COLONIE— After years of back and forth, the Planning Board granted final approval to Afrim’s Sports Park to be built at 969 Watervliet Shaker Road.
The project, which will feature an 86,400-square-foot air supported dome structure containing indoor sports fields, four outdoor artificial turf soccer/multi-use fields with lighting for evening use, a dome-attached two story multi-purpose building with a footprint of 6,425 square feet, and a 900-square-foot maintenance garage and parking for 410 vehicles.
Joe LaCivita, director of Colonie’s Planning and Economic Development Department, commended project engineers at the meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 13 for being patient with the roadblocks and, ultimately, adhering to all of the board’s requests.
But, the project hit an unexpected snag on Tuesday night when a representative from Memory Gardens of Colonie requested the board have a fence put in between the cemetery property and the sports park property to prevent people from cutting through the cemetery as a short cut to Afrim’s.
As a compromise, and due to the lateness of the request, the board decided that the new Afrim’s will be constructed, and the project representatives will be required to go back to the Planning Board to determine what, if any, fencing needs to go in between Memory Gardens and the sports complex.
Afrim’s currently has locations in Colonie, Latham, and Glenmont.