Adding businesses to any town is good for the economy, but the additions must make sense. That includes where the businesses are being located.
The Colonie Town Zoning Board of Appeals was going to hear more about a proposed project located near Exit 4 of the Northway last week, but it was postponed because a traffic study needed to be completed.
Frankly, we don’t think a traffic study is necessary in this case. Anyone who has traveled through the part of town where Wolf Road meets Albany-Shaker Road and the Northway knows just how bad traffic is over there — especially at rush hour. If you can navigate your way safely through that intersection, the rest of your trip ought to be a breeze. It’s amazing there aren’t more accidents than there are with all of the people trying to beat the traffic lights.
Now, imagine if someone were to add a department store, a second building housing various businesses and as many as three restaurants near that intersection. This is exactly what the O’Connell Development Group is proposing. It’s interested in purchasing unused land from the Times Union beside the Northway to put in a new retail area anchored potentially by Cabela’s.
These buildings are not small, either. The main store would be 106,000 square feet, and the multi-retail space is 150,000 square feet — large enough for a shared parking lot with more than 1,600 spaces. Would it be wise to jam a project of this size into a 50.7-acre lot near one of the busiest intersections in Albany County?
Granted, traffic isn’t going to have a direct link to these stores from this intersection. According to the proposal, traffic would enter and leave the new retail area along Serviceberry Road — a street created to allow Times Union workers to access their building from Maxwell Road after the latter was redirected several years ago to create a traffic circle where it now meets Albany-Shaker Road. The concept would be to create an extension to Serviceberry Road into the retail area, meaning the access point would be Maxwell Road — a two-lane, residential road.
Do you see the folly in this plan? Even with pre-existing turning lanes on the new portion of Maxwell Road and a traffic circle nearby, this project is asking people to use a residential road to access a small-scale big box store mall. As far as we know, there isn’t another retail area in the town that asks people to solely use a two-lane road to enter and leave, and for good reason — you don’t want to create traffic jams trying to get in and out of the place.
If O’Connell Development Group wants to build this project, it should look for a location along a main road where there is adequate support for additional traffic flow. Don’t try to jam something into an already crowded spot where you don’t have an entrance and exit point on a four-lane road. You’re just going to add to the traffic nightmare that already exists, especially between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m.
Retail business has its place in Colonie. It just shouldn’t be placed where access is difficult and traffic is already bad.
