COLONIE — A unique plan for an underutilized commercial building along Wolf Road was introduced to the Planning Board last week and while the board had questions about the design, it was open to the overall idea.
The plan, presented by See the Moon, a limited liability company that has owned the two-story building at 3 Cerone Commercial Drive since 2002, would convert the second floor to nine, one-bedroom residential units and warp three sides of the building with seven, one-story, garden-style apartments.
The apartments would be earmarked for low income seniors 55 years and older. See the Moon would retain ownership but residential portion of the building would be managed by St. Paul’s Center, a non-profit incorporated in 2006 that operates a homeless shelter in the City of Rensselaer. The rent would be subsidized by the state Supportive Housing Initiative.
“As manager and housing provider, SPC will provide daytime support services geared toward the needs of adult tenants aging in place, financial management assistance, rent subsidies (allocated to tenants as needed) and overnight monitoring,” according to the narrative submitted with the project. It will “ensure permanent affordable rental opportunities for seniors who may otherwise find themselves homeless.”
It would be considered permanent housing and tenants would not be on temporary weekly or monthly leases. SPC is a non-profit, but the building will remain on the tax rolls since it is owned by a for-profit limited liability company.
The first floor of the existing building would still be occupied by the Center for Natural Wellness, School of Massage Therapy. For years, the Capital District’s best known massage school was busy enough to utilize, and afford, the entire building. But, the number of clients has been steadily shrinking, even pre-COVID, and the school doesn’t need the second floor space to meet the demands of its service.
Also, since COVID, the school has modified its delivery and has a number of clients taking classes remotely, Karen Kupiec, of See the Moon, told the Planning Board on Tuesday, Aug. 10. Whereas a few years ago there would be 134 students in the building on a daily basis, now there are about 40, she said.
“We want to create affordable housing in a very green environment and this could be a model for use of a building that was obsolete,” she said. “We could see more office buildings that might be able to do this.”
The board was not opposed to the idea, generally, but did have some questions about how well it would fit in on the busy Wolf Road commercial corridor.
“The architecture is pretty institutional. This looks like the old Turf Inn before they closed it in,” said Planning Board member Steven Heider.
The area is zoned Commercial Office Residential, so a mixed commercial/residential use building is allowed. But, the configuration of wrapping a residential building around a commercial building is new to Colonie.
“Development age of wolf road is north of 40 years and at that time people didn’t contemplate a mixed use of residential. Now, I think of some of the three-story plus buildings have created apartments, without even knowing apartments are even there,” said Sean Maguire, director of the town Planning and Economic Development Department. “I don’t have an issue of the second floor conversion, I think that is spot on, but the first floor wrap is a bit of a struggle. Having a floor or two floors of residential above commercial is more tradition than the layered, truncated look.”
Kupiec said St. Paul’s needs 16 units to make the site economically feasible and that she could build a third story, rather than wrap the first floor with new apartments, but building up will isolate the seniors. Behind the building, which doesn’t front Wolf Road directly but is about three doors in, is a National Grid right-of-way so it is somewhat wooded.
“We could probably go up, but I don’t think it would be as healthy for 55-plus seniors. They need to be encouraged to go outside and not holed up in the apartment looking at the TV. It’s not in keeping with what I want to create,” she said. “If we can’t get subsidized apartments, my default is to have four luxury apartments up there. I have owned it for 20 years and didn’t want to sell it. I don’t want to give it up, there is a higher and better use for this property.”
The project was in front of the board for sketch plan review and will need to come back at least twice more for concept acceptance and final site plan review before construction can begin.