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Target, Walmart join mall seeking assessment cuts

Several Lakewood property owners aren’t the only ones unhappy with their new property tax assessments.

Walmart is asking state Supreme Court Justice Grace Hanlon to reduce the store’s 2025-26 tax assessment from the $15 million that is part of the town of Busti’s property reassessment to $11,250,000.

“Your petitioner is aggrieved and has been or will be injured by said unequal, unlawful and excessive assessment and will be required to pay a greater amount and proportion of taxes than would be required if the said assessment has been just and equal,” attorney Bruce Stavitsky of Fairfield, N.J. wrote in his court petition filed recently in state Supreme Court in Mayville.

The owner of the Chautauqua Mall is looking for another break on its tax assessment.

Walmart’s neighbor is also looking for a decrease in its taxable assessment, as The Post-Journal reported recently.

AP file photo A Walmart location in Philadelphia is pictured.

Chautauqua Mall Realty Holdings LLC has filed an Article 7 challenge to its assessment by the town of Busti, which is undergoing a property reassessment that has upset many town residents. It is also the second such request the mall has made since the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the mall’s court filing on July 2, 2025, its attorneys are asking for a decrease from the proposed $7.825 million for the three parcels that make up the entire mall property to $800,000.

The property reassessment Busti is undergoing was foreseen by state Supreme Court Justice Grace Hanlon when she ruled in 2023 that the mall’s property assessment should be reduced from $6 million to $4,020,000 through 2026. At the time, she wrote that if the town goes through a property reassessment the mall’s property value will use a $6 million fair market value multiplied by the new town equalization rate for the year the revaluation happens.

Court records show that in 2020 the mall’s assessment was $9,260,000, and that amount was reduced to $5,772,000. In 2021 the assessment was $9,260,000, and it was reduced to $5,592,000, and in 2022 the assessment was $9,260,000, and it has been reduced to $4,965,000. The 2023 tax assessment from the Busti tax assessor was $6 million — an amount mall officials said was too high even though the mall was purchased for $6 million in September 2022.

A third major retailer is also asking for a decrease in its taxable assessment, though Target is in the town of Ellicott, so its request has nothing to do with Busti’s property reassessment. The company is asking Hanlon to cut the tax assessment on Target’s 975 Fairmount Ave., property from $3.4 million to $1.7 million.

Much like the Chautauqua Mall, this is the second time Target has taken a tax assessment decrease to court in the past few years.

Target Corporation had challenged the 2022 assessment on the former K-Mart parcel of $3.4 million. Negotiations between the attorneys resulted in a settlement that left the assessment unchanged, according to the order signed in late August 2023 by Hanlon. The $3.4 million assessment was also the agreed upon assessment for the property for 2023-24 and 2024-25 as part of the court settlement.

Ellicott has agreed to approve a 485-B tax exemption starting with the 2025 assessment on the building that will phase in 50% of any assessment increase over the original $3.4 million tax assessment due to physical changes to the property.

Section 485-b of the state Real Property Tax Law provides the basis for a 50% reduction of the increase in assessed value due to certain qualifying new construction, alterations, installations or improvements for the purpose of commercial, business or industrial activity.

According to a 2022 court filing by Marilyn Fiore-Lehman, attorney for the town of Ellicott in the case, Target purchased the building for $3.15 million and had obtained a building permit to make improvements estimated at $4.5 million.

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