COLONIE —It’s coming down.
The vacant, three story former school and community center on Central Avenue is being demolished to make way for a three-story, 107,000-square-foot, climate controlled storage facility.
The town sold the building and the five acres of land to Goldstein Realty Holding in 2016 for $1.78 million. In July, the Village of Colonie Planning Commission unanimously approved the plan to build the storage facility and earlier this month, Goldstein was issued a permit to demolish the structure built in about 1926.
being incorporated into the Goldstein Collision Center, which is attached to the Goldstein Buick GMC of Albany car dealership located along Central Avenue, three doors west of the community center. That about 2.5 acres will be used by Goldstein to park excess inventory.
The storage facility does conform to the village’s zoning regulations for Central Avenue and the traffic generated from such a use is less than that of the community center or other acceptable use like retail. The second site is just a parking lot with no buildings proposed.
The new building will not be a 24-7 operation but only be open for business from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. During some business hours it will be manned and during off hours the facility will be monitored by security cameras. Customers using the facility cannot store flammable, perishable or otherwise dangerous materials at the site. The owners reserve the right to check the storage units if there is a valid reason.
The community center is a former school building in the South Colonie School District and it was last used to house such things as the Colonie Youth Center, Head Start and the Lisha Kill Senior Citizens Club.
The village had previously granted the car dealership temporary permission to use the community center to store vehicles in the front parking lot along Central Avenue. It is within the village boundaries so the town Planning Board does not have jurisdiction.
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