Site remains dormant
Colonie says no timeline yet on moving forward with plan for former playland
Eight years after the beloved Hoffman’s Playland closed for business, the site sits abandoned and overgrown — but won’t be forever.
A new senior housing and retail complex is in the works to replace the former amusement park after getting concept plan approval from the town last year. The project, dubbed The Galleria at Loudonville, will include a 26,000-square-foot building housing retail and restaurants, a four-story senior independent living building with 85 apartments and a three-story senior assisted living building with 92 beds.
“We think there’s a great area for this type of development,” Nick Costa, the project developer at Advance Engineering and Surveying PLLC, said at a past town board meeting. “We think the seniors would like facilities like this because it would be near Newton Plaza, near Bellini’s, so seniors aren’t just stuck in an institutional setting.”
After approving the concept plan, town departments met in August to give the developers more specific feedback and questions about their plans, including quantification of the impact on the wetlands along the back of the property and details on planned lighting levels throughout the site. Once the developers respond to the town’s notes, there will be a second review.
“We try to be very comprehensive,” said Sean Maguire, director of the town’s planning and economic development department. “This is a planning development district, so we’re looking at this from a bigger perspective for its mix of uses. They’re a little more complicated so they take a little longer.”
Hoffman’s Playland closed for good in 2014 after more than 60 years in business. The owners decided they wanted to retire and sold the park. The news was disappointing for many: Hoffman’s Playland was a well-loved part of Colonie’s history for decades. ▶
The rides were moved to Huck Finn’s Warehouse in Albany in 2015.
Maguire said it’s too soon to place a timeline on when the project may be able to break ground. Costa said in an email that they are working on a final plan to submit to the town.
The project faced a number of setbacks before receiving the green light from the town, including getting town approval to rezone the site.
Upon approving the rezoning of the site to a planned development district, the developer was required to commit $500,000 to “public benefits” — namely sidewalk improvements along Loudon Road and Spring
Street. The town had also wanted the developer to scale
back the initial project proposal.