Not everyone is welcoming Campus Suites, the proposed Downtown Binghamton student housing project, with open arms.
Ellie Farfaglia, president of the Landlords Association of Broome County, is worried about what the new complex would mean for landlords. She said that the proposed complex will cause “a glut of housing.”
“There is plainly not a need for more student housing,” Farfaglia wrote in a letter to Binghamton City Mayor Matthew T. Ryan.
Plans for the luxury apartments, which are slated to house 600 to 800 students, were announced over the summer. Construction is expected to begin this spring, with a tentative finish date of fall 2010.
“The [Downtown] student housing market has been very soft for several years,” Farfaglia wrote in the same letter. “Once-desirable rental properties remain empty.”
Concerns over Downtown housing came to the forefront last semester when six Binghamton University students were given an order of eviction for living illegally within the R-1 zone.
The R-1 zoning ordinance stipulates that only people who are considered to be a “factual and functional” family may live in certain areas of the West Side.
DOWNTOWN COMPETITION
Since then, Farfaglia said city councilwoman Teri Rennia has been meeting with the Landlords Association to try to revise the laws, which Farfaglia said are discriminatory.
“The Landlord Association of BC has fought the West Side Neighborhood Association [WSNA] of Binghamton for years regarding this draconian law that discriminates solely against BU students,” Farfaglia said.
She also said that she has not seen a case come to light against “a house of unrelated gang-bangers, unrelated welfare recipients, unrelated nurses, unrelated friends [or] unrelated Met baseball players.”
Ken Kamlet, the director of legal affairs for the Newman Development Group and a member of the Housing Commission in the City of Binghamton, also said he thought the zoning laws needed to be changed.
“There are major deficiencies in the housing code. Changes need to be made; they need to be clearer and fairer,” Kamlet said. “It is not fair to landlords, students and neighbors. Neighbors should not police the students.”
But Kamlet disagreed with Farfaglia and said he did not believe the new student housing would put smaller parties out of business.
“A large number of students will still want to live in houses because they don’t want to be in an apartment or they can’t afford it Downtown,” Kamlet said.
A CONFLICT OF INTEREST
According to Farfaglia, the Landlords Association was concerned with the handling of housing problems Downtown and said they felt Kamlet had a conflict of interest.
“Kamlet, an employee of the Newman Development Group, is working towards the goal of eliminating Mr. [Marc] Newman’s competition for student housing,” Farfaglia wrote.
In Farfaglia’s letter, she states that Kamlet wrote e-mails to members of the WSNA advising them on how to take action against student housing and steer Housing Commission members toward new legislation which would “financially destroy neighborhood landlords.”
But Kamlet said the claim “is absolute nonsense.”
Kamlet said the only conversation he had with Newman about his work in the commission was to inform Newman about it and to make sure the work was not a conflict of interest.
Kamlet, who is not a voting member in the Newman Development Group, doesn’t share profits, he said.
“What I do with my free time is up to me. I have bent over backwards to keep the two separate,” Kamlet said. “I never discussed any information from the meeting, nor did I take any direction from Newman Development.”
However, Farfaglia said she felt Kamlet wasn’t open to listening to the Landlords Association during a Housing Commission meeting held on Aug. 20, which she and another member of the Landlords Association were invited to by Rennia.
“Our concerns about Attorney Ken Kamlet were proven correct as he postured against allowing representatives of the Binghamton Landlords Association to speak to the commission’s members,” Farfaglia wrote.
According to Kamlet, however, the commission had been told there would be a surprise guest at the meeting and that his concern had not been to prevent representatives from the Landlords Association from speaking.
According to Andrew Block, director of community relations for the City, Kamlet was chosen as a member of the commission because he is a West Side resident who has shown interest in the community.
Block said the housing proposal was encouraging.
“Any opportunity for that many students is a huge positive project,” Block said. “It will be a shot in the arm for activity and economic development.”
Block said he thought the complex could greatly help the city’s economy.