An on-again, off-again proposal to create mixed-use development around the Wadsworth Labs site on the Harriman Campus may be on again.

Senator Patricia Fahy announced today, June 11, as the legislative session is soon drawing to a close, that the bill she sponsored to develop 7 acres of the 27-acre Wadsworth site for retail, commercial, and residential use had passed in the Senate.

A parallel bill in the State Assembly — sponsored by Gabriella Romero and John McDonald — has yet to be placed on the floor calendar. And then, of course, it would need the governor’s signature.

Fahy, Romero, and McDonald, all Democrats, had touted the proposal at a snowy January press conference held in a parking lot of the Harriman campus, which Fahy terms Albany’s uptown “Parking Lot District.”

“I’m grateful that my colleagues in the State Senate have listened to our community and recognized the need to move beyond the design mistakes of the 1960s and free up land to build new housing,” Fahy said in a statement on June 11. “New York’s $1.7 billion Wadsworth Labs project is the largest state investment in the Harriman Campus since its construction and represents an opportunity for a bolder, broader vision as part of this project.”

In February, more than 75 labor leaders, community groups, and elected officials — including Guilderland’s supervisor — signed a letter on Fahy’s letterhead, urging Governor Kathy Hochul to support the legislation.

But in May, Fahy and Romero expressed disappointment when the proposal was not part of the state budget.

They said in a joint May 6 statement that they would keep “working with our coalition” and concluded, “We cannot afford to keep thinking small when the stakes are this high: do we want another 5 decades of a disconnected, sprawling Harriman Campus stuck in the 1960s, or a fully integrated one with space for housing or small businesses that connects seamlessly with our neighborhoods?”

The bill also calls ​for creating a master plan for the redesign of the 330-acre campus at the west end of Albany, which was planned in the 1950s by Governor W. Averell Harriman, for whom it was named.

The campus was built in the Albany Pine Bush next to the Albany Country Club, where the University at Albany’s uptown campus is now. It 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.