GUILDERLAND — The corner of Western Avenue and Hague Drive may be the site of a two-story, mixed-use apartment and office building. The site at 2500 Western Ave. is at the entrance to a subdivision called Windmill Estates.

The application by Rick Rapp for a special-use permit calls for combining three parcels, located directly across Western Avenue from Governors Motor Inn, into one 1.42-acre property.

The building would be 11,625 square feet, with 11 apartments including two on the first floor and nine on the second, and 8,720 square feet of office or retail space. The building would have 44 parking spaces.

Engineer Luigi Palleschi of ABD Engineers presented the project to the planning board on March 8. Palleschi did not return several calls.

Palleschi said that in 2009 the owner had planned to build a 9,000-square-foot medical office building on the site.

The owner demolished a house that stood on the site, and the town issued a building permit, said Jacqueline Coons, the town’s acting chief building and zoning inspector. But the building never went up.

The owner could not locate any tenants interested in moving into that earlier project and hopes that this new concept will be more successful, said Palleschi.

The site now has one building on it, at 3 Hague Dr., that is home to the nursery school Twinkling Stars; that building would be demolished, Planning Board Chairman Stephen Feeney told The Enterprise.

At the meeting, Feeney asked Palleschi if the nursery school might be a potential tenant; Palleschi said that it might, although he thought that the office space would be larger than the nursery school would need.

Palleschi said that the applicant had considered asking for a rezone to multifamily residential, in case that might be a better fit with the surrounding residences. “But our application before you tonight is for a mixed-use building,” he said.

The board unanimously voted to recommend concept approval to the town board, with several conditions, including that the applicant plant deciduous trees along Western Avenue and, ideally, also on Hague Drive.

The board also recommended that the applicant reduce the number of parking spaces planned, from 45 to 44, since 44 is the number required, and having more in the plan triggers an area variance. Palleschi immediately agreed to remove one space. Parking would be behind the building, on the south side.

A stormwater-management system would involve “some sort of filtration,” Palleschi said. There are some federally designated wetlands along the back of the property that would remain undisturbed, he said.

Lighting would be kept to a minimum, with some light poles for safety, and some building-mounted lights.