ALBANY — After months of discussion, a $240 million quarter-century plan for the W. Averill Harriman State Office Campus was unveiled to mixed reactions Tuesday night.

With a long-term master plan that will take 25 to 30 years to complete, the 1960’s state campus is to be transformed into a modern, publicly-accessible, mixed-use development.

The new campus will include research and development facilities for private technology companies and academic programs, a collection of small shops, a hotel, and new residential housing.

As a result of the proposed mixed-use facilities, fewer parking spaces will be needed, planners say. The plans only call for 8,000 parking spaces, down from the current 11,000.

About 200 people, including local residents and state workers now at the campus, expressed both concern and delight with the new plans unveiled in building number three of the campus.

The purpose of the meeting was to let residents and state workers know what is being planned and to get feedback from the community, according to Harriman Research and Technology Development Corporation President F. Michael Tucker.

The campus is located off Western Avenue in Albany, near the Guilderland town line.

The plan represents Albany’s biggest development effort since the creation of the Empire State Plaza. It focuses on shifting the majority of state employees from the uptown Harriman campus to downtown Albany, and privatizing the campus with more technology, academic, retail, and residential development. Only about 1,000 state workers will be left at Harriman.

Much of the planning depends upon private investments, and is to create 8,000 new private sector jobs.

The tax-and-finance building, the power-plant building, and the Office of General Services warehouse are all slated to be torn down, as well as most of the outer road ring, which is over 250 feet wide, that surrounds the campus. However, connections to Interstate 90 and Route 85 are to remain intact, and be improved.

The police academy, labor department, and Harriman Campus buildings will all be salvaged and renovated. The state campus site is roughly twice the size of nearby Crossgates Mall in Guilderland.

The plans also call for an amphitheater in the center of the campus, which would be surrounded by open greenspace about half the size of Albany’s Washington Park.

Daniel Sitler, from Saratoga Associates, an architectural firm based in New York City, ran the main presentation for the evening, and said no plans were finalized. Suggestions from residents were needed, he said.
"What is our next step"" Sitler asked rhetorically. "We’re going to start listening to suggestions."

Residents react

The changes that take place in the Harriman campus could affect several different municipalities, including the residents of Albany, Guilderland, Colonie, and Bethlehem.

A long line of residents and state workers walked up to a microphone in the center of the room to talk about the plans for the Harriman campus. Questions were being shouted out by those in attendance even before the initial presentation was done.

About 40 minutes into the presentation, one resident stood up and asked if Sitler was being paid to give the presentation that night.
When Sitler replied that he was, the anxious questioner responded, saying, "We’re not being paid to be here tonight"We want a chance to be heard."

The man was concerned with walkways going from residential neighborhoods to the campus because he is afraid employees will start parking in his neighborhood and walk to work, rather than paying for parking on the campus.
"Everyone’s going to be parking on these streets and using these streets," he said.
Sitler called the campus plan a "muti-step plan" and said, "It’s a big process and can’t all be built at once." He continued, saying, that a master plan for the campus must be both comprehensive and flexible because of the nearly 30-year completion time.

Another resident asked those in attendance to be open-minded about the plan and its incorporated walkways and connection concepts, saying it is important for city residents to be connected.
One woman, a state worker in building eight on the campus, wanted to know what was going to happen to her building and said many of her co-workers were concerned. She said that over the years, her building has been renovated floor by floor, and, as a result, millions of dollars have been "dumped into the building."

Sitler and Dunn told her that, according to the current plan, her building has roughly 10 years left.
She responded, that, she could not believe someone could just tear down the building and added, "You talk about tax revenue; there’s your tax money going to waste."

An Albany resident, Roy Diehl, who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, said he was delighted with the plans. Diehl said Americans are becoming more and more reliant on foreign oil as suburbs push further away from cities. Innovative plans for places like the Harriman campus, he said, are exactly what cities need to cut down on traffic and create a more pedestrian-friendly environment.

Other residents’ concerns included parking problems in downtown Albany being compounded by moving thousands of state workers there, traffic jams on both the Western and Washington avenue sides of the park, as well as public transportation problems.
"It’s not broken, it doesn’t need to be fixed"I would hate to see it destroyed," said another resident about the Harriman campus.

Don Reeb, president of the McKownville Neighborhood Association, was also there to voice his neighbors’ concerns.

Reeb said there was not enough involvement with surrounding communities like Guilderland, Colonie, and Bethlehem in the overall planning process. He said the people who are going to be impacted the most should be a part of the process, step by step.

The traffic concerns were also on the top of his list.
"What’s going to happen to Fuller Road"" asked Reeb.

An already congested traffic flow in McKownville along the Albany-Guilderland city line could be made even worse if careful planning is not done with local residents, Reeb said.

Reeb also said town supervisors need to be kept updated and more active in the planning process.

Dunn responded, saying that more public meetings will be held with individual communities around the campus, and that local town supervisors have been contacted during the planning phase, and will continue to be involved in the process.

The next public meetings on the Harriman campus development plans will be held on March 7, 8, and 15 at 6 p.m. at the Harriman Campus Building. To find out which night your neighborhood will be discussed or for more details, call 457-4444.