All Over Albany

A look around the project that's aiming to make over a big chunk of Arbor Hill

One of the largest construction projects in the city of Albany right now is spread across multiple blocks of Clinton Ave and will eventually involve 70 different buildings.

A Rochester-based company called Home Leasing is working to create more than 200 units of affordable housing in the rehabbed buildings, many of which had been vacant or were in otherwise rough shape.

Here's a look around the project, and a bunch of bits about what's in progress...

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The apartments on Elm Street, The Lionheart, Colvin Ave mixed-use, and more exciting tales of the Albany Planning Board

Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board is a program recorded before a live studio audience once a month in which the fates of multi-million dollar projects around the city are (partially) decided.

Included this month: Approval for those controversial Elm Street apartment buildings, a Colvin Ave apartment proposal, The Lionheart, The Wilson, demolitions and how big is that sign...

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A peek at the plan for the new Capital Repertory Theatre in Albany

A rendering filed with the city as part of the exterior signage plan.

Here's a peek at Capital Repertory Theatre's planned renovation of an old warehouse space at North Pearl Street and Livingston Ave into a new theater space. The project is scheduled to make its first appearance before the Albany Planning Board this Thursday evening.

The project description from one of the development docs filed with the city:

The project includes the renovation of the existing 1800's vintage Nabisco building for use as a live theatre venue, 310 +/- seat auditorium with associated front and back of house facilities including a smaller 100 person performance and rehearsal space, box office, cafe/bar, gallery space, props and costume work area, dressing rooms, and administrative offices. The theatre will operate throughout the year, primarily matinee and evening showings arranged around performances. The offices, props and costume work area and rehearsal space will be used during normal business hours throughout the year.

The architecture firm working on the project is CSArch.

The proposed exterior plan includes four LED signs: three signs 4.5 feet by 40 feet, one each along the North Pearl side, Livingston side, and mounted on the roof; and a vertically-oriented sign on the corner that would be 18 feet tall and 4 feet wide. "The displays will be installed as permanent installations, illumination and scrolling LED graphics will be regulated by the theater and primarily limited to hours of operation."

The warehouse site doesn't have any parking and the docs also provide a peek at The Rep's plans for that.

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Gawking at the @HudsonPark residential conversion in Albany

At the corner of Myrtle and Swan.

This week we got a chance to gawk at the still-under-construction residential conversion of the former Long Energy building at Myrtle and Swan, right across from Lincoln Park in Albany.

It's an interesting project, in part because of the design challenge of reshaping the complex of three historic buildings -- they were originally used in association with breweries -- into apartments.

The project also represents a significant addition of residential units -- 75 -- to the neighborhood.

Here's a look around, along with a few more bits.

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A big chunk of downtown Albany was just sold, and there are some big plans for the buildings

A large group of historic properties were sold in downtown Albany this month, and the deal could be a major milestone in the ongoing transformation of the neighborhood.

Over the span of two days last week, Redburn Development Partners closed on "The Kenmore Portfolio," which includes the prominent Kenmore Hotel and Steuben Club buildings on Pearl Street, as well as the Capital Repertory Theatre building.

Redburn is planning apartment conversions for many of the buildings, which it sees as a continuation of downtown's recent shift toward being a residential, "18-hour" neighborhood.

"We think that we have the correct vision for what's needed in downtown Albany," said Jeff Buell, one of Redburn's principals, today via phone. "I think it's an absolutely transformational project that must be done if Albany's going to be a 21st century city."

Here are a few more bits about what's happening.

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A look inside 2 Judson Street

We got a chance this week to stop by the open house for 2 Judson Street, one of the properties that's for sale as part of the Albany County Land Bank's Neighbors for Neighborhoods program (a few details about that program below).

There are handful of photos to go along with this post, in case you'd like to gawk. Because, you know, we definitely wanted to gawk.

The property is part of the McPherson Terrace row on Clinton Ave in West Hill, a string of buildings (not all have survived) that date to the late 1880s/early 1890s. And they're related to Albany architectural royalty: The great Albany architect Edward Ogden participated in developing the strip. (Ogden and his son Charles, also an architect, designed a bunch of beautiful buildings around the city.)

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Approval to convert two prominent downtown buildings, a warm response to increased density, and more exciting tales of the Albany Planning Board

This block is in line to get new life.

Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board is a program recorded before a live studio audience once a month in which the fates of multi-million dollar projects around the city are (partially) decided.

This month: Approval for residential conversion of two notable downtown buildings, a historic parking garage, that big residential/retail project across from St. Peter's, stormwater concerns, an addition to the Lionheart, a practice gym, and that enormous Kenwood project...

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An update on that big project near Quackenbush Square (the one that's currently a big hole in the ground)

How the site looked on Friday.

At the beginning of this year the big mixed-use development proposed for the site just north of Quackenbush Square on Broadway in downtown Albany got approval from the city's planning board and the development company behind the project was looking to get started with construction soon after.

Then in May word surfaced that the project had gotten stuck on higher-than-expected construction cost estimates. And now, 11 months later, there's still just a giant hole in the ground. [Biz Review]

But the development company said this week it's reformulated the plan and it's hoping to get started next year.

Here are a few more bits about what's up for the project, which has the potential to significantly remake that section of Broadway.

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Neighbors for Neighborhoods

The Albany County Land Bank is looking for some landlords.

As part of a new program -- called Neighbors for Neighborhoods -- the land bank has been fixing up a few formerly vacant properties in the city of Albany and is now ready to sell them. That's where the search for landlords comes in. Blurbage:

The Albany County Land Bank will sell up to four (4) fully rehabilitated two-family residential buildings located in Albany County's most distressed neighborhoods to qualified residents who can demonstrate the capacity to own and manage a rental property. Buyers will be required to keep all rental units affordable for a period of 20 years from purchase, during which time they must rent to low-moderate income residents at affordable rental prices ...

As you might expect, there's are a bunch of guidelines for potential property owners. Among them: You have to live within 15 miles of the properties, own two or fewer rental properties, and have "have no current or prior negative real estate history."

That link above has more info about the guidelines and also walks through some of the math on what counts as affordable rental prices. In this case, "affordable" is up to 80 percent of the area median income. For a 1BR apartment that's a rent of $1,296 per month. And the income limit for renters is $48,400 for one person.

There's a workshop about the program Wednesday, November 14 at 6 pm at the Arbor Hill Branch of the Albany Public Library.

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A walkthrough of the old Kenmore Hotel and Steuben Club buildings in downtown Albany

The old Kenmore Hotel and Steuben Club buildings landmark buildings on one of downtown Albany's most prominent blocks. They've also sat largely vacant for years.

That could be changing, though. Both buildings are at the center of a huge in-progress real estate deal. Redburn Development Partners is currently working to close the purchase of the Kenmore Hotel and Steuben Club buildings -- along with a handful of other notable downtown properties -- and redevelop them with residential and retail uses. (See recent planning board discussion about the Kenmore and Steuben as well as the old Times Union building on Sheridan Ave.)

We've passed these buildings hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of times. They're anchors of downtown Albany -- but we had very little sense of what they're actually like on the inside. And we were curious about that, especially now that the buildings could be on the verge of their next lives. We figured you might, too

So we got Redburn to give us a tour. Here are a bunch of photos...

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The Kenmore Hotel and Steuben Club, uproar on Elm Street, and other exciting tales of the Albany Planning Board

Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board is a program recorded before a live studio audience once a month in which the fates of multi-million dollar projects around the city are (partially) decided.

This month: uproar over infill development in Hudson/Park, the plans for the old Steuben Club and Kenmore Hotel downtown, taking over a street segment, demolitions, and school buses...

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A look around the Maiden House residential + retail conversion in downtown Albany

That latest project in the ongoing shift of downtown Albany toward being a residential neighborhood: Maiden House.

It includes 18 apartments and a handful of potentially interest retail spaces at the corner of North Pearl Street and Maiden Lane in a building that had been vacant or underused for many years. And it's backed by development company that's becoming a key player in the transformation of downtown.

So, let's have a look around...

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A look around the new Bull Moose Club coworking space in downtown Albany

Another sign that coworking is starting to catch on in the Capital Region: Downtown Albany now has not one, not two, but three of the flexible shared work spaces.

The latest to open is the Bull Moose Club, right across State Street from the Capitol. (Yep, it has a bust of Teddy Roosevelt.)

As the location suggests, the space is focusing on a crowd of lobbyists, advocates, trade associations, and startups. And it's backed by the same people who created the Troy Innovation Garage coworking space in downtown Troy.

As with other similar setups, Bull Moose offers a typical menu of office services -- desks, internet, printers, mailboxes, conference rooms, and booths for making phone calls. And it has memberships that allow for the occasional drop in at a first-come-first-sit desk or table, as well as private offices available for rent by the month.

Here's a look around the new space, along with a few questions for its founder, Tom Nardacci -- about coworking, other cities, and changing the culture of the Capital Region.

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Another large residential project in downtown Albany that's part of a package of notable projects, and other exciting tales of the Albany Planning Board

This building in downtown Albany is in line to become 133 apartments -- and get another story.

Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board is a program recorded before a live studio audience once a month in which the fates of multi-million dollar projects around the city are (partially) decided.

This month: The first in a series of notable developments for downtown Albany, a tear-down-and-rebuild in Park South, and potential new life for a problem property...

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How to handle a situation involving a neighbor and uncertain future for a shared property?

Anonymous emails:

Do you have any suggestions on how to deal with the situation below:

We live in Center Square and we share a demising wall with a neighbor that has aged significantly. While we value her as a neighbor, we are concerned about what happens to her home when she passes away since we share a wall. Furthermore, we are concerned that she has no inheritors that will take responsibility for her house. So many houses are left in limbo in Albany and it takes many years for them to actually come on the market. What are some things we can do as proactive neighbors to avoid a bad situation?

Very often the best path is to start a polite discussion with the neighbor about an issue like this. (Or, really, about anything -- it's good to know your neighbors.) Sometimes that's not possible, though. And it's true that sometimes properties can fall into an in-between state of ownership that makes it difficult to address problems. Pretty much every neighborhood in Albany (and we suspect most other cities around here) have at least one or two houses that are stuck in this sort of state for all sorts of reasons.

So, this is an important and sensitive situation. Maybe you have a constructive suggestion to offer Anonymous? If so, please share.

Follow up: Lark Hall

AOA is on summer break. So we'll have new follow-ups with people we've met and covered during the last year (or so)

Back in February 2017 word surfaced that 351 Hudson Ave -- AKA the EBA Building, at the corner of Lark and Hudson -- was going up for auction.

The eventual buyers: A team made up of Jeff Buell, a local developer, and the married couple Justin and Jennifer Miller (an attorney and teacher / yoga instructor, respectively). They didn't have an exact plan for the landmark building, but they were excited to get started.

Well, that part took a little longer than expected -- a year, in fact. But the group does now own the building -- which they're calling Lark Hall -- and work is moving along on renovations. (The Lark Street Flower Market is still there.) First up: a yoga studio to be run by Jennifer Miller. A juice bar will follow after that. And then there's the large auditorium space upstairs.

We stopped by 351 Hudson to talk with Jeff Buell and Justin Miller about what's been going on, how they're planning to use that auditorium, and the Lark Street neighborhood.

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Gawking at the renovation of the long-vacant buildings on Broadway in Albany near the railroad overpass

The renovation of the buildings at 800-806 Broadway in Albany -- a strip of four buildings just south of the railroad overpass between downtown and the Warehouse District -- is now complete and ribbon cutting-official as of this past Friday.

The long-vacant buildings -- which were gutted and renovated -- now contain 15 apartments.

Here's a look around, along with a few bits -- including one about the nearby Church of the Holy Innocents.

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A look around the new CoLab coworking space in downtown Albany

Ron Grieco, the co-owner of Stacks Espresso, was skeptical when his business partner, Tyler Wrightson, got back from a trip to Florida where he saw a coworking space next to a coffee spot -- and said they should open a coworking space here in Albany.

"I was like no way, this is out of our wheel house," he said. But he thought about it, and the idea started to make sense because they already had experience creating places where people like to hang out. And there was an open space just across the hallway from the Stacks in the Arcade Building in downtown Albany -- with the same sort of huge windows that look out onto the street.

"This was the perfect space because we're right there already," he said. "That was a big thing, striving for the kind of atmosphere that we create in the coffee shop, which is a warm, welcoming atmosphere."

And this past Friday their coworking space -- CoLab -- opened its doors.

Here's a look around the place along with a few bits about what's up.

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A push to turn vacant buildings into owner-occupied homes -- with some help and coaching

351 Clinton Ave is one of the properties that's part of the program. / photo: Albany County Land Bank

The Albany County Land Bank is starting up a program with the goal of helping people renovate vacant properties and become homeowners. Blurbage for the Equitable Ownership Pilot Program:

EOPP aims to increase opportunities for homeownership in neighborhoods with large concentrations of vacant properties. The majority of the Land Bank's real estate acquisitions are in economically distressed neighborhoods where most residents are people of color. For decades, these neighborhoods have had disproportionately low levels of homeownership, created in large part by discriminatory housing practices dating back to the 1930s. A recent analysis by the Urban Institute on the gap between white and black homeownership rates in the 100 American cities with the highest number of black households found that the City of Albany has the second widest gap of all cities included in the study.

The initial phase of EOPP consists of five single or multifamily residential buildings located in the City of Albany. Buildings selected for EOPP are in economically distressed neighbors and require a low to moderate amount of rehabilitation relative to other properties in the Land Bank's inventory. Future phases of the program will be expanded to the cities of Cohoes and Watervliet, based upon property availability. Under the program, qualified applicants will receive a 15% discount off the listing price or a seller's concession of equal value to support the rehabilitation of a participating property, along with reduced closing costs.

Buyers will be paired with a "Rehabilitation Mentor" who will assist with creating a redevelopment plan and provide support during the rehabilitation process - from kickoff to close out - which typically takes 12 months. Buyers must provide evidence of sufficient financial capacity to complete the rehabilitation project prior to purchasing a property and will be paired with available resources if applicable.

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The Capital Region's home ownership rate ticked upward last year for the first time in a while

The Capital Region's home ownership's most recent peak was in 2010. It ticked up for the first time since then in 2017. Do note that the scale for the rate starts at 50. There's a chart with a from-0 scale inside. / data via US Census Bureau

Another few bits for the apartments / rents discussion...

The home ownership rate in the Albany-Schenectady-Troy metro area ticked upward for the first time since 2010 last year.

The Albany metro's rate was 64.1 percent, according to the Census Bureau. That was up from 61.3 the year before.

That's interesting, in part, because there's evidence that the upswing in rents in the Capital Region also flattened out last year. Maybe it's a matter of demographics as the population peak of Millenials grows older. Maybe rents have just risen to a point where it makes more financial sense to buy a house. (As with any complicated topic, it's probably some of those things and a bunch of other stuff, too.)

Anyway, you know that we have an additional chartage, because of course...

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Maybe all those new apartments are starting to have some effect on rents

Downtown Albany has been hot spot for new apartments in recent years.

A sort-of follow-up to the recent post about all the apartments the Capital Region has been adding the last few years (with many more in the pipeline)...

Capital Region rents have been on an upswing during the past half decade, but that increase appears to have flattened during the last year. That's one of the bits from the new Capital Region multi-family market report published by Sunrise Management & Consulting.

Sunrise president Jesse Holland in a press release: "The data indicates that the market is getting saturated ... Everyone wants to know if the time to build more apartments is over, or if the economy is going to take off."

A chart (because of course) and a few more interesting bits from the report...

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Apartments, apartments, and more apartments

Capital Region building permits for residential units over the last decade -- for single family homes and units in multi-family buildings.

Sometimes during episodes of Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board and related whatnot, we refer to the apartment building boomlet that's been going in Albany and around the Capital Region.

Right, so about the specifics of that boomlet... The Census Bureau collects data on the number of building permits for housing units issued each year in each municipality. And those numbers help draw the outline of this trend.

For example: The chart above shows the number of overall units covered by building permits issued for the four core Capital Region counties over the last decade -- along with how many of those units were in multi-family buildings (yellow). And as you can see, there's been an upswing in multi-family units in that time, especially the last few years.

More context? More details? OK, let's have a look...

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The Albany County Land Bank is again selling lots in Albany for $100

360 Sheridan Ave, one of the lots for sale.

The Albany County Land Bank is again selling a bunch of vacant lots in the city of Albany for $100. It did something similar last year, and this time around it's opened the program up a bit by allowing nearby renters to buy the lots. Press release blurbage:

The "Spend a Little, Get a LOT!" program is designed to increase opportunities for residents to own vacant lots and help stabilize economically distressed neighborhoods. Under this year's program, 32 vacant lots will be available for purchase for $100 each, plus significantly reduced closing costs. ...

The Land Bank acquired the participating lots from Albany County through tax-foreclosure. The lots are located in the Land Bank's Focus Neighborhoods, which are among the most economically distressed in Albany County and include: Arbor Hill, Sheridan Hollow, South End, West End and West Hill in the City of Albany. ...

In response to feedback from local residents, the program has been expanded to include renters who have resided on the block face of a participating lot for five or more years. Other eligible applicants for this program include those that own property immediately adjacent to, or on the same block face as, the participating lot.

As with anything like this, it's very important to read all the details (see the first link above). Among them: "Buyers will also be required to retain ownership of the property for a period of five years." Also: Closing costs could push the all-in price to something like $700-$800.

The land bank will be accepting applications June 1 through June 30 and scored on criteria such as geographic proximity and proposed use.

Blood plasma, another mixed-use project approved, that Western Ave apartment, and other exciting tales of the Albany Planning Board

The Swinburne Building project on Central Ave was up for approval.

Exciting Tales of the Albany Planning Board is a program recorded before a live studio audience once a month in which the fates of multi-million dollar projects around the city are (partially) decided.

This month: Blood plasma centers, approval for another large mixed-use project, continued neighborhood criticism of that apartment building on Western, and a proposal for affordable housing...

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That proposal for a big residential project on Western Ave in Albany has resurfaced

A new rendering for the project.

There's been a small boom in apartment building construction over the last few years in Albany, and officials have hailed it for bringing new development, residents, and housing options to the city.

But as these projects have spread into the lower-density neighborhoods of the city, they've also gotten pushback from residents who say the scale doesn't fit.

The project that prompted maybe the strongest neighborhood criticism has been the proposal for a six-story private dorm at 1211 Western Ave, near the edge of the UAlbany uptown campus. The response was negative enough that mayor Kathy Sheehan made the unusual move of asking the planning board to not approve the proposal in its then-current form -- and the developers pulled the project.

Now it's back, reformulated. And there's still skepticism.

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