The Colonie Planning Board is asking engineers working on a new CAP COM Federal Credit Union headquarters off of Wolf Road to find the best solution to reduce traffic congestion.
The board granted concept approval on Tuesday, Feb. 26, to a project to build a new three-story building sitting on 11 acres of land at 4 Winners Circle. CAP COM’s main offices are now at 18 Computer Drive East in Colonie, about a mile from the proposed new location, and the company is looking to more than double the space in its current headquarters.
The Planning Board’s main concern was figuring out a way to relieve traffic coming off of Wolf Road and create a connector at Marcus Boulevard to Albany-Shaker and Sand Creek roads. There are roundabouts at both Albany-Shaker and Sand Creek roads, and creating another roundabout at Marcus Boulevard would provide one complete movement, officials said, allowing cars to avoid Wolf Road altogether.
“I think a lot of people will be using that because they’ll find they won’t have to sit at a light,” Director of Planning and Economic Development Joe LaCivita said.
LaCivita said a traffic study is underway to determine the projected volume of traffic associated with the CAP COM headquarters. He said the town would have one of its engineers sketch a design in the coming days to see how another roundabout might look at Marcus Boulevard. The engineers might also propose a four-way intersection. LaCivita said he’s not sure which plan would work best for the roads.
“I think the roundabout would work well there. It allows nonrestrictive movements. T-intersections are more cautious but also backs traffic up,” LaCivita said.
The new headquarters will have a bank branch, an ATM line and a drive thru but will mainly house administrative, facilities, executives and main office staff. The engineers are not expecting the new headquarters to generate a lot of traffic, but LaCivita said adding in a connector road could add to the traffic congestion.
“One you get everybody using the connector road, you’ll get a lot more volume. That’ll be the projected volume that we need to see,” he said. “Once you do it, you really want to do it the right way. That’s why we’re trying to get our engineers to decide. We want to make sure we have the right information.”
LaCivita said the board is hoping to grant final site approval by the end of April.