NeoVista Equities challenges Albany County over South Pearl Street building sale; developer threatens legal action if legislature approves rival Liberty Park Development's US$1.498M bid

May 9, 2025 (Times Union) –

May 9—ALBANY — A Long Island developer moving quickly into the downtown real estate market will make a formal pitch Monday to the Albany County Legislature for a full consideration of the company's offer to buy a county-owned building across from MVP Arena for what it says is a better deal than the one favored by the county executive's office.

The executive team for the company, NeoVista Equities , said Thursday that it would consider legal action if rebuffed by the legislature, believing the process so far has "not been transparent." Several county legislators last week made similar allegations.

The legislature and County Executive Daniel McCoy's office denied any impropriety.

The full legislature is scheduled to vote during its May 12 meeting on whether to approve a proposal to sell 60 S. Pearl St. , currently home to the county's Department of Probation , to busy local developer Jeff Buell and partner Jahkeen Hoke. Operating as Liberty Park Development , they plan to turn the four-story, 38,000-square-foot building into about 30 apartments and ground-floor retail. The sale of the building, approved last week by legislature's audit and finance committee for consideration by the 39-member legislature, is what Liberty Park calls a "vitally important" component of its expansive vision for the nearby proposed Liberty Square . It would include a soccer stadium, retail and commercial space and a total of 1,000 apartments. Liberty Park's offer, meeting the full county asking price of $1.498 million , was formalized to the county with a letter of intent dated Oct. 7 and presented by Rudy Lynch of Carrow Real Estate Services .

Competing for 60 S. Pearl St. is NeoVista Equities , which in the past couple of months bought the former Jack's Oyster House on lower State Street and a five-story building a few blocks away on James Street . It also signed a lease on an existing restaurant space at 41 State St. for a Jewish-style deli to extend the Jack's brand. On March 7 , believing the 60 S. Pearl St. location would be ideal for a 30- to 40-room boutique hotel and retail space but unaware of the Liberty Park offer, NeoVista proposed to buy the building for the asking price and to close on the deal within two weeks. (Liberty Park's offer had a 280-day contingency period starting in October, followed by 30 days to close.)

After learning of Liberty Park's interest, NeoVista bettered its offer 11 days later, with considerations including allowing the probation department to stay in 60 S. Pearl St. for two years while its relocation was carried out. Based on the prevailing price for a triple-net lease for Class B office space in downtown Albany , NeoVista estimated the value of the two-year offer to be approximately $1 million .

There was no acknowledgment or other response from the legislature or McCoy's office, NeoVista executives said.

"We received absolutely no information from them," said John Hwang , NeoVista's chief operating officer. He was speaking during an interview in the company's Albany office with founder/CEO Kevin Yang , chief financial officer Jerry Eitel and Flerida Santana Johnas , a veteran of Capital Region real estate who is NeoVista's regional director.

During the legislature's audit and finance committee's March 28 meeting, Michael Lalli , the county's operations director, made the pitch for the sale to Liberty Park. He seemed to allude to NeoVista when he told the committee the county chose Liberty Park's offer over another it had received, but he did not name the company or discuss details of its proposal.

"We were taken aback because out offer was not articulated," Johnas said.

"If you compare the offers line by line," Hwang said, enumerating the differences, "ours is better, but (it) seems like the legislature never read it."

NeoVista's offer was also little discussed during contentious meetings last week of the legislature's committees for audit and finance and economic development. Paul Burgdorf and Mark Grimm , Republican legislators who expressed reservations at the meetings and tried to delay the vote, said they were "shouted down" by McCoy's representatives — videos of the meetings confirm pointed exchanges — or had their concern overridden when a motion to vote was passed.

"I have very strong reservations about how this came to the legislature," Burgdorf said the day after the vote, saying the way the Liberty Park offer was presented to the committees and pushed through made it "certainly seem ... like it was a done deal."

Hwang said, "The thing that bothers me is they didn't play by the book."

Burgdorf, Grimm and the NeoVista team also questioned how an appraisal of 60 S. Pearl St. , done for the county in September 2023 , valued the building at $2.8 million but was revised March 30 to $1.42 million , or $69,000 less than Redburn's and NeoVista's offers.

Hwang, who said he spent a decade researching the Albany real estate market before NeoVista started to invest, said, "When you see the market is going up by at least 20% to 30% from the COVID period but now you're telling me the market is depressed and the property value is down by 50%, does that make sense?"

He said NeoVista would "consider all legal options" if the company felt its offer was dismissed without full and fair consideration.

But, Hwang said, "Hopefully we will have a chance to speak on Monday, and everybody will come to their senses. At least we encourage the legislators to read the document. So far, I feel they didn't really read anything."

"The sale of 60 S. Pearl St. was vigorously reviewed and reported out for a full vote by the legislature," its communications director, Ben Meyers , said in a statement. Citing the two meetings of the audit and finance committee and the McCoy team's presentation to the economic development committee, Meyers said, "From this process, it was clear that the proper procedure was followed."

McCoy spokeswoman Mary Rozak did not reply to a request for comment from him made on Thursday. Last month, she said McCoy was not available to discuss NeoVista's offer, adding that the county "went through the normal public procurement process, and this is now going through the legislative process."

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