In February 2026, Black Diamond Capital Management paid $175 million for the Palisades Center at a foreclosure auction in lower Manhattan. The mall's tax bill, the one that helps fund Clarkstown's schools, town budget, and county services, is currently calculated on a value of $300 million. That number was locked in place by a 2024 settlement that runs for three years, meaning it holds roughly through 2027.
If you are comparing West Nyack against other Rockland towns right now, that gap between what the market just paid and what the tax roll says the property is worth is not a footnote. It is the mechanism sitting underneath every property tax figure you will see on a listing in this town for the next year, and it is worth understanding before you fall in love with a number.
The Number on the Tax Roll
For years, Palisades Center's owner, Eklecco, fought Clarkstown over what the 2.2 million square foot mall was actually worth for tax purposes. Eklecco argued the mall's market value was closer to $155 million. The town countered with $578 million. In 2024 the two sides settled, fixing the assessed value at $300 million for three years and barring the mall from filing another tax challenge during that window.
That settlement also came with a bill. Clarkstown had to refund $27.5 million in property taxes already collected, and the Clarkstown Central School District absorbed the largest share of it, around $18 million, since roughly 60 percent of a New York property tax bill funds schools. Clarkstown Supervisor George Hoehmann framed the outcome as a win for residents at the time, telling Patch that the settlement protected taxpayers by locking in a value far higher than what the mall's owners had sought and heading off an even larger refund.
That framing made sense in 2024. It gets harder to hold onto after February 2026.
The Number the Market Just Set
When Palisades Center finally went to auction after years in receivership, the mall did not sell anywhere close to $300 million, and it came nowhere near the $463.4 million judgment against it. Black Diamond, the only bidder, paid $175 million, using the discounted debt it had already purchased the previous October. That price sits well below the assessed value the town is currently using to calculate the mall's tax bill, and much closer to the $155 million figure Eklecco itself argued for during the tax certiorari fight than to the $300 million the town settled on.
Black Diamond's founder, Stephen Deckoff, said the firm intends to hold the property for the long term and reinvest in it, calling it an asset serving one of the most affluent, densely populated trade areas in the Tri-State region. Rockland County Business Journal later reported the new owner has no plans to flip it. Spinoso Real Estate Group, which has managed leasing and operations at the mall since September 2024, stays on in that role.
That continuity matters for the town in the short run. A buyer with no interest in flipping the property is also, for now, a buyer with no urgent reason to reopen a fight over its assessed value. But the open-market sale still did something the 2024 settlement couldn't undo: it put a real number on the property, and that number is a lot closer to what Eklecco once claimed than to what Clarkstown is currently taxing.
Why the Gap Matters More If You Live Down the Road
West Nyack sits inside the Town of Clarkstown, and Clarkstown is covered by three separate school districts, Clarkstown Central, Nanuet, and Pearl River, each setting its own mill rate independent of the others. Two homes with identical assessments, in the same town, under the same county tax rate, can carry annual tax bills that differ by thousands of dollars simply because of which side of a school district line they happen to sit on.
That line was drawn long before anyone involved owned a home on either side of it, and it interacts directly with what happens to a single commercial property like Palisades Center. When the mall's tax certiorari case forced an $18 million refund, most of that came out of the Clarkstown Central School District's side of the ledger, not out of Nanuet's or Pearl River's. The mall pays into whichever district it physically sits in. Homeowners on that same side absorb more of the swing when the mall's value moves, because the school district can't spread the loss across a wider tax base the way a county can.
Here is the part that gets lost when a listing simply states an annual tax figure:
| Locked roughly through 2027 | Still exposed |
|---|---|
| Palisades Center's $300 million assessed value | Its proven market value, now $175 million |
| The mall's ability to file a new tax certiorari challenge | Whichever school district absorbs the next assessment fight |
| The current tax roll's numbers | The county equalization rate, which is recalculated annually |
The lock buys the town three years of predictability on paper. It does not resolve the underlying disagreement about what the property is worth, and February's auction result gave Eklecco's old argument some real-world backing it didn't have during the 2024 negotiations.
What This Means If You're Comparing West Nyack Right Now
None of this means West Nyack's property taxes are about to spike. Black Diamond's stated plan to hold and reinvest, rather than flip or challenge the assessment immediately, is the best case scenario for short-term stability. What it does mean is that the tax figure on any listing you're comparing right now is a snapshot of an arrangement with an expiration date, not a permanent fact about the town.
A few things worth doing before you weigh a West Nyack tax bill against a comparable home in Nanuet, New City, or across the county line:
Ask which of Clarkstown's three school districts a specific address falls into before you compare its tax bill to a home in a different part of town. The address matters more than the assessed value here.
Treat the current $300 million figure for Palisades Center as a negotiated number with a known shelf life, not a market appraisal. The mall's own sale price this year suggests the next assessment conversation, whenever it happens, will start from a very different baseline.
Watch for news out of the Town of Clarkstown Assessor's office each spring, since assessed values are published annually and the county equalization rate that adjusts them changes with local sales activity, mall or no mall.
I've spent more than two decades walking buyers through exactly this kind of local detail, the kind that never shows up on a national portal but changes what a house actually costs you to own. If you're weighing West Nyack against another Rockland or Bergen County town and want a straight answer about what a specific address's tax picture looks like, that's a conversation worth having before you write an offer, not after.
A Few Questions Worth Asking Directly
Does the Palisades Center sale mean my West Nyack tax bill is going up? Not automatically. The $300 million assessed value is locked through the 2024 settlement's three-year term, and the new owner has said it plans to hold and reinvest rather than challenge that assessment right away. The exposure is what happens after that window closes.
How do I find out which school district a house is actually in? The school district is tied to the specific parcel, not the town or hamlet name on the listing. It's worth confirming directly for any address you're seriously considering, since Clarkstown Central, Nanuet, and Pearl River set their rates independently.
Is this specific to West Nyack, or does it apply elsewhere in Rockland County? The mechanism, a large commercial taxpayer whose assessed value shapes what residential owners pay, exists anywhere a town depends heavily on one big property. Clarkstown's version is unusually visible right now because of the mall's public foreclosure and sale, but the underlying school district math applies to any home search in a town with overlapping district lines.
Property taxes in a place like West Nyack are never just about the house you're looking at. They're about a tax base you're joining, one that currently includes a mall carrying a negotiated value that the open market just quietly disagreed with. If you want help reading that picture for a specific street or a specific school zone, Debra Gay is glad to walk through it with you. Let's Connect.
