NEW SCOTLAND — The New Scotland Planning Board recently approved two projects that had been before it. 

The board on June 13 signed off on a daycare center slated for the second building Grove at Maple Point development near the intersection of routes 85 and 85A and approved Meadowdale Winery’s application to shift its operation from Guilderland to the site of the former Picard’s Grove.

The Learning Garden Childcare Center at 392 Maple Road will be an approximately 5,500-square-foot full-time, year-round daycare center with enough room to accommodate 66 children from 6 weeks old to pre-kindergarteners; it won’t be offering aftercare for elementary students.

The planning board had raised concerns about traffic using the facility because it’s not laid out like a traditional school, so pick-up and drop-off wouldn’t be a seamless experience, according to a report by the town’s engineer and traffic consultant.

At its December meeting, after a long discussion to remedy the issue, Chairman Jeffrey Baker said, “We are satisfied with the traffic-flow issue and the traffic-count issues,” according to meeting minutes.

With hours of operations set for 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, the facility will have staggered drop-off and pick-up procedures in place, according to its project narrative, with drop-off to take place between 7 and 8:30 a.m., and pick-up between 4 and 5:30 p.m. 

The Learning Garden is also offering incentives to families who enroll multiple children, according to its project narrative, “so it is estimated that once we are at capacity, at least 10% of our students will have a sibling who is also enrolled, which will help cut down on traffic.”

Meadowdale Winery

Also on June 13, the board approved Meadowdale Winery’s request to move its facility from 32 Fryer Lane Guilderland to 111 Picard Road. 

With the move, Meadowdale will help lay to rest the recent rocky history of the former Picard’s Grove, which for generations had been a community gathering place. 

In 2020, after months of legal wrangling, the 87-acre property was purchased by Valerie and Richard Glover, who had been working with the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy to place the property under a conservation easement, protecting it from future development. 

With the move into Picard’s saloon building, Meadowdale is consolidating its entire operation under one roof. “This would be a larger, easier-to-access space for us to handle our production,” Meadowdale’s John Sheehan told the planning board in April.

There’s no kitchen and no plans to prepare food at the new facility, Sheehan said on April 4, other than what’s already authorized by the state for farm-wineries: pre-packaged hard cheeses and summer sausage. 

The plan is to expand the days Meadowdale’s tasting room is open to the public from two, Saturday and Sunday, to three days — Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — while also moving to a year-round operation, up from six months.