A father-son team working on a housing development near Kodak Tower are being ordered to repay project tax breaks after officials learned of “egregious” labor violations.
Work began two years ago on the vacant three-story building at State and Factory streets, on the northern edge of the High Falls district. The $1.3 million project would convert the building to 16 apartments, mostly market rate, but with a couple of affordable studios, while adding a rooftop deck.
Local officials welcomed the investment, granting tax incentives in exchange for the developer’s promise to hire locally when it came time for construction.
“It’s good to have development anywhere, particularly housing right now,” said Ana Liss, executive director for the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency. “It’s not a bad project.”
And initially, everything was fine — until it wasn’t.
“It’s just willful and egregious violations of our local labor policy,” Liss said of the problems that arose. But that is “pretty easy to remedy: You just hire local workers to do the work on the project, and don’t lie to our local labor monitor.”