(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2022)
Glens Falls Mayor Bill Collins presents ideas for the Downtown Revitalization Initiative in City Hall, June 7, 2022.
About 100 residential apartments — most likely not condominiums — will be coming to downtown Glens Falls, under the latest, still in draft form, plan for the Downtown Revitalization Initiative. The DRI is the initiative that will redevelop the area surrounding the intersection of Elm and South streets in Glens Falls.
“I think they’re all going to be rental because I don’t think the condo model has worked in Glens Falls,” Mayor Bill Collins said Tuesday.
Some of the development funding comes from a $10 million grant the city won from the state to promote downtown redevelopment. The mayor said he expects Spring City Development Group, an arm of Bonacio Construction, to spend about $28 million more as the preferred developer of the project.
Plans offered by the mayor for press review on Tuesday afternoon came ahead of planned public meetings set for Monday June 13.
The DRI plans are drawing closer to fruition as the city has told state authorities of its decision to sell property to Spring City Development, and closing is set for later this summer. Also, Spring City has begun an application for tax incentives with the Glens Falls Industrial Development Agency.
The public discussion is the mayor's response to the unexpected fallout from stories FoothillsBusinessDaily.com and others wrote in April.
The stories first reported that the city was applying for a federal grant for a “multi-modal” transportation hub — part parking garage, part bus station — where the Elm Street parking lot now sits. The follow-up story says the business community generally was not happy with the idea.
“I thought that this was a great location,” Collins said Tuesday. He said the response caught him by surprise since the city discussed the possible garage last year. Still, the reaction told him he needed a different tack.
“What I'm doing is I’m taking a giant step back, and I’m calling people in and I’m listening to them.”
After the stories came out, his office promised that they would give the public a full presentation of the DRI plans. The press conference and presentations are part of that, he said.
[Read about the grant here and the follow-up here. Read our extensive coverage of the DRI here.]
The plans show that current buildings at 41 and 45 South Street and at 36 Elm St., will have ground floor restaurants or commercial space and two floors of apartments above.
Those buildings will include 18 one- and two-bedroom residential apartments and will be offered at market rate, meaning they will draw whatever price the market will bear. The buildings together hold nearly 33,000 square feet of residential space and about 8,400 square feet of commercial space.
Spring City/Bonacio will also build three, connected new buildings. The largest will replace a parking lot on Elm Street behind the current Sandy’s Clam Bar building.
Residential only, it will hold about 70 units, but the mayor said about 20% of the apartments will be available to low-income residents or those with special needs, and about 50% will be offered to modest-income residents on a sliding scale. The remaining 20% would be market rate, the mayor said.
Another building will replace the Market Pavilion at 31 South St. with a mixed use building, again with commercial on the ground floor and about five apartments on the top two floors. The two larger buildings will be connected with a smaller building that will be little more than a lobby and elevator shaft, the mayor said.
“This all totaled is about $38 million of development, and 10 of that is DRI development money,” the mayor said.
The mayor believes that all of this housing will require more parking, and he says the city will begin a study of parking as soon as this month, using parking sensors that will be installed with new LED lighting on city streets. The sensors will give the city the chance to see where people park and for how long.
He expects to have discussions about where a garage might go if one is needed. The parking discussion will consider how much to charge. Now, people pay nothing to park in prime spots on Glen Street, yet pay for parking in the Hudson Avenue garage two blocks further away.
Although the parking will support downtown businesses, it also supports the private development of these residential buildings.
“The city will provide [Spring City] 70 parking spots somewhere as a condition of doing $28 million worth of development,” the mayor said, adding that the expense was worth it. The city has state and DRI funding to put toward parking, and the 70 parking spots do not have to be next to each other or in a garage.
On another front, Spring City Development is putting together an application to the Glens Falls Industrial Development Agency for mortgage and sales tax exemptions and a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes plan, said Judy Calogero, a member of the IDA.
She believes the application is not quite finished, but once complete it will be posted to the IDA’s document center and a public hearing will be held on the application.
Documents provided say that Spring City will bring about 20 construction jobs to the city, 1.5 full-time-equivalent management operations, and about 15 to 20 jobs inside the commercial spaces. According to county land maps, the two properties on Elm are assessed at $600,000 for the property and buildings. The property and buildings on South are assessed at about $400,000.
Bonacio's Larry Novik, who has been a contact on this project, did not respond to a request for comment.
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Monday’s presentations: Crandall Library in the Christine McDonald Community Room from noon to 2 p.m., and at the Park Street Theater from 6 to 8 p.m.