(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
Giovanni Virgiglio, Jr., the superintendent of Catholic schools for the Albany Diocese, speaks to the Saratoga Spring City Council Tuesday Feb. 7, 2023.
Schuylerville: Update on the Wilmarth Building
Flatley Read, the safe housing and community development company in Schuylerville, does not plan to move into Greenwich’s Wilmarth Building once Flatley Read is done with reconstruction, Vice President Andrew Alberti said. He spoke to FoothillsBusinessDaily.com shortly after we posted the first story about the grant and reconstruction earlier this week. Flatley Read bought the building, or the property, after it burned to the ground in an act of arson last year.
[Read our story from earlier in the week, here.]
He said that his company has fielded questions from people wondering if they would move from the Saratoga Town Hall building on Spring Street in Schuylerville into the commercial office space in the building that the company is reconstructing and will own when complete.
“They were a bit concerned about it,” he said of those asking, “because we’ve been tenants here for about 13 years.”
At the end of last year, the company with the Village of Greenwich, won a state Restore NY grant to reconstruct the Wilmarth Building.
The grant came in at $1.6 million, but the total reconstruction should cost about $3.5 million Alberti said, adding that they are working with other possible funders now.
Flatley Read may still sell the building once complete to a nonprofit to own and operate. Alberti said that this project is not intended to be a money-maker for the company but is aimed more at community development.
Greenwich Mayor Pamela Fuller said earlier this week that the community needs the residential units that will be aimed at lower-income residents.
Alberti said the number and size of the units is still up in the air, but now the plan has four, two-bedroom units; two, one-bedroom units; and three studio apartments.
The first floor and lower floor of the building will be dedicated to commercial space.
He ended with a note of caution that recreating the exact look of the original building is cost prohibitive but the building will still be nice and appropriate for the setting.
Springs: Police oversight Civilian Review Board empaneled; mayor forms homelessness task force
Thursday evening Feb. 9, the Saratoga Springs City Council picked up their meeting that had been delayed by the Black Lives Matter Saratoga protest on Tuesday Feb. 7.
[Read about the disrupted meeting here.]
The five members of the city council named and ratified their five members of the police oversight Civilian Review Board. They had planned to complete this task on Tuesday.
Also Thursday, Mayor Ron Kim announced the formation of a homelessness task force which will look for a new location for a drop-in homeless shelter and resource center in the city. This comes in the wake of the parental push-back aimed at the city for planning to put the shelter at 5 Williams St., near Central Catholic School.
The mayor once again laid blame on Shelters of Saratoga, a nonprofit that works with the homeless, for pulling out of the plan before the city could show upset parents how the city planned to keep kids safe.
[Read about our coverage of police reform here.]
We will have more about these stories in the near future.