Ellenville – If all goes according to plan, the Ellenville Dodge building on North Main Street in the Village of Ellenville may have some new tenants in 2009.

Following reports from two weeks ago regarding a possible purchase of the building by Joe Tso, the current owner of the Napanoch Valley Mall property on Route 209 in the Town of Wawarsing, Tso himself has confirmed that he expects to have financing for the roughly $310,000 purchase of the building. To that end, he has signed leases with three businesses in the Valley Mall allowing them to move into the new building starting March 1, 2009. The businesses — LR Cards, the Toolbox, and the flea market which currently resides in the old Ames store — are without leases for the mall. Since they would be displaced should plans for Wal-Mart to purchase the property move ahead, Tso says that the relocation is part of an effort to fulfill a verbal commitment he had made with those businesses when talk of the sale first started to circulate last year.

"I promised the current tenants I have to find them a home," said Tso in a phone interview on Monday. The tenants who have signed the leases have the option of not moving into the new building by the time March rolls around.

"I gave them the option, the right not to do it," said Tso. "Therefore they have a free choice, but everybody wants to have a location. The option is in their favor. I have no way to force anybody to move. But everybody wants to move."

Both Larry Rosselli, the proprietor of LR Cards, and Phil Diamond, the proprietor of the Toolbox, both say that the lease they've signed does indeed give them the option not to move should they find that the building is not in the condition in which they'd want to run their businesses.

Tso also assured them that he will be renovating the building, with an estimated cost of between $200,000 and $300,000, saying that he will begin "probably next year, I have all winter to do it."

One of the businesses in the mall that is also without a lease, Brother John's Pizza, will not be moving to the Ellenville Dodge building, however. To relocate them, Tso said that he is in the planning stages to construct a new building on a two-and-a-half acre property across from Peter's Market, the former site of Beefsteak Charlie's.

"It's in the planning stages," he said. "When Wal-Mart closes, I'll have [the] money…after March. I expect Wal-Mart to close probably around March or April…as a seller I have no idea what date, but I think that's because Wal-Mart is behind schedule by about one year. They told me that." Tso said that the contract for the property's sale is for $5.5 million.

As to the possible future tenants of the Ellenville Dodge Building, the Toolbox's Phil Diamond said on Tuesday that he saw positives in the move, saying, "the location's good." The details of the lease beyond the start-date, however, have yet to be ironed out.

"I took a gamble, I signed a blank lease," said Diamond, "but Joe's always been good to me."

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