Downtown building attracts buyers
Couple expresses interest in developing downtown building
City officials are excited over interest in developing the old vacant Cohoes Family Care building on Remsen Street.
The city’s Director of Community Development Michael Jacobson confirmed Monday morning that 95 Remsen St. is currently under contract with a local husband and wife developer’s team. Jacobson said that he is not ready to release the names of the couple, but he did say that they do have a real interest in developing at this location.
“Their vision as I understand it is to rework the top floor of the building for quality apartments,” Jacobson said. “I think their further vision is to have some sort of entertainment entity on the first floor, that could be a restaurant with a stage and that would help to bring that corner to life in their words.”
Jacobson said the building has been vacant for about five years. In addition to the medical facility on the first floor, the upper levels had offices. Jacobson said the building at one time housed all or part of Cohoes City Hall.
Jacobson also said that the couple also recently had an engineering company look at the basement of the Remsen Street location to see if that could be converted to underground parking.
“I think the initial reaction from the engineering company was that it could be done,” Jacobson said. “They are doing their due diligences right now to see if the sun, the moon and the stars align and if it does it would be great for the city.”
Jacobson believes that if this project does get finalized and goes through eventually that the redevelopment will help to only continue to improve and revitalize the downtown area.
“This is a great gateway property right in the crosshairs of downtown and it would be wonderful to bring that corner back to life,” said Jacobson.
Mayor Shawn Morse is also thrilled that developers continue to have interest in investing in the Spindle City.
“95 Remsen Street is just another example of
how many people are interested in coming to Cohoes and investing in our vision,” Morse said. “We’re excited because people are calling us every day and this is just another example of another developer buy into our vision.”
City officials said once the project is determined to be viable, the interested developer would close on the property and then bring their design plans to the city’s community development office for review.