ALBANY —  Senator Patricia Fahy has been advocating for the same thing for more than a decade: a master plan for the state’s Harriman Campus that would transform what she calls the “Uptown Parking Lot District” into something resembling an actual neighborhood.

Over the course of what is now decades, studies have been commissioned, committees convened, and reports filed, but getting the state to ultimately commit to the idea has stalled. 

A year ago, Fahy and Assemblywoman Gabriella Romero proposed developing seven acres within a 27-acre parcel designated for the new $1.7 billion Wadsworth Laboratory.

Rather than paving the land for additional parking and sealing it behind a security perimeter, the legislators want to encourage private residential and commercial development that would serve both the lab workers and the surrounding neighborhoods.

The master plan idea is not new, Fahy told attendees during a Jan. 15 meeting with residents at Albany’s New Covenant Presbyterian Church, a few hundred feet over the Guilderland town line. The proposal draws largely on a library of unexecuted plans dating back nearly two decades.

“There are no new ideas here,” Fahy told attendees. “We’re dusting off what has been sitting on a shelf.”

The Jan. 15 meeting was framed not as a reveal of specific answers but rather appeared to be an effort to mobilize support for a process that would eventually yield solutions, with Fahy stating repeatedly, in one manner or another, “We’re not saying we have the answers,” that’s why a master plan is needed. 

Over 100 were in attendance; resident concerns ranged from worries about taxing the maxed-out Eagle Hill watershed to fears dead-end streets would be opened.

The 330-acre campus at the west end of Albany was planned in the 1950s by Governor W. Averell Harriman, for whom it was named. It was built in the Albany Pine Bush next to the Albany Country Club, where the University at Albany’s uptown campus is now. 

The campus is bordered by a ring road, which divides it from surrounding neighborhoods; the complex was meant to be accessible to state workers, many of whom lived in the suburbs. The first building, for the Department of Civil Service, opened in 1956.

The mechanism for implementing the proposal are bills sponsored by Fahy and Romero requiring the Office of General Services and Empire State Development to create a master plan for the site and designate specific acreage for mixed-use development within a year.

But Fahy and Romero’s proposal faces multiple obstacles: bureaucracy, a ticking clock, and politics.

The Wadsworth Center is designated as a Biosafety Level 3 facility, meaning it will handle dangerous pathogens like anthrax, and the Office of General Services, which manages the Harriman Campus for the state, along with the lab administrators, prefer to secure the site with a fence around the entire 27-acre parcel, making development impossible.

Then there’s the lab itself. 

Construction has already started at the site and is expected to last for four years. 

Complicating matters further, the governor excluded any funding for a master plan from her budget.

While Fahy’s bill has passed the Senate, Romero’s proposed legislation has yet to make it out of committee. But Fahy also made clear in a Jan. 16 interview with The Enterprise that “we do not want to slow down the lab.”