GUILDERLAND — As the Mill Hollow project languishes, the developer has asked the town board to lift restrictions that led to its approval in 2006.

Steve Buck of Buck Construction asked the board on March 15 to lift two requirements, one that calls for at least one resident in each unit to be aged 55 or older and the other for sidewalks inside the subdivision and then out to Route 20 and along Route 20 between French’s Mill Road and Landbridge Drive.

Asked what would happen if the town board voted not to lift the age restriction, Buck told The Enterprise, “It would probably put us out of business.”

A public hearing on Mill Hollow will be held Tuesday, April 5, at 7:45 p.m. at Town Hall.

Concerns from Twenty West

Several neighbors who are living in the next-door Twenty West complex of luxury homes complained at the meeting about Buck’s plan to change from senior condos to apartments.

Annie Mirochnik said that she hoped the project would remain senior condos. She said that people who own property take a different level of care with it than do renters. She worried that proximity to an apartment complex, with no visual barriers such as lines of trees, would lower property values for residents of Twenty West.

It would have affected the decisions of buyers in Twenty West, Mirochnik told The Enterprise, if they had known that the project next door was going to be apartments, with a cut-through. Mirochnik told The Enterprise, if they had known that the project next door was going to be apartments, with a cut-through.

Twenty West, built by the Masullo Brothers alongside the field that has for a decade now been earmarked for the Mill Hollow project, was approved in 2007, the year after Mill Hollow was approved. Steve Masullo estimates that 72 of the 74 homes planned for that community are either in construction or already completed, and that about 65 of the 74 are already occupied.

At the March 15 meeting, Buck told the board about Mill Hollow, “Right now we’re trying to keep the project from completely failing.”

Sitting at the kitchen table of his upscale Twenty West home on a recent Sunday morning, Brian Mirochnik — husband of Annie Mirochnik — said about Buck Construction, “It seems like there have been multiple failures in due diligence. We don’t have faith that he’s done his homework, to be able to make this a success.”

He continued, “They signed on for 55-and-over and sidewalks. If they want to start changing the game, we’re going to voice our opinion.”

Brian Mirochnik asked, “How do we know that the market can support luxury housing? What happens if they can’t rent it out at the higher rents? Will he be in a position to cover the maintenance costs and make sure that it is not going to decline?”

Another Twenty West resident, Sandi Slusar, told The Enterprise, “He walked  into it. I don’t like him crying poor.”

Annie Mirochnik nodded her agreement. “We all make financial decisions every day. And every person doesn’t get a bailout.”

Finances

Attorney Mary Beth Slevin, who spoke at the March 15 meeting as a representative for Buck Construction, said that the developer was not asking the town for permission to turn the project from condos to apartments, because, she said, the original local law merely called the project “Multiple Residence,” without specifying whether units were to be for sale or for rent.

What the developer needs to be financially viable is to lift the age restriction. Slevin said told the town board that the market changed dramatically in 2008, becoming harder to get financing for age-restricted projects or for condos. Buck Construction has been trying since 2013 to get financing, she said.

“And we have invested over $6 million of our own money,” she added. Buck Construction has improved both the site’s sewer and water infrastructure, she said.

At a town board meeting on Feb. 2, Slevin specified that the company had spent $1 million on the senior center and related infrastructure, and $6 million on the entire project to date.

Slevin noted at the March 15 meeting that the project’s density, as approved in 2006, was 7-percent greater than what would ordinarily have been approved at that time, but that she does not consider this slightly greater density to be “significant,” particularly in light of Buck Construction’s expansion of the senior center.

The senior center was originally required to be 4,000 square feet, and Buck built it to be 5,150, Slevin told the board on Feb. 2. Asked why he made it bigger than he needed to, Buck told The Enterprise that, during his coordination with the town’s senior services, he was asked for additional space for various planned activities. “Since we had additional area that we could work with, we added it. We didn’t think we were going to have the financial pressures we ended up having,” Buck said.

At the March 15 meeting, Slevin called it “imperative” that the age restriction be lifted. She said that the real-estate market evolved in 2013, and the lenders now find that there is sufficient supply in the market for over-55 units and no need for this project if it remains senior-focused.

Buck said that the company cannot get financing to complete the project as long as it continues to be envisioned as either senior housing or condos.

Providing sidewalks is also a financial burden, said Buck. The original estimate for the sidewalk project from 2006 had been $63,000, Buck told the board in March, but a new estimate had raised that price to $250,000.

Asked to explain the discrepancy, Slevin said that the preliminary number had been a “guesstimate,” and that when the numbers were actually crunched, “the reality of the numbers” came to light. She also mentioned issues of feasibility, saying that there are gullies of five or six feet in some areas of Route 20 where sidewalks would need to be installed.

Steve Buck quipped that if the obligation to build all of the sidewalks at once is not lifted, “My grandson’s college fund would have to be extended.” He asked the board if it would consider allowing him to install the sidewalks in stages, as units become filled.

One resident at the meeting who spoke during the public comment period identified himself as being in the construction business and took exception with this point about feasibility, saying, “If I said to a town board that I was going to build a sidewalk, I would build it. They could have looked at Route 20 and seen that there were gullies. If not, they’re not qualified.”

Buck’s plan is to make the units, for the time being, luxury apartments open to people of any age. Rent, he says, would be $2,000 for most units, with some a bit higher.

Buck told the board that he does have a lender ready to provide financing for a luxury apartment project. Once all the units are full, he told The Enterprise, “We would like to revert back to a 55-plus, for-sale condo project again.”

He said that at that point the company would offer apartments for sale to those residents wishing to buy. He said that the company expects, in any case, that “a lot of our residents” will be 55 or older, because none of the units offer more than two bedrooms.

Once the project is “stabilized monetarily,” he suggested, “we could market to the senior community.”

“It’s really designed to be a senior community,” Buck said. “That’s our desire, to bring it back to what it was meant to be.”

The plan

The plan is for 13 residential buildings, some with eight and some with four units, for a total of 84 units. There will also be a clubhouse with outdoor pool. The first floor of the clubhouse is to be a dedicated senior center owned or leased by the town; the details are still to be worked out.

Buck says that the second floor would also be available for use for senior activities. Town Supervisor Peter Barber said at the March 15 meeting that he wants to be sure the town has “meaningful access” to the second floor.

On a recent visit, it was evident that, while the clubhouse building structure has been built, the interior remains largely unfinished.

Buck still has a long way to go. One residential unit is completed, with two of its units occupied. The shell of another residential building has been constructed, but, inside, that building lacks any drywall or flooring.

Longing for neighbors

Joanne Traeger of Guilderland told The Enterprise that her parents, Mary and Rocco DePremis, are in one of the two units that are currently occupied. They moved to the area from Virginia at her urging

“My parents are happy there,” she said of Mill Hollow. “They would like neighbors, though. I would like to pull up and see them outside talking to people. There should be a community here right now.”

When her parents moved up here, she says, that’s what she promised them — a community.

That’s what the Mill Hollow website still promises: a “delightful community … with the charms of a friendly suburban neighborhood.”

Instead of the condo the DePremises originally signed on for and paid a deposit on in 2014, they have an apartment. Their daughter says that that doesn’t really bother them. “At first we were surprised,” she said, to learn that they would be renting instead of buying, “but now we’re OK with it, and it meets our needs. As long as my parents are safe and happy, that’s what matters to me.”

All she wants, Traeger said, is for the project to be built. “I want a nice community here. I think it’d be nice to have young children and families around. I would like to pull up and see my parents outside, talking to friends.”

Small garage

Another relative of the DePremises, Jean Lizzi, also of Guilderland, told The Enterprise that the unit’s garage is too small, and that her cousins must leave their car outside in the driveway all the time.

Traeger confirmed this, saying, “Just luckily for them, my dad doesn’t drive any more. For my parents, it’s not a big deal. For some people it would be.”

She said she thought that Buck would probably modify the design to make the garage larger, going forward. “You learn and grow,” Traeger said. “You realize the mistakes you made, and you rectify them.”

The plans on the Mill Hollow project’s website show a garage that is 12 feet from the exterior of one wall to another, and 22 feet deep. A standard one-car garage is 12 by 22 feet, authorities agree. The problem seems to be with the door, which is eight feet wide.

The width of a one-car garage door starts at eight feet. But this width might require owners to fold their side mirrors down, and it might simply be too narrow for some larger cars.

Asked about this, Buck told The Enterprise that he planned to modify the design of the garage going forward. “The garage doors were a little tight on the first building,” he said.

Shifting market

The market has changed since the company bought the land in 2013, Buck told The Enterprise. The market soon started to turn against for-sale condo projects, and the additional “product added to the market didn’t help anyone,” Buck said. He said that by additional product he meant other condo communities built at the same time that were also forced by lack of sales to change over to rental communities. Asked for specifics, he was unable to name any.

Wolanin Construction has already started work on a planned 210-unit gated luxury apartment complex in Westmere. With Buck’s 84 units, that makes a total of 294 luxury apartments coming to Guilderland shortly.

Asked if there is demand in Guilderland for that many luxury apartments, Town Planner Jan Weston said, “That’s an interesting question, one that I’m not qualified to speak on. I don’t do market research. One would hope that the people spending millions on these projects have done their research. Or that when they go to get funding, they have to show some sort of evidence that the market would support the project.”

Weston continued, “When they first opened Nanotech in Albany, I got a lot of calls from people wanting to build apartments. But now what I hear is that the market’s shifting back to single-family homes. It’s like, wow, how do you keep up with it? You get approval for a project when the market’s hot, and then by the time you’ve got it built out, the market’s changed again.”

Traffic concerns

Buck was asked at the March 15 meeting if he expected traffic patterns to change, because of the change from senior condos to apartments for residents of all ages. He said that he did not.

But a special-use permit granted by the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals for Mill Hollow in March 2007 does note, “A senior residential use will also not generate the car trips, noise and other impacts typically associated with an unrestricted Multiple Residence use.”

Asked if it was realistic to say that traffic patterns would not change, when residents change from retirees to those who are still working, Buck said that he did not expect heavy traffic, because the complex would be a “destination location,” rather than a place like a mall where people come and go. At Mill Hollow, he said, they would “come and then stay.”

Asked if there will need to be a traffic light installed on Route 20 at the corner of French’s Mill Road, Buck said that he didn’t think so. Cars coming from Albany and turning left onto French’s Mill Road at evening rush hour should not have too much problem, he said. “It’s not like there’s a continuous stream of traffic. It’s pretty hit-or-miss.”

A community of just two families

Traeger’s parents, who are 88, have been patiently waiting since 2014 for their community to materialize. They have been befriended by the neighbors in their building, Traeger said. “It’s nice that my parents have somebody!”

Are they lonely there now, living alongside a large, empty field?

“They are right now. I want this to be built. I want them to have friends and neighbors,” she said. They have not given up, she said, because “at 88 years old, I don’t think packing up your dishes is really all that feasible.”

Traeger said that, if she lived near the Mill Hollow project, she would want to see it “developed and looking nice and having some life there.”

She dismissed the idea that renters don’t take care of their properties, saying, “I challenge anyone to keep a more immaculate house than my mother, and she’s renting.”