Industrial Development Agency
Lancaster's IDA arrived Tuesday with a resolution authorising litigation to end the tax deal at 515 Pavement Road and put the building back on the rolls, thirty days after its notice to cure expired. The developer's attorney apologised, conceded that a fitness tenant has to go by year's end, and the board tabled it 5–0. A rewritten deal returns November 10.
The resolution was printed, numbered, and sitting in the packet. It recited the statute, the dates, the default and the cure period, and then it authorised the agency's counsel and its chairman to do “all acts and things required… including but not limited to litigation” to terminate the lease, terminate the leaseback, and restore 515 Pavement Road “to fully taxable status on the tax rolls.” For an industrial development agency, that is the whole arsenal in one paragraph.[2]
It was never moved. The chairman took the item out of order, ahead of the other resolution on the docket, “because they're here with them here today” — and what the agency got instead of a vote was an apology and a negotiation conducted in public, in about fifteen minutes.[1]
Ralph Lurigo[*], the attorney who said he has represented the developer for four decades, opened by conceding the point. “So clearly, we've made some mistakes here. The leasing agent that we have in place is not really aware of the whole situation. So I apologise for that.” Then he laid out the arithmetic of the building: more than $2.6 million invested, broken into roughly 1,250-square-foot units, 14 units identified — seven in compliance with office and warehouse use, four still vacant, and two tenants who do not fit, one of whom occupies two spaces.[1]
The two are a light-manufacturing business and a personal trainer. He argued hard for both, and hardest for the trainer: a one-on-one practice that “doesn't start until after 5 o'clock and only actually takes one person at a time… It's not like the gym.” His case was purpose over paperwork — that the agency exists to “advance job opportunities, health, general prosperity, economic welfare of the people of the town of Lancaster,” that these are “Lancaster people who want to develop their business here in Lancaster,” and that a manufacturer employs more people than a warehouse does. His ask was explicit: “We ask that we expand the definition to include these two tenants.”[1]
The answer was no, and it came with a date attached. “And, sir, with all due respect, that was the question four months ago. We brought this up to them four months ago requesting the information… Then when they did give us the information, it was inaccurate. Jennifer had to chase them down at a lot of time and expense.” The same speaker added that the developer's letter, received that morning, had called the agency's letter nasty — “which it wasn't. It was just a letter saying that you're not in compliance” — and that he was not prepared to rewrite a signed contract's core definition: “I personally am not going to. I don't know how the rest of the board feels.”[1]
What broke the impasse was Lurigo's[*] own admission that he did not need the agency's permission to fix half the problem. The leases themselves, he said, specify office and warehouse use — “It actually says that in the lease that she's provided to every single one of those tenants” — so the trainer is in breach of her own lease and “I can get them out.” He added that she is short of the parking the town code requires. Asked directly whether he was offering to remove her, he agreed, and proposed the split the board accepted: “change the contract to include light manufacturing and just have the fitness centre has to go.”[1]
So the deal, as struck on the record: the agency will rewrite the project's permitted uses to include light manufacturing; the fitness tenant must be out by the end of the year, which is when her lease is believed to expire; counsel will produce a replacement resolution for the November 10 meeting; and the developer will bring every future tenant for consent before signing. The termination resolution was tabled 5–0 rather than withdrawn — it stays on the shelf, loaded.[1]
And one term that matters more than the rest, stated plainly and not softened by anyone present: “Any new contract will go from day one if there's a penalty. If something isn't done, it's going to go back to day one. There won't be a two-year moratorium.” In other words, the clock on any future breach runs from the start of the deal, not from the date it is discovered.[1]
The threat in that resolution only reads as a threat if you know the mechanics, so here they are. An industrial development agency does not hand out a discount. It takes a leasehold interest in the property itself — the “Lease to Agency” in the documents above — and then leases it straight back to the company under a “Leaseback Agreement.” Because the agency is a tax-exempt public-benefit corporation, the property comes off the ordinary tax roll for the life of the deal. In its place the company makes payments in lieu of taxes, on an agreed schedule that normally starts low and climbs. Sales tax on construction materials and the mortgage-recording tax are abated separately.[2]
What the public gets in exchange is not the building. It is the approved use — the specific economic activity the agency found would justify the forgone revenue. At 515 Pavement Road that use is offices and warehousing, written into three separate instruments. This is why a use restriction at an IDA project is not a formality a landlord can quietly outgrow: the use is the consideration. Change it unilaterally and the public has paid for something it did not agree to buy.
Terminating the arrangement means unwinding both leases, at which point the property returns to the roll at full assessed value and the abatements stop. That is the agency's principal enforcement tool, and it is blunt: it cannot issue a fine, pull a permit, or order anybody out of a building. Those powers sit with the Town Board, the Planning Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals and the building department. An IDA benefit is not a permit — which is precisely why the only lever the agency had on Tuesday was the one it chose not to pull.[4]
The board's reasoning for refusing the fitness use was not about one personal trainer, and it said so. A member set out the precedent problem with a live example already in the queue: “Right now Uniland wants to have one of their spaces to where they want to have gymnastics or something like that. It may be beneficial to the town in some respects as far as having a youth bureau type thing, but it doesn't bring the economic development that we're looking for.” And then the general case: “Once you give it to one, now everybody else is going to say, well, you broke your contract with them.”[1]
There is a statutory edge underneath that instinct. New York restricts industrial development agencies from assisting projects that are substantially retail, and a commercial fitness studio or a gymnastics school is a consumer service, not manufacturing, warehousing or industry. This publication's September record of this agency put the retail share limit at a third of project cost. The board on Tuesday did not cite the statute. It reached the same place by contract: the lease says office and warehouse, every tenant signed it, and the agency would rather enforce the document than redraft it.[4]
What the developer's side wanted was the opposite framing — that the project serves the purpose even if it breaches the wording, because an incubator full of small Lancaster businesses creates the jobs the agency exists to create. That argument was heard, not accepted, and not rebutted on its merits either. The board answered the question it was asked with a deadline rather than a philosophy.
The other resolution on the docket is the control that 515 Pavement Road went around, and it passed in under thirty seconds. At 9 Lancaster Parkway[*] — an 11,400-square-foot flexible-space industrial facility on three acres, induced by this agency in July 2024 and closed into a lease and leaseback dated June 1, 2025 — the owner, Lancaster Parkway Development LLC, asked the agency's consent to sublet to Smithers Construction LLC and Kenworth Northeast Group Inc. The agency consented, 5–0, subject to compliance with local building and zoning requirements.[2]
That consent requirement is the monitoring mechanism. It is how an agency learns who is actually inside a building it has taken off the tax roll, one tenant at a time, before a lease is signed rather than four years afterwards. The contrast between the two items on one half-hour agenda is the clearest lesson of the morning, and the developer's own attorney conceded it twice: “while we should have presented these things to you in advance…” and “we are certainly going to come back to you in advance of signing any lease with any other tenant.”[1]
A third prospect for the same Lancaster Parkway facility surfaced later in the meeting: a company that outfits “facility trailers, commercial vehicles for government agencies, for contractors.” Counsel confirmed the project was induced as a flexible-space industrial facility and that such a tenant would fit. No application has been filed; the agency hopes to take one up at its December meeting. That is the consent process running forwards.[1]
The agency adopted its 2027 budget 5–0. Chief Financial Officer Michael Stegmeier[*] explained what had changed since the draft: the finance committee, meeting immediately after last month's regular session, recommended a potential 3% increase for four positions — the secretary, the building administrator, the executive director and the chief financial officer — and a revised budget carrying those increases had been circulated.[1]
He was careful about what adopting it does and does not do. “Those are only recommended increases… the budget is not committed to any salary. Those salaries are set in January, so there's no commitment to providing any of those salaries with the budget.” A budget line authorises a ceiling; the board sets actual compensation separately at its organisational meeting.[1]
The timing was the reason it could not wait. A New York public authority of this kind must adopt and file its annual budget with the state ahead of its fiscal year — this publication's September record of this agency put the filing deadline at November 1 — and the CFO told the board this was “the last meeting before it's done.” With no meeting between October 13 and November 10, that is simply true.[4]
One exchange in the roll call did not resolve, and this brief will not pretend otherwise. As the vote went round, Member Robert Leary[*] stopped to ask: “This is with the 3% increase?” The recording carries both a “Yes” and a “No” in reply, from voices the open-room microphone does not separate, followed by someone observing “so he's actually showing 1.3.” Leary then voted yes and the budget carried. Whether a second percentage figure is in the adopted document, and what it refers to, cannot be answered from this recording — the budget pages of the agenda packet are scanned images carrying no extractable text, and the minutes of this meeting are not yet posted. It is the one figure in this brief worth checking against the filed budget.[3]
Stegmeier's[*] report, accepted 5–0, was short. The agency's total balance stood at $2,011,520.55. One cheque was deposited — $500, for a sales-tax extension, which matches the application fee this board approved in September when it reached backwards to revive a sales-tax exemption for JAG Electric[*] that had expired in June without anyone noticing. Five vouchers totalling $4,978 were approved for the month, plus one software subscription charged to the agency's credit card; the vouchers were accepted in a separate 5–0 vote. PILOT billing calculations for the school districts and the county will be completed as budgets close and tax rates are set, and go out in mid-January alongside the annual surveys.[1][4]
Nobody voted for this board. An industrial development agency in New York is a public-benefit corporation created by the legislature for a particular municipality, and in a town agency the members are appointed by the Town Board. With the documents now in hand, the composition can be stated exactly rather than inferred from a recording — and three things in it are worth a reader's attention.
The board is five, and describes itself as seven. The agency's own website says it “is governed by a seven member Board of Directors.” The October 13 agenda is addressed to five people; the September minutes record five; five voted on every item on Tuesday. The members are Chairman Kevin Lemaster and members Grant Getzoni, Robert Leary, Frank Lutz and Patrick Sportelli. Whether two seats are vacant or the description is simply out of date is not established by any document available here.[2][5]
Offices are doubled up. On the agency's published roster the Vice-Chairman line is blank, and Frank Lutz is listed as both Treasurer and Secretary. Jennifer Strong, Esq. appears as Assistant Secretary and also as the agency's General and Transactional Counsel — the lawyer referred to throughout the recording simply as Jennifer. Chief Executive Officer Paul Leone is listed under Consultants as well as under staff, and the September minutes record him as “CEO/Consultant”; his published contact address is at the Amherst Industrial Development Agency. This is how a small authority is staffed, and it is a matter of public record rather than an allegation of anything.[5]
Two people here also hold Town roles. The agency's Administrative Secretary and Records Management Officer is Andrea Crage — the Town Clerk, who also clerks the Zoning Board of Appeals and signs its legal notices. And member Grant Getzoni sits on the Town's Zoning Board of Appeals, where he voted on all eight petitions five days before this meeting. Both facts come from official documents of both bodies, and neither is unusual in a town of this size; both are things a reader following Lancaster should simply know.[4][5]
And the committees meet in the last two months of the year. Under old business the chairman scheduled the Governance Committee — himself with Leary and Sportelli — to sit immediately after the November regular meeting, and the Executive Committee — himself with Lutz and the CFO — in December, “because we have to do it once a year… and we'll be in compliance.” Those committees and that annual obligation come from New York's accountability regime for public authorities. The board's own framing of the schedule is reported here as he put it.[1]
Chief Executive Officer Paul Leone[*] reported three or four live conversations, and the most instructive was the one he turned down. The village mayor had asked him to meet a company interested in buying Joseph's[*] banquet facility. “I said, well, the IDA is not getting involved in those type of things… we're not eligible to do those type of things.” A banquet hall is a hospitality business, and that is the retail-type activity an IDA generally cannot assist.[1]
The board then spent four minutes finding the version of that project it could help, which is a fair illustration of how an IDA thinks. Members noted the site now does more food preparation than banquets — “almost like a commissary” — that it sits on what one called “the second or third largest chunk of vacant land in Depew,” and that it backs onto the Northeast Community Works[*] site. If it came in as food processing and wholesale distribution rather than catering, it might qualify. “If they come up with a good comprehensive plan and we can get it to fit within the page, I've got no problem looking at it. The worst we can tell them is no.”[1]
Also reported: Buffalo Wholesale Supply[*] is looking at buying a building the recording does not name clearly, and the agency is working with them. A demolition contractor's project expires in December; the agency has told it that sales-tax exemption letters can issue and spending can begin as soon as it signs the contract and agent agreement, provides insurance and pays the agency's quarter-of-one-percent fee, which it has not yet done. That company may now proceed without a mortgage at all, despite having been approved for a mortgage-recording-tax abatement; its attorney was to confirm within the week. The agency's verdict on the delay was self-critical as much as anything: “They put the cart before the horse, and they're trying to get him to walk backwards, and it's not working… I think they came to us a little too soon… I guess we're going to have to do a better job of explaining that.”[1]
And one line that belongs in any account of economic development in this corner of New York in 2026: two Canadian companies the agency has been talking to are, in Leone's[*] words, “still very nervous with what's going on between Canada and the U.S.” No project, no application, no timetable — just two prospects on hold.[1]
New business. The Sealing Devices[*] project is expected to close by the end of this year. Superior Pallets[*], an existing project whose PILOT expires at the end of the calendar year, is weighing a refinancing and has not decided whether it will seek an additional mortgage-recording-tax abatement or simply the agency's consent — which it needs either way, because the agency has to sign the mortgage.[1]
A question that went unanswered. A member asked whether JAG Electric[*] had resolved the permitting problem it was reportedly having with the town — distinct from the sales-tax extension this board granted in September. “I'm not sure… I don't have an update on that.” The chairman's instruction was to be told if permitting is holding a project up: “If they are having issues with the permitting, please let us know, whoever's talking to them.”[1]
Microphones, and who can hear this board. Twice in half an hour the agency's audio came up. Before the gavel, members discussed that the microphones exist but the stands are not mounted — “Carmen just needs to drill holes” — and one member volunteered to do it himself. Later the chairman asked a speaker to come to the podium “that way you're close to the microphone, people watching from home could hear what's going on,” adding that he keeps forgetting. The agency streams its meetings on its own channel and the audio is the public's only access to a 9:00 a.m. weekday meeting that drew no attendees. It is a small housekeeping item with a direct bearing on whether anyone outside the room can follow what this board does.[1]
All five seated members were present and voted on every item: Chairman Kevin Lemaster with members Grant Getzoni, Robert Leary, Frank Lutz and Patrick Sportelli. Every action was taken by roll call with each member named — a cleaner record than the September meeting produced. No recusals were announced and no resolution numbers were read aloud. Row 5 is flagged: it is the item the agency chose not to decide.
Moved from the chair immediately after the roll, seconded without discussion, no corrections offered. Those minutes are now posted and were used to verify this brief's roster and the September figures carried forward here.
Total balance $2,011,520.55. One cheque deposited, $500, for a sales-tax extension. Five vouchers for the month totalling $4,978, plus one software subscription on the agency credit card. PILOT billing calculations for the school districts and the county to be completed as budgets close and tax rates are approved, and mailed in mid-January with the annual surveys every member completes.
The CFO also reported the finance committee's recommendation of a potential 3% increase for the secretary, building administrator, executive director and chief financial officer, and that the revised budget carrying it had been circulated.
Moved from the chair. The voucher schedule itself is in the agenda packet as a scanned image and carries no extractable text, so the total reported aloud is the whole of what this brief can confirm.
Adoption authorises the budget, not the salaries: the CFO stated on the record that the increases are recommendations only, that the budget commits to no salary, and that compensation is set separately in January. Must be adopted and filed with the state ahead of the fiscal year; the CFO described this as the last meeting before the filing, and there is no meeting between this one and November 10.
Member Leary interrupted the roll to ask whether the figure included the 3% increase. The recording carries both a yes and a no in reply from voices it does not separate, and then a remark that “he's actually showing 1.3.” Leary voted yes. The budget pages of the packet are image-only and the minutes of this meeting are not yet posted, so the second figure is unresolved here.
Taken out of order, ahead of the sublease item, because the developer's representative was present. The drafted resolution would have authorised the agency's legal counsel and chairman to do all acts including litigation to terminate the Lease to Agency and the Leaseback Agreement and restore the premises to fully taxable status, on findings that subtenants were not using the premises for office or warehousing and that thirty days' notice to cure had lapsed un-cured.
Instead the developer's attorney disclosed the tenancy unit by unit — 14 units of roughly 1,250 square feet, seven compliant, four vacant, two non-conforming with one tenant in two spaces — apologised for not seeking consent in advance, and asked the agency to widen the approved use to cover both non-conforming tenants. The board declined as to the fitness use, citing the precedent it would set for other projects, and accepted light manufacturing. The attorney agreed the fitness tenant is in breach of her own lease and can be removed.
Terms settled aloud: the permitted uses to be rewritten to include light manufacturing; the fitness tenant out by the end of the year; a replacement resolution and a draft contract for the November 10 meeting; all future tenants brought for consent before signing; and no grace period on any future breach, which would run back to day one. Tabled rather than withdrawn.
Consent to the execution and delivery of subleases by Lancaster Parkway Development LLC at the 2024 project — an 11,400-square-foot flexible-space industrial facility on a three-acre parcel at 9 Lancaster Parkway, induced by resolution of July 9, 2024, with the Lease to Agency and Leaseback Agreement both dated June 1, 2025. The resolution consents to the sublessees, is subject to compliance with all local building and zoning requirements, and takes effect immediately.
No discussion. The chair moved it, noted that everyone had received it, and the roll was called — about twenty-five seconds in total, for the exercise of precisely the power whose absence produced the previous item.
Old business and new business were taken as reports with no motions. The chair noted there were no public comments and moved to adjourn, about 28 minutes after the gavel. Committee meetings were scheduled from the chair rather than by motion: Governance after the November regular meeting, Executive in December.
A source that did not exist last month. This is the first brief of this body produced with its own documents in hand. Until this week the pipeline had no configured source for the Industrial Development Agency — it is a separate public authority, not a Town department, and its records are not in the Town's document centre — so the September 8 brief was written from audio alone and said so, flagging every name and figure in it as unverified. The agency's own document centre has now been located and wired into this pipeline, and the October 13 agenda packet, the September 8 minutes and the published board roster were all used here. Two consequences follow. The roster in this brief is verified rather than heard, including the owner entity at 515 Pavement Road, which the September recording never named. And the September brief's unverified names are now confirmed, with one correction: the member rendered there as “Gazzoni” is Grant Getzoni, and the minutes record him that morning as excused rather than absent.
Capture. 28.1 minutes, faster-whisper “large-v3,” 485 segments of which 425 are distinct, language confidence p=0.998, content to 1,683.2 of 1,683.7 recorded seconds — full coverage. Captured and transcribed the morning of the meeting. The recording opens about two minutes before the gavel on an open microphone; that passage is used here only for the microphone exchange reported above, which the members were discussing as a matter of public access, and is otherwise not reported.
Who said what. This is an open-room microphone around a conference table with frequent crosstalk, and apart from the clerk's roll call the individual voices are not reliably separable. Where a speaker is identified in this brief it is because he named himself, was named by the chair, or is unambiguous from the role he is performing — the chairman running the meeting, the CFO delivering the financial report, the CEO delivering his. The firmest exchanges in the 515 Pavement Road item are attributed to “a board member” rather than to a name, because the recording does not support more than that. The agenda packet's roll-call block was left blank by the agency, so it cannot settle the question either.
Names. Board and staff names are taken from the agency's October 13 agenda, its September 8 minutes and its published roster. The transcription renders Getzoni as Gattoni, Rizzoni, Zoni and Lurigo in places, Lemaster as LeMaster, LeMansky and Master, Sportelli as Spitelli and Fratelli, and Sealing Devices as “Stealing Devices”; these are corrected against the documents and marked [*]. The developer's attorney gave his own name at the podium and it is rendered as heard, confirmed by no document. The construction company he said he represents is not recoverable from the audio and is not guessed at. “Joseph's,” “Northeast Community Works,” “Buffalo Wholesale Supply,” “Superior Pallets” and “JAG Electric” rest on audio alone; the building Buffalo Wholesale Supply is said to be considering is named indistinctly and is deliberately omitted.
Streets. The automated check against the Town of Lancaster street index flagged “Lancaster Parkway” with a full-confidence suggestion to correct it to Lancaster Avenue. That correction was not applied: the agency's own resolution gives the project address as 9 Lancaster Parkway, and an official document beats a street index. The index gap is disclosed here rather than resolved, as this publication does elsewhere when a legal notice and a street list disagree. Pavement Road is corroborated by this publication's own validated Lancaster address records.
What could not be read. Pages 10 to 15 of the agenda packet — the 2027 budget schedules and the voucher list — are scanned images with no extractable text, so the figures in this brief for both are the figures spoken aloud. The minutes of this meeting are not yet posted; this agency's minutes have run about a week behind, and when the October minutes appear the unresolved budget percentage and the exact terms tabled on 515 Pavement Road should be checked against them.