The city might not have to go through a formal process of transferring ownership of what is now Fair Street Extension to a private developer as part of the proposed Kingstonian project, Mayor Steve Noble said.

The land transfer process originally envisioned may be unnecessary, he said, because the short thoroughfare connecting Schwenk Drive and North Front Street will remain public space as an entrance to the Kingstonian’s parking garage.

Noble’s remarks to the Common Council's Finance Committee come ahead of a public hearing Thursday on the transfer of another piece of city property, the municipal parking lot at 21 North Front St., where the developers plan to build the 420-space garage and a 143-unit apartment complex with hotel and retail space.

Noble has asked the Common Council to vote to transfer the title to the parking lot to the city nonprofit Kingston Local Development Corporation. The move will allow the site to be turned over to developers without the same restrictions — like sale to the highest bidder — that would apply if the city were to transfer title directly to JM Development Group, the Kingstonian’s backers.

Earlier this month, Noble told lawmakers the transfer to the KLDC would also allow the site to continue to function as a municipal parking lot until construction begins there and would ensure that the property would revert to the city ownership if the project fails to come to fruition.

The online hearing for the proposed parking lot transfer is set for Thursday, Feb. 25 at 6:30 p.m.

Opponents of the Kingstonian have zeroed in on the pending property transfers in their latest bid to kill a project that has been deeply unpopular with some city residents who see it as an unwarranted giveaway to wealthy developers building high-end housing. Attorneys for another project opponent, rival developer Neil Bender, have also used the parking lot issue as an angle of legal attack.

Attorneys for Bender, a Manhattan-based real-estate magnate with extensive holdings in Uptown Kingston, have filed a series of lawsuits challenging actions by city officials in relation to the Kingstonian project. In a Feb. 10 email to city officials, attorneys for Bender described the proposed transfer to KLDC as an effort to evade a requirements in the city code for the sale of city property.

“It is apparent that the city is seeking to convey the property to KLDC in order to do what it is otherwise prohibited from doing,” the email reads. “Conveying a city-owned parking lot to a private developer for free.”

As lawmakers weigh transfer of one piece of the Kingstonian site, city officials say that they have not yet decided how they plan to incorporate Fair Street Extension into the project. Plans call for the street to serve as an entrance to the parking garage. Opponents of the project virtually turned out at a recent council meeting to protest the transfer of a city street to private developers.

But this week, Noble said it’s unclear whether that process would even be necessary. Noble noted that the road would technically remain a public right-of-way as the entrance to a public parking lot. Plans also call for construction of deck above the roadway which will serve as a public plaza and contain public bathrooms.

“It may not function as the road we know it as today, as a two-way street, but I’m not sure that [transferring the street to developers] is necessary,” said Noble.

Assistant Corporation Counsel Dan Gartenstein, meanwhile, said that there were no immediate plans to do anything with Fair Street Extension. The road, the city attorney said, was addressed in a traffic study carried out by the developers, adding that disposition of the site could take place as part of the Planning Board’s site plan review process.

The city, said Gartenstein, has a number of options for incorporating the street into the Kingstonian plan, but that none had been considered in detail yet.

“We are focused on one portion of this process at a time,” said Gartenstein. “And for Fair Street Extension, we’re not there yet.”