Chris Churchill
Columnist writes about project that may transform city’s South End./
In recent years, Albany’s South End suffered repeated blows to its vitality. Amid a landscape marked by abandonment and slow decay, those blows included the shuttering of Rite Aid and Stewart’s stores, two of few remaining places where residents could buy basic necessities, and the departure of a Department of Motor Vehicles office that drew in workers and visitors from outside the neighborhood.
As I noted last year in a column, even the iconic Lombardo’s restaurant on the neighborhood’s northern edge went dark. The South End, I wrote then, badly needs a jolt that could change its depressing trajectory.
Well, today I’m going to tell you about a proposal that could provide just that. The development is called “The SeventySix,” and it would be like nothing the South End has seen.
Proposed for a block on Second Avenue, the 2.4acre development would be a “triple net-zero” project, meaning it would generate all of its power and recycle stormwater for toilets and other uses. The Seventy- Six would include nearly 200 affordable and market-rate apartments in four buildings, plus retail and commercial space.
All and all, it would be a $120 million investment in a neighborhood that has for decades suffered from a grim tide of disinvestment. As Michael Demasi of the Albany Business Review noted, the scale of the project is roughly on par with the wave of development that happened around Albany Medical Center in the Park South neighborhood.
It is, in other words, a big deal.
I was aware of the project, which the Times Union has reported on previously. But it wasn’t until I saw renderings of the plan a few days ago that I fully grasped what it could mean. The design by Garrison Architects in Brooklyn calls for dramatic and distinctively modern buildings that seem guaranteed to attract attention.
Would the buildings fit within the low-scale context of their South End surroundings? That’s an open question and a concern raised by some neighbors. Of greater importance, perhaps, is how the buildings could impact their context for the better by bringing new neighbors, stores and energy to a South End that needs all three.
“The goal of the project is to build something that people can be proud of,” said Jahkeen Hoke, chief development officer at South End Development, the firm behind the proposal. “Something that would highlight that the capital of New York is an important place.”
Before we get further along here, I’ll concede that if you’re skeptical of the project’s chances, that’s understandable. Given the difficulties of financing and other hurdles to construction, many promising development proposals end up, ultimately, as just that — proposals. They sit on shelves collecting dust.
Building in dense urban neighborhoods is always challenging, and the South End might be particularly so, given its blight, poverty and problems with crime.
South End Development faces additional complexities with this project: The Seventy- Six would be built onto a sloping piece of land between Leonard and Krank streets that includes 32 separate parcels, and it would be built around two existing buildings, the Elijah Missionary Baptist
Church and the St. Peter’s Addiction Recovery Center.
It’s fair to wonder, then, if Hoke and South End Development CEO Corey Jones are taking a bite bigger than they can chew. (“I like challenging projects,” Jones told the Times Union last year.)
This has been a difficult year for Albany and many other cities. The pandemic has delivered an economic blow that’s landing with particular force in neighborhoods like the South End, while a spike in violent crime has hit the city’s psyche. In some respects, this isn’t an easy time to be hopeful about Albany’s future.
But Hoke and Jones are both from the neighborhood, giving them a perhaps unusual commitment to seeing the project through. Together, they have finance and construction experience, and they’re working with Chazen Cos., an engineering firm in Troy, to push The Seventy- Six forward. The project will be discussed at a Planning Board workshop Tuesday.
When I spoke with Hoke, 32, whose roots in the neighborhood reach back generations, he talked with passion about wanting Albany to reach its potential and his desire to bring the South End back to days when children felt safe playing outdoors and small businesses thrived.
“Some of my fondest memories from growing up are of walking up and down South Pearl Street and being able to get everything that you would need,” Hoke told me. “Obviously, you can’t do that now.”
No, you can’t. And no one project will fix that.
But The Seventy- Six is a reason for hope in Albany and one of its most distressed neighborhoods. It could be what the South End needs.