New plans for old sites

Albany

The city's once-gritty industrial corridor along Broadway may be shaping up as the next place in the Capital Region to find apartments in sturdy century-old commercial buildings that were built to last.

Plans involving apartment conversions at the century-old former Rodgers Liquor Co. building at 960 Broadway and the massive former Albany International headquarters, a few blocks north at 1373 Broadway, are both set to come before Albany city planners later this month.

Laura Ryder, an architect with Troy Architectural Program, said plans for the four-story brick former liquor warehouse call for 30 apartments and a restaurant. The 44,744-square-foot building is among five historic buildings in the region that were targeted by the Preservation League of New York under its Industrial Heritage Reuse Project, she said.

"The league will leverage the momentum of the latest industrial development boom computer chip fabrication within a 40-mile radius of GlobalFoundries' Fab 8 plant in Saratoga County," said league President Jay DiLorenzo, who announced the project last month at the Rodgers building. "Through this effort, we hope owners of historic industrial buildings and elected and appointed officials will begin to see these structures as developable assets instead of liabilities."

Other buildings in the project include the Sanford Clock Tower Building, 37 Prospect St., Amsterdam; Mooradian's Building, 599 River St., Troy; Lindy's Hardware, 285 2nd St., Troy; and the former Grossman's Bargain Outlet, 1410 Erie Boulevard, Schenectady.

The project provides building owners with a schematic reuse plan; code evaluation; cost estimate; list of funding assistance; and outline of approvals required.

The Rodgers building, built around 1910 as a parts warehouse for International Harvester, said Ryder, has been vacant for some two decades. The property is zoned for light industrial use, and would require a zoning variance for the apartment project to be allowed, she added.

It is premature to describe the type of apartments and restaurant envisioned by building co-owner Bill Barber, said Ryder. "We are just now getting started with the project," she said. She said Barber sees encouragement in development farther south on Broadway in a strip of nightspots anchored by Wolff's Biergarten.

To the north at the 400,000 square-foot Albany International site, developer Uri Kaufman is planning an apartment complex called Harmony Primalofts.

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New plans for old sites