GUILDERLAND — Residents received updates on a number of planning-related issues in Guilderland at an April 12 morning meeting with Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik. 

Kovalchik touched on topics, from water and open space to home-building projects in town. 

The meeting was recorded and posted online by resident Gerd Beckmann.

Water consumption was discussed and framed in a more holistic context. 

Demand is to the point where Guilderland is looking for grants to try to bring two of the town’s three wells, which have unacceptable levels of iron and manganese, back online with a filtration system. Those two wells currently don’t meet standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, so the department is looking for grants to get those wells going again for summer, when demand is highest.

The town’s third well is brought back online in the summertime when usage peaks. The state grant for which the town applied in November, if it is awarded to Guilderland, would cover up to 60 percent of the costs or up to $3 million, whichever is greater. 

Water needs to be addressed in the town’s comprehensive plan update, Kovalchik said, a process the town has begun in earnest.

The half-acre and one-acre home lots are the biggest demands on municipalities’ infrastructure in general, Kovalchik said, as it costs money to provide their water, sewer, fire, and police services.

“The commercial, industrial, or multi-family complexes is what really solidifies your tax base,” Kovalchik said. Different types of single-family housing  need to be discussed so there’s less of a water demand during the summer. 

According to a Cost of Community Services Studies conducted by the American Farmland Trust, comparing the cost in services used by residential development, commercial and industrial development, and working open land, “In every community studied, farmland has generated a fiscal surplus to help offset the shortfall created by residential demand for public services.”

Guilderland also needs more affordable housing. 

For example, prices have gotten so high in the Fort Hunter Fire District that approval was needed to increase the percentage of firefighters who can live outside the district from 20 percent to 40 percent, because volunteers can’t afford to live in Fort Hunter anymore. 

Air and water

One resident noted developers had been scooping up land along Route 146 between Route 158 and Altamont, and how there’s now talk of extending a water main along the same route, which would only exacerbate the development problem. 

Kovalchik then talked about a project that recently came before the town’s development planning committee. Proposed off of Gun Club Road near the village of Altamont, the approximately 161-acre cluster development would be made up of 41 lots that would leave 100 acres of open space. 

“There’s issues with water quantity from the village of Altamont,” Kovalchik said, so the proposal was to extend the water main from the corner of routes 146 and 158, which could cost over $1 million. 

Altamont has had additional water problems of late, having had to shut down its Brandle Road well site — the source of 30 percent of its water supply — because of a high manganese reading. The village isn’t sure when the site will be back online. 

 “But then there’s still sewer issues,” Kovalchik said. 

He said he fielded a recent call from a real-estate agent who was looking at a large parcel of land on rural Gardner Road, which has a number of large lots, for a subdivision project, but there’s no water or sewer lines on that road. 

In rural Guilderland, more than homebuilders are looking to buy land, Kovalchik said; solar companies want to install large-scale facilities. 

He noted new upgraded power lines will be terminating at National Grid’s substation in New Scotland and how that added capacity will be taken from a lot of renewable energy sources. “The going rate for solar leases is anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 an acre per year,” he said. 

Kovalchik said a number of large-scale facilities — those producing 5 to 8 megawatts, which is a lot of what the town is seeing — need a minimum of 25 to 40 acres of land. But the good thing about solar is that, in 50 years, the facility could be uninstalled whereas a home could not. 

He then turned to the town’s own attempts to conserve open space and how Guilderland recently created its own conservation easement program. Residents who agree not to build on their land for a predetermined period of time receive a sliding-scale tax break from the town. 

But for the program to be successful, Kovalchik said, it needs buy-in. 

The largest line-item on Guilderland residents’ tax bill every year isn’t what they pay to the town or county, it’s their school taxes. And the six school districts in the town have yet to sign on to the program, he said.

Kovalchik pointed to a similar but little-used conservation easement program in Bethlehem where most of the land that would use the tax break is located in the southern part of town, Selkirk, which is the Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk Central School District. 

Development 

Kovalchick told the meeting’s dozens of attendees that he considers the proposal for Planned Unit Development on Winding Brook Road near the YMCA “dead.”

Known as Winding Brook Commons, the project called for 283 apartments across 24 buildings with 80,500 square feet of commercial space including a mixed-use office building, a bank, and a restaurant. The project had been a scaled-down version of another never-built project proposed some 15 years ago, Glass Works Village, which Kovalchik said in 2018 called for 200,000 square feet of commercial space and 360 apartments.

Kovalchik surmised the installation of a costly center-turn lane from the project site all the way down Route 20 approximately to the Knockout Carwash may have been one of the reasons the developer walked away from the proposal. 

Dutch Mills Acres, another project that last year was before the town’s development planning committee, continues to make progress. 

Rosetti Properties of Colonie in January 2021 proposed a 96-unit townhome development on Carman Road. Kovalchik said the state’s Department of Transportation has reviewed the Dutch Mills Acres proposal and determined there will be no access from Lone Pine Road — the plan initially called for two access points.

“The applicant is now working with DOT on Carman Road access,” Kovalchik said.

Two projects that received town approvals but with futures that are still in question are Pine Bush Senior Living on New Karner Road and Beacon Meadows on Mercy Care Lane. 

The 65-unit Beacon Meadows was to become Guilderland’s first development for people aged 55 and older, adoptive families, and young adults with developmental disabilities. While Pine Bush Senior Living was slated to become 86 affordable units, with rents ranging from from $444 to $1,244 per month. 

But both projects are relying on millions of dollars in competitive state financing to get built, and Beacon Meadows specifically has already had its application for grant funding denied — Kovalchik thought more than once.