Owner chases lower taxes on former municipal golf course
Oct. 13—The owner of the former Scranton Municipal Golf Course wants taxes lowered on the sprawling Jefferson Twp. property.
SMGC Realty LP, at least partly owned by brothers Louis and Dominick DeNaples of Dunmore, applied to decrease the 176.6-acre property's assessed value of $340,000, but did not specify what the value should be. The partnership's mailing address is 400 Mill St., Dunmore, home to the DeNaples' auto parts store.
The partnership paid the city of Scranton $3.475 million for the golf course in March 2003. The sale price of the land was $1.4 million, according to a deed. The course closed in 2020. The county board of assessment appeals is scheduled to meet Oct. 25 to hear SMGC's appeal.
Real estate agent John Cowley, who represents SMGC, declined to comment.
In June, the township supervisors voted against rezoning 534 acres, including SMGC's, from a low-density residential district to a highway commercial district. Rezoning would have allowed a California company to build six warehouses with about 4.17 million square feet of floor space. Residents, fearing traffic and noise, opposed the change.
Township board of supervisors Chairman Jason Hollister declined to comment on SMGC's appeal of its assessment, but said the township plans to send its solicitor, attorney Anthony Magnotta, to the hearing. The township is used to property owners appealing their assessments because new homeowners regularly wind up with assessments far higher than older homes, Hollister said.
"Unfortunately, every new homeowner has to appeal to get to something reasonable," Hollister said. "New construction is taking the brunt of the unfair assessment."
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@scrantontimes.com; 570-348-9147; @BorysBlogTT on Twitter.
