A development of 156 apartments will be coming to Glenville after getting the green light from the town.
The Glenville Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday, May 14, unanimously approved a site plan by Clifton Park-based New York Development Group that includes building 13 luxury apartment buildings with 12 units per building. The apartments would be located adjacent to the northwest portion of the Schenectady County Airport and sit on 12 acres.
The total site is 40 acres, and the company is planning to add commercial development at the location.
Geoffrey Booth of New York Development Group said construction work would begin this year once final signoffs are given. Booth said he didn’t have “any definites” regarding the timeline to complete the project, but all apartments will be built out.
The main issue of contention amount commission members and the public was water drainage issues and how it would affect neighboring communities. In the approved site plan, some storm water from the west side of the property has been diverted to the east side. There has been a 40 percent reduction in the storm water basin area in the final site plan compared to the original proposal.
“I think the changes made are going to improve the overall project and to the extent possible minimize the runoff to the west,” Commission Chairman Michael Carr said after the meeting. “We have existing buildings and existing houses and we want to minimize any impact with these folks and we are working with the developers to make sure this doesn’t happen.”
The project is also being engineered to withstand a 100-year flood event, similar to what occurred in the wake of Tropical Storm Irene, so water system infrastructure can withstand a reoccurrence.
Booth said the project doesn’t fit the traditional idea of what people think of when they hear the phrase “apartment complex.” There would be garages on site and the residences would be built with more than one bedroom to suit families. There would be some one-bedroom apartments, but there would mostly be two-bedroom, two-bedroom with a den and three-bedroom apartments.
“There is absolutely a demand (for this housing),” Booth said, “between what is going on at GE and also GlobalFoundries there is so much demand for high quality housing in this area.”
After the meeting, Booth said the total investment is not yet clear, but initial estimates on the project after the full 40 acres is developed was said to range from $80 to $100 million.
“It really comes do to the cost of construction and the size of the units,” Booth said.
He also said there aren’t any details he can release about future development of the remaining acreage, because it is “market driven.”
