Albany gets $3M for apartment demolition

ALBANY — The city has about half the money it will need to level two derelict apartment towers in the South End.

The city will receive $3 million to help pay for the demolition of the shuttered towers at Lincoln Square. The money was included in a federal spending bill, according to U.S. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office, which announced the award last week.

“I am proud to help deliver one of the final pieces of the puzzle to help tear down these aging towers and lay the foundation for a better future for Albany’s South End,” Schumer said in a statement.

The Albany Housing Authority closed the towers last year, citing rising maintenance costs and deteriorating infrastructure. Last week, Chiquita D’arbeau, the housing authority’s executive director, said the total cost to demolish the empty buildings is between $6 million and $7 million. D’arbeau said there is no demolition date set because the authority still needs to come up with the remaining funding.

The demolition and redevelopment of the site is one of the authority’s top priorities, she said.

“Moving forward, we will continue in our efforts to secure the additional funding required to complete this task.”

The housing authority began the process of moving residents out of the towers in 2020 and closed them for good last January when the last tenants left.

Last year, Capitalize Albany, the city’s economic development arm, applied for a $3 million Restore New York grant to help fund the demolition of three Albany Housing Authority high-rises at 1-2 Lincoln Square. Capitalize Albany and the city have proposed that the demolition to make way for a massive Hudson Valley Community College expansion site, an idea that caught some community members off-guard.

An educational campus in the South End has been part of the city’s planning for years. Since at least the early 2000s, city leaders have envisioned tearing down the high-rise public housing towers along Morton Avenue. The housing authority was able to tear down one of the Lincoln Square complex’s four brick towers in 2004 but did not find funding to remove the remaining three buildings.

The 196-unit Lincoln Square homes were built in the 1960s as part of the larger urban renewal movement. Consisting of two 12-story buildings and two eight-story buildings, the structures were rehabilitated in the 1980s but continued to deteriorate, with failing elevators, boilers and electrical systems.