Albany Development Thread

[kznyc2k]

Hotel plans for center revisited

Authority for convention site questions efficiency of building two facilities
By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business rightr
First published: Saturday, October 27, 2007

ALBANY -- Two smaller hotels? Or one big one?

Albany Convention Center Authority officials are weighing that decision as they plan the construction of the $300 million center on Hudson Street downtown.

Plans long have called for building two hotels: a full-service hotel of about 250 rooms offering room, laundry and other services, and a limited-service hotel with no such amenities.

But now, one 400-room hotel is under consideration.

Two reasons are cited for the shift: changing market conditions and concerns over spiraling costs.

Several hotels have been either proposed or built in central Albany, meaning there may be shifting demand for either a full- or limited-service hotel, said Duncan Stewart, executive director of the authority.

And with the expected cost of building the center ballooning by $100 million, constructing one hotel is cheaper, although exactly how much cheaper hasn't been determined.

"(Cost) will certainly be a consideration," said George Leveille, chairman of the authority. "We'll certainly try to find values as we approach this."

Leveille said it's likely that authority officials will have a firm idea of the direction they intend to head when they meet again Nov. 30.

Also at that meeting, officials could pick who will operate the hotel and convention center. Four firms are under consideration, and the authority was expected to make a selection at its meeting Friday morning.

But Leveille said the complexity of the decision led to a delay.

Interested in being the operator are Waterford Hotel Group of Waterford, Conn.; the partnership of BBL Development of Albany and Ocean Hospitalities Inc. of Portsmouth, N.H.; Starwood Hotels & Fine Resorts Worldwide Inc. of White Plains; and SMG, a Philadelphia company that runs the Times Union Center.

Leveille noted, however, that SMG wants to run only the convention center, while others generally concentrate on the hotel industry.

That leaves officials weighing the possibility of choosing two firms, while attempting to judge how well they might work together.

As planned, the convention center would include a 60,000-square-foot exhibit hall, a 25,000-square-foot multi-use room and a 22,350-square-foot ballroom.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=10/27/2007

[kznyc2k]

Power of water to transform Albany?

New city waterfront could take cue from canals of Providence, R.I.
By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer
First published: Sunday, October 28, 2007

As the sun falls behind downtown buildings in Providence, R.I., barges carrying black-clad, torch-bearing volunteers make their way down a wide canal separating the city's east side from its center.

Thousands watch as the volunteers lean from the boats to light mid-river bonfires. Classical music plays as light dances on the water.


In the summer, this eerily beautiful environmental-art display called WaterFire has become a bi-weekly civic happening.

Yet two decades ago it was unimaginable, because there was no water.

The canal was covered with roadways, parking lots and railroad tracks, until the city in the 1980s uncovered the water and built an elegant waterfront park.

The move is credited with enlivening what had been a grim downtown, making Providence an example of the power of water to transform a city.

There's a similar plan here, too, for an Albany waterfront dominated by Interstate 787.

The plan, by design firm Saratoga Associates, was developed in 2001 and is no doubt gathering dust on shelves across the region. It notes there were once canals just north of downtown, near Erie Boulevard.

They're buried by concrete, just as Providence's waterway was.

Bob Bristol, president of Saratoga Associates, says revealing the canals would give Albany a waterfront west of the highway and could be a catalyst for development -- and a rejuvenated city.

The price tag? $100 million, at least.

Bristol concedes that kind of money is not going to be available soon, especially with state and local governments preparing to build a $300 million downtown Albany convention center.

But he thinks the plan for a new Albany waterfront has an undeniable logic.

Mayor Jerry Jennings doesn't seem so sure, saying he fears digging up the canals could uncover problematic environmental pollution.

But Jennings, whose administration has earned credit for developing waterside parkland, says he has long been interested in lessening the impact of the interstate.

He says he has talked with developers willing to weigh building over the highway, as has been done in cities such as Boston.

Jennings has also looked -- briefly -- into burying a mile or so of Interstate 787.

That price tag? $700 million to $800 million.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=10/28/2007

[kznyc2k]

New signs coming to Albany

ALBANY -- The Downtown Albany Business Improvement District announced Wednesday that it is creating a system of signs and maps to help drivers and pedestrians find their way around town.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=11/13/2007


Plan for strip mall dropped

The developer who proposed a controversial Loudonville strip mall has agreed to rework the plan.

Crisafulli Associates LLC envisioned Loudon Square as a 15,000-square-foot shopping strip and 4,500-square-foot restaurant at Albany Shaker and Everett roads. Instead, Crisafulli said Monday, he will submit a plan for a two-story office building at the site.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=11/13/2007

[kznyc2k]

Tower proposal raises concerns

Group worries plan for 221-foot building on Wellington Row would ruin Capitol's character
By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer
First published: Wednesday, November 14, 2007

ALBANY -- A downtown property owner is objecting to the height of the proposed Wellington Row redevelopment, saying the tower planned as part of the project would overwhelm the state Capitol.

Mark Pastreich, owner of 126 State St., just east of Wellington Row, said he has formed the group "Save Our State Capitol" and is talking with other property owners and historic preservationists who object to the size of what is proposed.

"The building would dwarf the Capitol and destroy the historic character of the district," he said.

As proposed by Columbia Development Cos. of Albany, the new Wellington Row would mostly keep the row of historic facades that now line State Street. Behind those buildings would rise a 221-foot, 14-story tower.

City zoning for the area, however, limits new buildings to a height of 85 feet, said Bradley Glass, an Albany city planner, requiring Columbia Development to secure a variance before construction can begin.

That variance will be considered at 5:30 tonight by the Board of Zoning Appeals at a meeting in City Hall. Pastreich said he and others will attend the meeting to voice objections.

"I definitely believe they need to do something (at Wellington Row)," said Pastreich, a Poughkeepsie-based real estate investor who bought his State Street building in 1999. "But I don't believe the zoning variance is in the best interest of the city or the state."

Wellington Row is a dilapidated string of five historic buildings at the top of State Street. The structures, at 132 to 140 State, have long been a boarded-up eyesore that downtown boosters have been eager to see redeveloped.

To some, Columbia Development was a white knight when it bought the buildings a year ago for $925,000 and announced plans to demolish most of the row and build an office tower behind the historic facades.

But preservationists quickly objected to the plan, saying it would reduce the facades to little more than window dressing. In response to the concerns, the developer in July came forward with a revised plan that mostly preserves the buildings and won praise from the earlier critics.

Under the $60 million plan, the State Street buildings would have retail on the ground level with apartments above. The tower would be an office building.

The revision seemed to silence criticism, and public hearings on the proposal drew no objections.

Some observers, however, quietly questioned the size of the building, but many preservationists said they believed the project's many benefits, including the revitalization of the historic facades, outweighed concerns.

"Given the circumstances, it's a remarkable level of preservation that Columbia has taken on," William Brandow, an architect and board member with the Historic Albany Foundation, said after seeing the revised plan.

Still, Pastreich is convinced the city should reject the variance request and limit the new building to 85 feet. Zoning regulations are not established lightly, he said, and they should not be lightly disregarded.

Mike Arcangel, who is overseeing the Wellington project for Columbia, declined to comment Tuesday.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=11/14/2007

[Lance]

I'm not sure if it's the case, but I drove by last night and it looked like the low-rent residential building, the old Dewitt Clinton I think it was, looked totally empty. I don't remember if that was going to be taken for this, but someone has cleared it out. No big loss, at least other residential things seem brewing nearby in downtown.

[kznyc2k]

Lance, I think the the Bizjournal read your mind. There's more to the article, but it's for paid subscribers only:

Future of landmark Albany building unclear; owners mull costly choices
The Business Review (Albany) - by Michael DeMasi
Friday, November 9, 2007

The scaffolding that surrounded the DeWitt Clinton Apartments in downtown Albany for several years is gone. And so are the elderly and low-income residents who lived there.

But the fate of the 11-story building diagonally across from the Capitol is uncertain, 19 months after father-son investors from Brooklyn bought it for $5.3 million.

Architects have tried to devise plans that would suit national hotel chains but also preserve the building's original character, said Henry Nahal, an Albany attorney who represents the owners, Chaim Ausch and his son, Yakov.

"Each franchise has different requirements and costs," Nahal said. "Some would require major renovations."

[kznyc2k]

In other news--

Firm hired to design 'new urbanist' development at Hoffman's Playland

The company behind The Village of New Loudon, a 'new urbanist'-style community proposed for a 37-acre site adjacent to Hoffman's Playland on Route 9 near Albany, N.Y., has hired a New York City firm to design the development.

Cooper Carry beat four other competitors to win the contract from New Loudon Road Associates LLC, a group of Schenectady, N.Y.-based investors, according to Cooper Carry. The firm also cited another one of its mixed-use projects, Bethesda Row in Bethesda, Md., as a "major inspiration" for The Village of New Loudon.

The developers describe the project as "new urbanist."..........Plans for The Village of New Loudon call for a boutique hotel and spa, national chains, local retail, entertainment spaces, restaurants and a variety of multi-unit residential buildings. The Albany area's Shaker heritage will be a major theme in the development's design.

http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/st...843600^1549611

It's great to hear that new urbanism will finally make an appearance in the region!

[Lance]

Good lord, Route 9 is busy enough in that area as it is. And they better not do anything to the character of Hoffman's Playland, that place is a treasure.

Thanks for the articles though, I'd be curious to see if any hotels would bite on converting the DeWitt Clinton, especially once the Convention Center got underway. Time will tell.

[kznyc2k]

About the hotels, there's been so many new ones popping up in the past few years, I don't imagine Albany could support one or two hotels at the convention center, along with one at the DeWitt. I'd back that notion up with some occupancy figures, but the best and latest info I can find right now is this mega-specific comment from April: "Even with the growth in hotel rooms, Hershberg said the occupancy rate downtown 'appears to be hanging tough.'" Quoted from here: http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany...y4.html?page=2

On a related note-

Hilton Garden Inn opens across from UAlbany - November 15, 2007
http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/st...843600^1551359


And a totally unrelated one-

Price Chopper to build 6-story headquarters in Schenectady - November 15, 2007
http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany...ml?jst=b_ln_hl

[kznyc2k]

Price Chopper sees future in hometown
Golub Corp. reveals plan for new headquarters in Schenectady

By ALAN WECHSLER, Business writer
Click byline for more stories by writer.
First published: Friday, November 16, 2007

SCHENECTADY Golub Corp. unveiled good news for this city Thursday: a new company headquarters near Union College that could open as early as 2009.

The parent of the Price Chopper supermarket chain, which now is based off Duanesburg Road in Rotterdam, also has plans for its current home. Golub promises to expand its warehouses there by more than 500,000 square feet over the next five years.

The cost of the two projects is expected to exceed $40 million.

The news was announced at the GE Theater at Proctors, to a room filled with Price Chopper executives and local officials.

Standing under an image celebrating the company's 75th anniversary, President and Chief Executive Officer Neil Golub said the move was needed to expand the business.

"Growing our stores and sales is really what it's about," he said.

In addition to the new headquarters and warehouse, the company plans to open 30 new stores in the six states where it does business. The company also plans to rehab or expand other stores in its territory. It now has 116 stores.

Included in the mix is the Price Chopper in Colonie Plaza on Central Avenue near New Karner Road, which will be replaced by a new store, and store expansions in Malta, Saratoga and Granville. Two other new stores in New York and two stores in Connecticut are also planned for the immediate future.

Construction on the new $22 million headquarters would start next year, to open in 2009. The 240,000-square-foot, six-story building would be erected north of Nott Street near its intersection with Erie Boulevard. Between 850 and 1,000 people eventually would work there.

Price Chopper's overall Northeast work force numbers 24,000.

The new headquarters would be built by developer Galesi Group of Rotterdam, which would lease the facility to Price Chopper for 30 years. The facility will incorporate environmentally friendly technologies, officials said.

The project will be located on a 9.5-acre parcel called College Park North, adjacent to Union College and across Nott Street from the former Ramada Inn, now Union College dormitory and conference space.

The site was at one time part of the large American Locomotive Co. property, and was more recently known as Big N Plaza, home to a retail operation abandoned years ago.

It's also a brownfield site. Galesi officials said contaminated dirt will have to be removed as part of the clean-up process.

The new building would be adjacent to a proposed YMCA, which Neil Golub said could serve employees with its day care and health club. But the announcement means an end to a proposed 35,000-square-foot school for Union Graduate College.

College Interim President John Huppertz said the school had been negotiating with Galesi over the proposal, and would be looking at other sites instead.

"We were only going to take a small piece of the property," he said. "We weren't upset this is business."

Golub Corp. looked at several different sites around the region for its headquarters, including the Harriman Campus in Albany and Rotterdam Industrial Park, which is adjacent to its existing headquarters.

The company, which is family- and employee-owned, saw more than $3 billion in revenue last year. Seven Golub family members work for the company, which is in its fourth generation.

Golub Corp. has been headquartered in Rotterdam since 1961. Now, the busy warehouse is expected to expand by more than 500,000 feet over the next half a decade. The work, totaling $19 million, includes an 89,000-square-foot expansion to the perishable warehouse, a 100,000-square-foot expansion to the grocery warehouse, and a 275,000-square-foot expansion to the general merchandise warehouse.

Elected officials in both Rotterdam and Schenectady praised the announcement.

"Wow," said Mayor Brian U. Stratton of Schenectady. "This is a great day for Schenectady."

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...ate=11/16/2007

[kznyc2k]

From the Price Chopper website:

[kznyc2k]

Saratoga condo project awaits city approval of land sale

The Business Review (Albany) - by Robin K. Cooper
November 16, 2007

Builder Sonny Bonacio's latest Saratoga Springs residential and office project will house 12 condos with prices starting at $600,000.

The condo and office builder is hoping by year's end to complete the $850,000 purchase of a 12,000-square-foot, city-owned parking lot at 420 Broadway, located between Lillian's Restaurant and Cantina.

Bonacio has applied for city Design Review Commission approval to demolish the dilapidated 31-space lot. He hopes to begin the $100,000 demolition following the 2008 horse racing and tourist season.

.........The plan calls for a four-story mixed-use structure, with the first floor leased as retail space. The second floor will accommodate office uses, and the third and fourth floors will be cut into 12 condos. The size of the condos will be determined by prospective buyers.

http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/st...448400^1551031

4 stories here is perfect:

[kznyc2k]

Hope springs eternal amid doubts about convention center

By FRED LeBRUN
First published: Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Doubts linger that Albany will get its long-overdue convention center complex.

How many years in the planning is it now?

For all the considerable and thoughtful work that's been done around the edges, contracting with architects, builders, and management firms, we still don't have a realistic price tag. Nor have we heard an enthusiastic voice in the governor's office boosting it, either. Not from the sitting governor, anyway.

What's been said so many times before bears repeating: Without the state coming across with the hundreds of millions needed, including inevitable cost overruns, there will be no convention center. This is a New York state convention center in all but name.

So far, the Albany Convention Center Authority doesn't have the money, or a bankable assurance that it will come, simple as that.

Now, maybe Gov. Spitzer is a huge fan of giving Albany a convention center and hotel, and he's just keeping it under a bushel basket for whatever reasons, although I can't imagine why. And perhaps concerns about the ever-elusive financing are overblown. But the hour of reckoning, either way, is coming soon.

Assemblyman Jack McEneny, an authority board member is utterly convinced there will be a convention center and that the state financing will be there. Further, he's confident that unless something untoward happens to vastly delay a late 2008 or early 2009 groundbreaking, the entire complex can be built for around the currently advertised $325 million to $340 million.

"It was never not going to happen," the assemblyman insists.

Others associated with the board and the project, who don't want to go on the record, range from somewhat confident to doubtful, especially with a looming $4 billion state budget deficit. Truly, the hour of reckoning is at hand.

On Dec. 14, authority members finally will get hard numbers on cost that will include all the fiscal implications. "A cloud is lifting and we will get specificity," notes McEneny. The authority could release or act on those numbers at its final meeting of the year on Dec. 28.

But how much will be too much when those numbers do come in?

Already, the governor's Division of the Budget, in a glib e-mail to the authority board, suggested cutting back on the project to reduce cost. Yet during the forum if one message rang loud and clear from those familiar with convention centers in Hartford, Conn., and Providence, R.I., it's that any chance of success requires not cutting corners. Give a convention center the amenities to draw in customers, or suffer the consequences long term.

So again, how much will be too much?

Which begs the question -- still lingering out there -- whether a convention center is the right thing for downtown Albany. I believe it is, even as a money loser, as long as it serves as an economic development engine for a large block of the city in desperate need.

That was the other clear message representatives from Providence and Hartford brought us, that a convention center has to be part of a much larger urban development plan to optimize its benefit.

On that score, our confidence lags. There is no larger urban development plan for downtown Albany. And why not? Albany city halls, past and present, wasted hundreds of thousands over the years on useless downtown studies, but a larger context for a convention center is apparently an idea we're just getting around to now. That's baffling.

That makes the convention center complex the economic development equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. Which means throwing a lot of money up in the air for iffy results in the end zone.

How much is too much?

Finally, as to the fundamental question of yes or no to an Albany convention center, Jack McEneny provides the right perspective, from my point of view at least:

"Does Albany need a convention center is the wrong question. Do the 19 million people of New York state deserve an appropriate place to gather in their capital city? Now that's the right question."

As long as it's not too much.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...date=12/4/2007

[kznyc2k]

$23M project adding to historic turnaround

By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer
Tuesday, December 4, 2007

COHOES -- The room is as big as a football field.

Its floors are rutted and littered with piles of abandoned industrial debris. Pigeons make their homes in a nearby stairwell. And cold wind blows through broken windows, rattling ripped plastic intended to keep out the rain.

Uri Kaufman saw all this last week and offered an assessment: "This," he said without irony, "is a trophy property."

It was hard to disagree, because while the north end of the massive Harmony Mills building, where Kaufman stood, remains a relic of a gritty industrial past, its south end is a polished and profitable apartment complex.

And many consider the residential part of the building a trophy not only for Kaufman, co-owner of Harmony Mills, but for the city of Cohoes and the entire Capital Region.

Indeed, the Harmony Mills conversion has won several historic preservation awards, including the most prestigious of such kudos: a 2007 J. Timothy Anderson Award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The project is helping to prove that redirecting abandoned industrial properties to residential uses can succeed in the Capital Region, and that wealthy renters can be lured to locations other than, say, Saratoga Springs or Albany.

Harmony Mills also might be influencing the broader housing market, affecting the location, construction and design of other residential projects -- including the second phase of development at Harmony Mills itself.

That $23 million project is expected to start early next year and add 141 apartments to the 96 already at The Lofts at Harmony Mills, where monthly rents range from $925 to $2,100.

And Kaufman says he is moving forward without the trepidation and worries that dogged him and Ira Schwartz, his publicity-shy business partner, during the first phase of construction two years ago.

If the building and conditions are right, Kaufman said he has learned, renters will pay above-market rates in Cohoes. They will live in a semi-industrial neighborhood that offers few residential comforts. And they seem to appreciate a building with history and character.

"All of the things that we were afraid of did not come to pass," said Kaufman, who lives on Long Island.

When Harmony Mills opened, it had few counterparts in the Capital Region. That is no longer the case.

Several other conversions of commercial properties to residential are under way. And there are many new developments in Cohoes: The city at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers has 532 condominium units planned or under construction, as well as 132 new residential units at a senior living complex along Route 787.

Mayor John McDonald credits the redevelopment of Harmony Mills with helping to change both the demographics and image of Cohoes. He said the project gave other builders confidence in his city and helped to quicken the arrival of other new developments.

Jesse Holland, president of Sunrise Management & Consulting, a Latham company that monitors the local housing market, agreed that Harmony Mills is significant and said the complex, with its history and Mohawk River views, has succeeded with renters partly because it is unique.

"The project is important because of how big those structures are, and it's important for Cohoes to have that kind of development and redevelopment," Holland said. "If you look back 15 years ago, those were structures waiting to be a two-week fire."

Indeed, Harmony Mills was once a four-building complex, but one of the buildings burned beyond repair in 1999, a year before Kaufman and Schwartz, responding to an advertisement in the New York Times, paid $1.7 million for the former cotton mills in 2000.

The 850,000-square-foot complex lines two sides of North Mohawk Street. It was built in the 1850s and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

"There's a lot of history there," said Peter Seidner, the Albany architect who designed the Harmony Mills conversion. "You can create something new that's very nice, but there's no way of creating history."

The next phase of Harmony Mills' construction will complete work on the east side of the street. Kaufman said he then will turn his attention to the west side of the complex, where he plans more apartments and, perhaps, shops and a restaurant.

Kaufman, giving a tour of the complex last week, considered how far it had come from the days when financing and the potential for success were unclear.

He also considered how a factory where, according to photographs, children with few choices in life grimly toiled had been turned into homes for people who can choose to live anywhere.

"This place was probably a house of horrors 100 years ago," he said.

Pictures at the link: http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...date=12/4/2007

******
I think this sign of success deserves a

[bpg88]

rents range from $925 to $2,100

Who the hell is dumping that kind of money into an apartment?

Nice project, anyway.

[kznyc2k]

Albany lease dispute gets new court date

Dewitt Clinton owner seeks ouster of tenant in bankruptcy action
By CHRIS CHURCHILL, Business writer
Thursday, December 6, 2007

ALBANY -- Lawyers representing both sides in a lease dispute at the Dewitt Clinton building downtown gathered Wednesday in a bankruptcy judge's chambers, but emerged without a resolution to the disagreement.

The landmark building at the corner of State and Eagle streets is owned by See Why Gerard LLC. Principal Chaim Ausch, a Brooklyn investor, says the company intends to convert the building into a hotel, but cannot do so as long as two businesses -- the State Room banquet hall and the Comedy Works club -- remain as tenants.

But Tom Nicci, owner of the businesses, says he has a valid 15-year lease.

See Why Gerard filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month, hoping the move would lead to the nullification of the lease.

A hearing in the case was scheduled for Wednesday morning at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Albany, but Judge Robert Littlefield Jr. had attorneys involved in the case meet with him behind closed doors. A new hearing has been scheduled Dec. 19.

See Why Gerard isn't disputing the validity of the lease, which Nicci signed before the company purchased the building last year for $5.3 million.

But Richard Weiskopf, the Albany attorney representing See Why Gerard, said Nicci pays rent that is far below market rates, and renovation of the mostly vacant building can't begin until Nicci leaves.

Stephen Waite, the attorney for Nicci, said his client pays low rent because he paid for a renovation.

"When my client took over the space, it was raw and basically uninhabitable," he said.

If Judge Littlefield rejects the lease, it would not force Nicci to vacate the building, Waite said. But it would allow See Why Gerard cut the heat, he said, and that would make operating the businesses a challenge.

Nicci has declined to comment publicly on the dispute.

The DeWitt Clinton stretches along a block directly across the street from the state Capitol. It was built in the 1920s, but conditions have declined from its days as an upscale hotel.

At an adjacent property on State Street, Albany developer Columbia Development Cos. has announced plans to redevelop the historic Wellington Row, with stores, apartments and a 14-story office tower.

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...date=12/6/2007

[kznyc2k]

Albany's 11 North Pearl filling up

The Business Review (Albany) - by Michael DeMasi
Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The new owners of a landmark office tower in downtown Albany, N.Y., are sprucing up the largely-empty Art Deco-styled building and have lured a handful of new tenants.

Tony and George Huang of The Heights Real Estate Co. in Manhattan have embarked on the latest plan to fill space in the former Home Savings Bank building at 11 N. Pearl St.

The owners have spent more than $100,000 on improvements since purchasing the 20-story building in May for $8.25 million, said Dan Kemp, property manager.

Amenities will include a fitness center on the 14th floor, dedicated parking and concierge services, Kemp said. The owners are also negotiating a lease to fill the former bank offices on the ground floor and a 2,500-square-foot retail space that fronts James Street.

Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings will host a ribbon cutting Wednesday at 4 p.m. to celebrate the improvements and mark the building's 80th birthday. Tours will also be provided until 8 p.m.

Filling the 125,000-square-foot building will be a tall order: it's 65 percent vacant.

But Kemp has made headway. He said several new tenants will be moving in, including Brinjac Engineering Inc., of Harrisburg, Pa., JP Morgan Chase and The Business Services Group.

Another new tenant will be The Design Center at 11 N. Pearl Street, a custom interior decorator for commercial offices.

The design center will fill about 1,200-square-feet on the 15th floor and feature window treatments, floor finishes, cabinets and other furnishings.

Owner Richard Norizsan said the business will appeal to commercial office tenants who have difficulty getting contractors to come to downtown Albany because of concerns about parking.

"We've already got everybody in place to do the work and get it all accomplished," said Norizsan, who also owns an online business, ShutterKing.net, based in Clifton Park.

Another tenant that may move into the building is Marcus & Millichap, a large national real estate firm that currently leases space for its two agents in Latham. The firm is negotiating space on the 12th floor, said James Verseput of Marcus & Millichap.

The firm was drawn to the building because of the fitness center, the views and the possibility there will be a restaurant on the ground floor, he said.

It's proven difficult to fill the former Home Savings Bank building since its successor company, Home & City Savings Bank, was bought by Trustco Bank in 1991.

Trustco sold the building for $2 million in 1999 to a New York City investor who planned to make it a home for telecommunications businesses.

Pinetree Group Inc. installed switching networks and other equipment, but its plans were dealt a blow when the telecom industry went bust in the early 2000s.

http://www.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2007/12/03/daily22.html?b=1196658000^1559695

[kznyc2k]

City renews effort for homes project

Mayor Jennings says more land can be found for affordable housing
By TIM O'BRIEN, Staff writer
First published: Friday, December 7, 2007

ALBANY -- Mayor Jerry Jennings pledged this week to renew efforts to find vacant land for developer Charles Touhey to turn into homes.

Three years ago, the mayor and Touhey announced a plan to build 50 two-family homes for low-income homeowners in Arbor Hill. Since then, only six have been built. In October, Touhey said he was frustrated at the lack of progress and had a list of interested buyers.

"There is plenty of land available to the city," Jennings said at a ribbon cutting Wednesday for the last of the six homes Touhey built on a block of Second Street.

Deven Horne, whose late husband Milton Horne built the day-care center across from the homes, announced she would donate land next to it for Touhey to build another house.

The developer noted the city applied for and received a $5 million grant to renovate a former refrigerated warehouse. He suggested the city seek a similar amount to start a Strategic Acquisition Fund to acquire vacant land and homes to create owner-occupied housing.

"We need to get these lots," Touhey said.

Once built, the homes are sold for $99,000 to an owner-occupant who can use the apartment rent to pay the mortgage. The houses also go on the city's tax rolls.

The Touhey Homeownership Foundation pledged Wednesday to fund half the salary of a full-time staffer to identify properties that can be acquired and converted into housing. Jennings welcomed the news, saying such a position is being planned.

"Our foundation wants to go above and beyond subsidizing the houses ourselves," Touhey said. "We can do lots of these houses in Albany."

Jennings said afterward the city is still committed to helping Touhey find other land. "We'll work with him," he said. "We have plenty of lots for him."

Michael Yevoli, the city's commissioner of development and planning, said there are challenges in finding land for the homes Touhey builds. The houses require two connected lots, he said, and do not fit the criteria to be built within historic neighborhoods.

"We need to get control of contiguous lots. That's one of the challenges," he said. "We are working with Charles to identify areas where this works."

Anna Thomas is the buyer who will close on the last of the six homes within two weeks. Her daughter Syreeta Edmond will live in the apartment.

"I'm trying to get other people to get into the homeownership process," Thomas said. "Everyone I worked with was just fabulous, friendly."

As Jennings and the other public officials left, Touhey said he was feeling optimistic that the remaining homes might yet be built.

"He's saying the right things. You need to have someone who is focused on it full time."

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories...date=12/7/2007

[Canasian]

Originally Posted by kznyc2k

Stumbled upon this.. a rendering for 733 Broadway. More (exciting) info regarding this in the residential thread

I like that! How far is it from E-comm Square?

[kznyc2k]

E-comm Square... hahaha, now there's a brand that history has been all but atrocious to.

E-comm Square is on the south side of downtown, a block east of the proposed convention center, while the above proposal is on the far northern side, a block north of Broadway's intersection with Clinton Ave.