The corner of Wolf and Albany Shaker roads took its first steps toward restoration on the morning of Monday, Aug. 13, as two bulldozers clawed at the former J.J. Naughter’s Gas Station. In a matter of a half hour, the cinder-block building came down to the applause of Colonie town and planning board members, and department heads that have wanted the building gone for more than a decade.
At one time part of a quaint orchard, the corner lot was bought by the Hofer family in 1928. In 1929 until the early 1990s, the lot was a bustling automotive business and the home of Mary Lou Hofer.
The former owner was on hand to watch the building go. It was sad, she said, but definitely needed.
The corner lot had been a state Brownfield site for years as crews worked to remove petroleum-laden soil from the site. Hofer started the cleanup; it carried on through a second owner and was eventually completed, she said.
The cause of the mess was traced to an underground fuel tank.
We went bankrupt trying to pay for the cleanup. It cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and it wasn’t done, said Hofer.
The lot was sold several years ago to current owner Tom Burke, president of Burke Companies, for $1.3 million.
A town revitalization committee formed by Supervisor Mary Brizzell last year, placed the site at the top of a list of residential and commercial properties the town wished to be rid of.
`When is something else going to be up there,` Brizzell said she had been asking herself for years. `This site is back into something that is worthwhile.`
It is also a prime property, often referred to as the million-dollar corner, that will be back on the tax roles as early as the fall.
Lot owner Burke said he plans to build a 6,000-square-foot retail center with tenants that will include Starbuck’s Coffee and Moe’s Southwest Grill. He wouldn’t say who the third tenant would be.
`Somebody called this ground zero for retail recently, and I agree. This is a highly visible property,` said Burke.
He said he plans to spend $3 million on the property and retail center.
The property is not the only one on the revitalization’s committee to-do list.
Weeks ago, the town watched as the former Nichol’s Bait shop on McNutt and Central avenues came down, and another vacant automobile shop on Fuller Road was turned into a Mama Mia’s deli in July.
Still the J.J Naughter site is a big win for the committee and department heads, some of whom had put the site at the top of their own lists.
`This one was on my own to-do list,` said Denise Sheehan, Planning and Economic Development Department director. As former state Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner and former resident of West Albany, the site of several vacant industrial properties, Sheehan had always wanted to the see the Wolf Road site remedied and redeveloped, she said.
`I have 15 sites on my list. I put this one on top,` she said.
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