site — they generate very little traffic and they pay taxes," Stewart said.

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The entire property consists of 550 acres, all of which were owned and operated by the state until 2002, when Orangetown bought 348 acres, including 57 buildings and the nine-hole Broadacres Golf Course.

Netflix's "Orange is the New Black" has been regularly filmed on 49 other acres in the former Rockland Children's Psychiatric Center site.

The project would not be the first redevelopment on the site. A portion of the town-owned land has been turned into soccer and Little League fields, and the NYC Football Club is building a training facility on a 17-acre site.

The 60-acre site being eyed for the data center is part of the 110 acres where Rockland Filming Campus, a private filming company, wanted to create a complex of film studios and sound stages. That plan, which was pitched in the spring, fell through, Stewart said.

"Ultimately, after a lot of work, they decided that it didn't make sense as a business," he said.

The new developer approached town officials weeks ago, saying the proposal "hinged in part on the town providing a pathway to approval by the end of June," Stewart said.

Officials responded with a timeline, including necessary steps that the applicant must go through, such as environmental reviews and site-plan approval, as well as a set of deadlines for document submissions. If all goes according to the timeline, a final site plan could be approved by the Planning Board on June 14, demolition of about 40 existing buildings would take place in July, and construction would begin in November, Stewart said.

Stewart said the amount of taxes that could be generated from the project has not been determined, and the applicant has yet to apply for any tax breaks as no contract has been signed.

Councilman Denis Troy said that, in addition to boosting the town's tax base, the proposal would benefit Orangetown because it would eliminate the town's need to demolish the abandoned buildings on the property that are contaminated by hazardous material, such as lead and asbestos. The cleanup, said to cost tens of millions of dollars, would be taken care of by the developer, he said.

"It's a home run," Troy said. "It's a great use, with really no overhead to the town."

During a Town Board meeting on Tuesday, the developer's attorney, Brian Quinn, presented a preliminary site plan for the 60-acre parcel between First and Third avenues, bounded by Convent Road on the north and Oak Street on the south.

A large building, about 150,000 square feet, would be constructed roughly at the center of the property, Stewart said. First and Third avenues would remain open to traffic. The name of the developer for the single-user data center was not disclosed during the meeting at the applicant’s request, officials said.

The Town Board, next week, is expected to declare itself lead agency for the state environmental review process. It is also expected to consider a proposed new zone for the site that would enable a data center to be built there.



The terms of proposed sale and the approval process are also expected to be discussed.

A public hearing for the project is likely to be scheduled for March 21, officials said.

"A major focus for the Planning Board, which should receive detailed site plans by late March, will be the planning and permitting of the demolition and construction process to prevent any negative impacts on neighbors from dust, noise or traffic," Stewart said.

Data centers are not new in Orangetown.

Bloomberg LP opened a $710 million, 131,805-square-foot data center at 155 Corporate Drive in 2014. Fifteenfourtyseven (1547) Critical System Realty opened a multi-tenant data center in 2015 after renovating a 232,000-square-foot vacant office building off Blaisdell Road just north of the New York-New Jersey border.

Both projects sought and were awarded sales-tax exemptions through the Rockland County Industrial Development Agency and payment-in-lieu-of-taxes agreements with the town and the Pearl River school district.

Twitter: @LohudAkiko