Albany looking to unload Scott St.
City hopes to sell road to South End Development for mixed-use project
Say goodbye to Scott Street. The city is planning to sell the 245-foot strip of asphalt connecting Leonard and Krank streets to South End Development, LLC, as part of the company’s vision to build The Seventy-six, a massive mixed-use property along Second Avenue.
While the name Scott Street will disappear from city maps forever, the physical street isn’t totally going away. Under the proposal, the street would become a privately owned walkway to storefronts planned for the project. The purchase won’t displace any city residents — properties on both sides of Scott Street are already owned by South End Development or 76 South Holdings LLC.
It’s far from the first time a street has had to make way for a new development. The city has periodically sold or conveyed “paper streets” — those that exist only on planning maps but aren’t developed — and cut others in half to squeeze in a development. Larger projects, like the Empire State Plaza, I-787 and the Harriman State Campus pushed other physical streets out of existence.
Monday evening, the Common Council voted to decommission
Scott Street, which allows the Planning Department to remove it from city maps. It gives the city corporation counsel the ability to negotiate the sale with South End Development attorneys and for Mayor Kathy Sheehan to sign the contract.
Jahkeen Hoke, chief development officer for South End Development, couldn’t be reached. Hoke was recently named co-chair of the city’s COVID Recovery Task Force.
It’s still unclear how much the city might agree to sell the land for but a report that South End Development had prepared gives a hint. It says the roughly 11,000-square foot parcel is worth around $272,512, based off similar property appraisals in the city and a price of $22.96 per square foot.
But the report doesn’t propose writing the city a check for that amount. Instead, the developers offer to make improvements to city-owned infrastructure in the area that they say are worth over $1.1 million, more than four times the land’s appraised value.
“Now that we have permission to do that from the council, what we’ll do is enter into some discussions with them on the actual consideration, fair market value and transfer,” said Corporation Counsel Marisa Franchini. “We haven’t agreed to anything at this point.”
Some of those proposed improvements would likely need to have been made anyway, although the report says they’re not necessary for the project’s development.
They include installing more than 1,000 feet of separate storm sewer infrastructure, which would keep more than 8 million gallons of water out of the combined sewer system, new mains on surrounding streets and widening and repaving parts of Leonard, Krank, and Seymour streets around the property, as well as installing new sidewalks and curbs.
The Seventy-six project is an estimated $140 million development that relies on solar arrays for power and will collect rain and wastewater to be recycled and reused.
“We’re reaching the highest sustainability we can obtain,” Corey Jones, of South End Development said when he initially pitched the project to area residents nearly three years ago. “It will produce enough energy to go back to the grid.”
The city gave conditional approval for the first phase of the project late last year, but developers still have to meet some requirements with the county and state before they can break ground, due to its unique approach to energy consumption, said Brad Glass, the city’s planning director.
“It’s got to the point where it was sufficient to greenlight the project, but there were still details that needed to be worked out on paper,” he said. “If they pull it off, I think it’d be great for the neighborhood and the city, it’s certainly an area in need of investment.”
The first phase includes 184 affordable and market-rate apartments, according to city planning documents. The proposal includes a possible 9,700square foot grocery, though it’s unclear if that would be a brand-name grocer or a store run by South End Development.
Though that first phase will include buildings of at least six stories, the developers are taking advantage of the sharp grade in the area and they will appear close to four stories tall.
The developers have said they envision four buildings with up to 250 apartments and 50,000 square feet of retail space.
Councilwoman Sonia Frederick, who represents the area, had heard from business owners looking to open in the planned retail space.
"It's definitely a very ambitious, forward-thinking model that I'm very excited see come to fruition and I'm really hopeful that everything goes forward according to plan," she said.