COLONIE —A plan to demolish a one-story office building at 1201 Troy Schenectady Road and build a 107,000-square-foot, four story office building was introduced to the Planning Board at its last meeting.
The 16-acre parcel, called Riverhill Center, is comprised of three buildings, 1201, 1203 and 1205 and is zoned Commercial Office Residential. Most of the complex is owned by First Columbia and the presentation was made by Chris Bette, the company’s vice president.
“We feel it will be a nice presence on the site, it will be situated behind the three-story Sunmark building and the two-story general use building and it will make a nice visual as you drive along Route 7,” Bette told the board.
The building will allow the New York State Insurance Fund to consolidate operations from Computer Drive in Colonie and Watervliet Avenue in Albany.
Traffic generation along the busy stretch of Route 7 was brought up by the Planning Board and it will need to be further explored as the project works its way through the process. It is within the Airport GEIS, and as such there will be mitigation fees associated with the project based, in large part, on the amount of traffic generated.
There was also mention of using the site as an access point from Route 7 to the bike path along the Mohawk River and Bette said it was included in previous plans for the site and the company is amenable to exploring the possibility.
Bette said about six years ago the Planning Board approved an 80,000-square-foot general office building at the site but it was never built because there was a lack of interest by potential tenant.
The plan will need to come back before the board at least two more times — for concept acceptance and final site plan review — before construction can begin.