Old Ford site desired for project
Green Island IDA says acreage is last undeveloped land village has
A century after auto tycoon Henry Ford began building a power plant to drive his factory, the village Industrial Development Agency is seeking proposals to develop the northern 30 acres of the Ford Motor Company parcel.
The 30 acres is the largest bank of land left for development in the village, accounting for 6.7 percent of the community’s acreage. This land plus 14.1 acres to its immediate south are what’s left of the original 160acre Ford site.
“The Ford property is the last of the undeveloped land we have,” Mayor Ellen Mcnulty-ryan said.
Whether it’s housing, industrial, commercial or mixed-use that may be built on the island’s northeast corner at the confluence of the Mohawk and Hudson rivers will be determined by the proposals submitted to the IDA by the April 21 deadline.
“It’s zoned industrial. A PPD (planned development district) would be required,” said Sean Ward, executive assistant to Mcnulty-ryan and the IDA chief executive officer.
The IDA decided in March — the 100th anniversary of Ford obtaining a license to build a private electrical plant for his planned factory — to issue a request for proposals to develop the site. The IDA went this route after Ward reported that there was interest from developers in the northern 30 acres. There’s also been interest in the southern acres which Ford is currently cleaning up under a remediation agreement, Ward said.
Ford became acquainted with Green Island when he went camping there with Thomas Edison and other industrialists. Eventually, Ford Motor Company would manufacture radiators and heater cores there for 65 years until shutting down its plant in 1988.
The IDA has received one serious inquiry and a couple of others with questions about the property, Ward said. The 30acre lot is assessed at $1,102,500. There’s another 1.5 acre lot that’s on
Cannon Street that can also be developed as part of the project, which is assessed at $55,400.
Mcnulty-ryan and Ward said that additional housing, preferably in
cluding single-family homes not just apartments, would be a welcomed development.
“It’s a beautiful spot,” Mcnulty-ryan said. “We’ll see what happens.”
Housing would fit in neatly with the village trail, part of the state’s Empire State Trail, and village Black Bridge Trail that together run along the western boundary of the property and cross the Mohawk River over the Black Bridge, a former railroad bridge, into neighboring Cohoes, where the Van Schaick Island Country Club is located on the other side of the river.
The northern Ford property is bordered by Cannon Street and the trails to the west, the Mohawk River on the north, the Hudson River on the east and on the south by the Veterans Memorial Drive and the 14.1-acre portion of the Ford property.
The potential development of the 30-acre site follows the construction of apartments in the Starbuck Island project on Center Island at the southeast corner of the village along the Hudson River.