In the Empire State, cities, villages, towns and counties have the ability develop their own procedures to address non-performing properties within their communities by establishing land banks.
When setting up a land bank in New York, a municipality will create a foreclosing governmental unit.
The foreclosing governmental unit is able to take possession of non-performing properties. Repositioning the properties to be conveyed to a public or private person, or entity. This includes developers.
A land bank’s property acquisition policy sets what the land bank targets – tax-foreclosures, vacant, abandoned, or tax-delinquent parcels – and how it prioritizes each.
A property disposition policy covers who is able to purchase land bank properties. The property disposition policy also sets out how offers are evaluated, the pricing of properties as well as board approval procedures.
A land bank’s procurement policy governs rehab and/or demolitions.
The land bank will establish an annual budget, while also developing an operating plan.
Twenty-six would be the number of land banks which have been established, to date, in the great state of New York.
So far, twenty-six New York State towns, cities, villages and counties elected to go the land bank route since then-Governor Andrew Cuomo signed the Land Bank Program into law in July of 2011 – The Land Bank Act.
One of the tasks for New York land banks is to think through how to best address the nearly one million or so investor-owned properties in New York State which sit vacant – somewhere in the range of between 25,000 and 30,000 properties.
These vacant properties are too often positioned as write-offs for investors. While many of these “write-offs” could become affordable options for families who dream of one day becoming New York homeowners.
Thanks to The Land Bank Law, twenty-six New York cities, villages, towns and counties were able to draft their own unique “blue prints” to address housing needs within their distinct communities.
In New York, the municipality establishes a foreclosing governmental unit. The foreclosing governmental unit operates within guidelines established through local laws, ordinances and resolutions – the proverbial “home rule.”
Foreclosing governmental units have the capability to take possession of vacant, non-performing properties within the municipality. According to applicable municipal ordinances.
Oversight and governance for a New York land bank is bestowed upon a land bank boards of directors.
Here is the list of land banks which have been established in regions throughout New York State, to date.
Greater Syracuse
Buffalo Erie Niagara (Buffalo)
Lackawanna
Tonawanda/Erie County
Schenectady County
Chautauqua County
AmsterdamCounty
Newburgh
Broome County
Suffolk County
Rochester
Albany County
Capital Region Land Bank
Troy Community Land Bank
Oswego County
Finger Lakes Regional
Wayne County Regional
Tioga County
Steuben County
Kingston, Newburgh Community
Sullivan County
Greater Mohawk Valley
Ogdensburg
Nassau County
Suffolk County
Allegany, Cattaraugua, Chautauqua
Brad Lander is now the Democratic nominee for Congress in New York’s 10th District. New York’s 10th District includes lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Brad Lander was born in St. Louis, Missouri.
Missouri is widely recognized as having been the first state to set up a land bank – St. Louis Land Reutilization Authority (LRA). The country’s first land bank was established in Brad Lander’s hometown.
In 1971, LRA was created in St. Louis under Missouri’s land reutilization law. The nation’s first land bank.
In Brad Lander, Congress will soon be adding a land bank proponent to their Capitol Building roster.
One year after a pier was built to access Raritan Bay in Port Monmouth, New Jersey, Middletown Plank Road Company built a timber plank road which wound through town – the “Farmer’s Railway.” A farmer’s “railway” arrived in Port Monmouth in 1854.
Port Monmouth’s Farmer’s Railway was constructed using wooden planks, laid side-by-side across beams. Those beams were called stringers. Stringers stabilized planks with their weight.
Prior to construction of the Farmer’s Highway, local farmers around Port Monmouth labored through the process of being forced to move produce over rugged terrain. Muddy, uneven paths, rocky terrain…it was rough.
A timber plank road made it easier for farmers to get to Port Monmouth’s pier – where products could be transported by ship – and the local farmer’s market in Middletown.
Those wooden wagons making their way across this new ”railway” in Port Monmouth were stocked with rye, Indian corn, oats, peas, beans, Irish potatoes, barley or buckwheat.
Ninety miles east of Wichita, 100 miles north of Tulsa you find Fredonia, Kansas. Fredonia, Kansas was named after the Fredonia we find in New York State. Fredonia, Kansas was incorporated in 1871.
Eleven years after the first European settlers set foot in this Kansas community located at the southeast tip of the state alongside the Fall River, Fredonia was organized and a name for the town was chosen – Fredonia Town Company. That year was 1868.
Following the discovery of oil and gas in nearby Neodesha in 1892, the regional oil business ramped up in southeast Kansas. By 1900, Fredonia evolved into a regional energy center, a position Fredonia maintains to this day. Last year, seventy-two Fredonia oil wells produced 1,703,238 cumulative barrels of oil.
Since 1900, oil production in Fredonia has steadily increased, while industry efficiencies resulted in a streamlined exploration processes.
In the oil business, production bbls (barrels of oil) represents the volume of oil produced, annually. Whereas cumulative bbls (barrels of oil) represents the running total for all oil produced from a well, a field or a lease since the well, field or lease began production.
The highest count for Fredonia oil wells was registered in 2012, when the town had 212 wells. Those 212 wells produced 1,599,095 cumulative barrels of oil that year.
There were seven per cent fewer barrels of oil produced in Fredonia in 2012 than were produced last year, in 2026. Even though the number of active Fredonia oil wells in 2026 – 72 oil wells – represents only 33% of the number of Fredonia wells in 2012, when there were 212 wells.
The first time Fredonia produced in excess of one million cumulative barrels of oil was 1987 – 1,016,872 bbls. The 1,016,872 bbls were extracted through 120 wells.
Fredonia’s cumulative oil production hit the 1.5-million mark for the first time in 2006 – 1,508,415 bbls. There were 195 wells pumping oil in Fredonia that year.
Of Kansas’s 105 counties, Wilson County (Fredonia is located in Wilson County) is ranked #54 in terms of cumulative oil production.
The oil business has a strong foothold in Fredonia. Cherokee Wells, Viking Production and E and E Holdings are each based in Fredonia.
In 1853 a pier was built in Port Monmouth at the end of Church Street, extending into Raritan Bay. Steamboats could now dock at this bayshore community.
Port Monmouth Steamboat and Sloop Transportation Company built the pier so they could curry passengers to Manhattan. Port Monmouth became a commuter town. A New York City bedroom community.
Next, the company built a covered pavilion.
With the pavilion, a steamboat passenger could enjoy a soda, a sandwich and a cigarette while they waited to board, before heading into New York City.
With the pavilion, evenings spent on Port Monmouth’s pier were topped off by dinner and drinks, accentuated by a backdrop of jazz.
Today, The Belford Ferry Terminal is just a few minutes from Port Monmouth, with morning and evening trips to Pier 11/Wall Street and Brookfield Place in Downtown Manhattan. With connections to Midtown.
El Dorado, Kansas – home to the Kansas Oil Museum – sits alongside the Walnut River, 24 miles to the northeast of Wichita.
El Dorado’s beginning was staked out during the 1850s when settlers arrived on this western edge of Kansas’s Flint Hills.
West of El Dorado you’ll encounter the open plains of Kansas. East of El Dorado you’ll see limestone-caps in the Flint Hills.
El Dorado’s first settlers established trading posts, seeing promise in timber belts along the river’s banks.
The Walnut River – a tributary of the Arkansas River – is formed through the convergence of two creeks: Cole Creek and Durechon Creek. The Walnut River flows southward through Butler and Cowley Counties, passing through El Dorado, Augusta, Winfield and Douglas before connecting with the Arkansas River in Arkansas City.
The Arkansas River – the longest river in Kansas – and Walnut River meet four miles north of the Oklahoma border.
The river valley surrounding El Dorado has some of the richest soil east of the Rocky Mountains. This nutrient-rich soil found around El Dorado supports a farming economy which developed around the town.
During the 1850s settlers started arriving on the plains of Kansas’s Flint Hills, thirty miles northeast of Wichita, at a site that would soon become El Dorado.
Early El Dorado Kansans established trading posts along the Walnut River. A 140-acre townsite was platted in 1858. El Dorado was incorporated in 1871.
Early on, what attracted frontiersmen to El Dorado was the Walnut River and the timber belts found alongside the Walnut.
The Walnut River is a 154-mile long tributary of the Arkansas River, formed through a union of Cole Creek and Durechon Creek. Walnut Rover flows southward through Butler and Cowley Counties, passing through El Dorado, Augusta, Winfield and Douglas before joining the Arkansas River in Arkansas City in south-central Kansas, four miles north of the Oklahoma border.
The timber belts frontiersmen found nearby El Dorado ranged from a quarter mile to one mile in width – oak, walnut, hickory, mulberry, sycamore, elm, and hackberry timber belts. River bottom timber was the only lumber supply available on the prairie. El Dorado and the Walnut River provided that lumber supply.
While oak timber belts and Walnut River trading posts represented underpinnings for the early days of El Dorado, it would prove to be neither trading posts nor hickory timber belts which made El Dorado indispensable to President Woodrow Wilson. It was oil.
The first oil development around El Dorado occurred in nearby Augusta. Black gold was discovered in Butler County Kansas in June of 1914, just outside of Augusta.
World War I began that same year, on July 28th.
Less than one year after World War I broke out, on October 5, 1915 wildcatters hit it big when oil started gushing from a massive oilfield located a stone’s throw northwest of El Dorado on North Oil Hill Road. That oilfield was Stapleton No. 1, named after the man on whose land black gold had been discovered, John Stapleton.
That oilfield would go on to become El Dorado Oil Field. El Dorado Oil Field triggered the El Dorado Oil Field boom.
By 1918, El Dorado Oil Field produced 29 million barrels of oil, supplying the United States with 9% of oil consumed by the country.
World War I increased demand for oil. El Dorado Oil Field’s importance grew, as the Butler County oilfield was delivering nearly 13% of all oil consumed in the United States.
El Dorado Oil Field became “the oil field that won World War I.”
Ottawa, Kansas was founded on September 6, 1864 along the Marais des Cygnes River as a reservation for the Ottawa, Kansas tribe. The Marais des Cygnes River, which runs right through the center of town, was named by 17th Century French trappers. Translated from French to English,Marais des Cygnes River is “Marsh of the Swans.”
Trappers were drawn to Ottawa by the allure of profiting from lucrative fur trade with Native American tribes. In the late 1600s, French explorers known as coureurs des bois – the translation for coureurs des bois is, woodsmen – journeyed throughout eastern Kansas, pursuing beaver and otter pelts. The Marais de Cygnes River was an anchor to the local beaver and otter population – beavers and otters are native to eastern Kansas.
The source of the Marais des Cygnes River is found in east-central Kansas in Wabaunsee County, near Eskridge.
The mouth of the 217-mile long Marais des Cygnes touches Little Osage River in western Missouri.
At the point where the Marais des Cygnes River empties into the Little Osage River, the two rivers join to become the Osage River. The reach of Marais des Cygnes River in Ottawa encompasses 9 miles of Midwest riverbanks.
Ottawa’s early settlers envisioned the Marais des Cygnes River as a navigable maritime asset…a useful waterway which would facilitate the transportation of agricultural products, such as grain. However, Ottawa’s early residents soon discovered that their stream was shallow. At its deepest point in Ottawa, the Marais des Cygnes River measures only four feet deep. And…the steam meanders.
During dry seasons, the water depth of Marais des Cygnes drops significantly. Furthermore, its riverbed consists of a solid rock bottom which is exposed when there is little rainfall. In relation to Ottawa’s economy, the river’s purpose went from navigation to the powering of mills.
Ottawa’s early mills were built in the latter part of the 20th Century, mostly along Walnut Street off of North Main Street – a stone’s throw away from the Marais des Cygnes.
The Ottawa Mill was built in 1867 at the intersection of Main Street and First Street. Forest Mills was constructed in 1872 at the corner of 1st Street and Walnut. Ottawa Oil Mill went up in 1873 on Walnut Street, just north of the Marais des Cygnes. The Excelsior Mill – built in 1881 – was at the corner of Main and Tecumseh Street.
The Marais des Cygnes River functioned as a reliable energy source for Ottawa’s mills. The mills used water power to turn their heavy mill wheels. Through the utilization of buhrs made of stone, Ottawa mills produced 20,000 pounds of processed grain products, daily.
While the Marais des Cygnes River provided the initial idea upon which Ottawa commerce could be built upon, and while Ottawa was not set up as a railroad town, it ended up being the advent of the railroad which contributed to the town’s growth.
Constructed using limestone extracted from nearby hills, Ottawa’s original depot was built in 1888. The depot was designed by one of Ottawa’s most prominent citizens, George Washburn.
George Washburn was Ottawa’s home grown architect. And a prominent architect, at that.
After working as a carpenter In Kansas City, George Washburn set foot in Ottawa in 1882 and would go on to make several noteworthy architectural contributions to Ottawa, and to Kansas, beyond Ottawa.
George Washburn designed nine Carnegie library buildings as well as 13 county courthouses. Among the Kansas courthouses Washburn designed was the courthouse found in his hometown – the Franklin County Courthouse. Washburn’s design for the Franklin County Courthouse integrated a tasteful blend of two styles: 1) Romanesque Revival, and 2) Colonial.
Washburn’s idea for Ottawa’s depot included a rail yard consisting of a 13-stall roundhouse for engine repairs, as well as a freight depot.
You can visit Ottawa’s original depot today – it’s now a museum.
Ottawa’s Old Depot Museum is located at 135 West Tecumseh Street and sits at the northernmost trailhead of the Prairie Spirit Trail – a bike and walking trail. .
You can’t buy Amtrak tickets at the Old Depot Museum. No trains arrive at Old Depot Museum. What you will find at Old Depot Museum is the Model Railroad Room, complete with HO-scale model train layout depicting 1950s rail lines. You will also find the recreation of a 19th Century schoolhouse, a Victorian parlor, the Soda Fountain Room and a General Store.
Using Washburn’s plans, Kansas City, Lawrence, and Southern Kansas Railway – now part of Santa Fe Railroad – built the Ottawa depot. By the time two additional railroads – Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad and Missouri Pacific Railroad – arrived, the town became a busy transport.
Ottawa’s depot was primarily a passenger depot, although adjacent freight-handling structures were soon built on the Depot’s grounds.
The first train pulled into the Ottawa depot in 1888. The last train left Ottawa’s depot in 1962. At which time, the Santa Fe Railroad donated the depot to the Franklin County Historical Society.
Ottawa, Kansas was founded on September 6, 1864 along the Marais des Cygnes River as a reservation for the Ottawa, Kansas tribe. The Marais des Cygnes River runs right through the center of town. The Marais de Cygnes was named by 17th Century visitors to Ottawa – explorers and trappers from France.
Explorers and trappers from France were drawn to Ottawa by prospects arising through the lucrative local fur trade with Native American tribes. By the late 1600s, French explorers known as coureurs des bois – the translation for coureurs des bois is, woodsmen – journeyed throughout eastern Kansas, pursuing beaver and otter pelts. Beavers and otters are native to eastern Kansas. Translated from French to English, Marais des Cygnes River is “Marsh of the Swans.”
The source of the Marais des Cygnes River is found in east-central Kansas in Wabaunsee County, near Eskridge.
The mouth of the 217-mile long Marais des Cygnes touches Little Osage River in western Missouri.
At the point where the Marais des Cygnes River empties into the Little Osage River, the two rivers join to become the Osage River. The reach of Marais des Cygnes River in Ottawa encompasses 9 miles of Midwest riverbanks.
Ottawa’s early settlers envisioned the Marais des Cygnes River as navigable maritime asset which would prove to be useful in transporting agricultural products – such as grain – to outside markets. However, what Ottawa’s first residents soon discovered was that their stream was shallow. At its deepest point in Ottawa, the Marais des Cygnes River measures only four feet deep. And…the steam meanders.
During dry seasons, the water depth of Marais des Cygnes drops significantly. Furthermore, its riverbed consists of a solid rock bottom…exposed during the dry season. In relation to Ottawa’s economy, the river’s purpose went from navigation to powering of mills.
Ottawa’s early mills were built in the latter part of the 20th Century, mostly along Walnut Street, close by North Main Street. Just a stone’s throw from the Marais des Cygnes.
The Ottawa Mill was built in 1867 at the intersection of Main Street and First Street. Forest Mills was constructed in 1872 at the corner of 1st Street and Walnut. Ottawa Oil Mill went up in 1873 on Walnut Street, just north of the Marais des Cygnes. The Excelsior Mill – built in 1881 – was found at the corner of Main and Tecumseh Street.
The Marais des Cygnes River functioned as a reliable energy source for Ottawa’s mills. The mills used water power to turn their heavy mill wheels. Through the utilization of buhrs made of stone, Ottawa mills produced 20,000 pounds of processed grain products, daily.
While the Marais des Cygnes River provided the initial idea upon which Ottawa commerce could be built upon, and while Ottawa was not set up as a railroad town, it ended up being the advent of the railroad which contributed to the town’s growth.
Constructed using limestone extracted from nearby hills, Ottawa’s original depot was built in 1888. The town’s depot was designed by one of Ottawa’s most prominent citizens, George Washburn.
George Washburn was the local architect. And a prominent architect, at that.
After working as a carpenter In Kansas City, George Washburn set foot in Ottawa in 1882, establishing himself as skilled tradesman.
George Washburn was an architect. An architect from Ottawa who would go on to make several noteworthy architectural contributions to Ottawa, and to Kansas, beyond Ottawa.
George Washburn designed nine Carnegie library buildings, as well as 13 county courthouses. Among the Kansas courthouses Washburn designed was the courthouse found in his hometown of Ottawa – Franklin County Courthouse. Washburn’s design for the Franklin County Courthouse integrated a tasteful blending of two styles: 1) Romanesque Revival, and 2) Colonial.
The Ottawa depot design Washburn came up with was part of a larger rail yard, a rail yard which consisted of a 13-stall roundhouse for engine repairs, as well as a freight depot.
You can visit Ottawa’s original depot today – it’s now a museum.
Ottawa’s Old Depot Museum is located at 135 W Tecumseh Street. Old Depot Museum sits at the northernmost trailhead of the Prairie Spirit Trail – a bike and walking trail. The Depot is not far from Forest Park and Haley Park.
You can’t buy Amtrak tickets at the Old Depot Museum. No trains arrive at Old Depot Museum. What you will find at Old Depot Museum is the Model Railroad Room, complete with HO-scale model train layout depicting 1950s rail lines. You will also find a recreation of a 19th Century schoolhouse, a Victorian parlor, a Soda Fountain Room and the General Store.
Using Washburn’s plans, Kansas City, Lawrence, and Southern Kansas Railway – now part of Santa Fe Railroad – built Ottawa’s depot. By the time two additional railroads – Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston Railroad and Missouri Pacific Railroad – arrived in Ottawa, the town became a busy transport. Ottawa’s depot was primarily a passenger depot, although adjacent freight-handling structures were soon built next to the depot.
The first train pulled into Ottawa’s depot in 1888. The last train left Ottawa’s depot in 1962. At which time the Sata Fe Railroad donated the Ottawa’s depot to the Franklin County Historical Society.
Rumson, New Jersey started out with the name Navarumsunk when English settlers purchased the territory from the Lenape Indians in 1663.
Controlled by the English, the Native American name of Navarumsunk was changed to Ramson’s Neck. The name “Ramson’s Neck” then was made more-simple, becoming Rumson.
Popular legend has it that Navarumsunk was purchased from the Lenape Indians in exchange for rum. Hence, “Rum’s son” or “Rumson. Though this is generally treated as folk etymology, a fun tale to tell, yet not true.
Through Revolutionary War times, Ramson’s Neck consisted of today’s Rumson, Fair Haven, Red Bank, Little Silver and Shrewsbury.
