About 30 Guilderland residents turned out for an Albany Common Council hearing Monday night on Sandidge Way Apartments, a project that would tear down 11 homes at the town’s northeastern edge and put up 173 “workforce-oriented” rental units in their place.

Many expressed fears about how much more traffic Fuller Road between Western Avenue and the traffic circle can bear.

The project lies in Albany, but within 500 feet of the town line, so the Common Council was soliciting responses from nearby residents.

Developer Dawn Home Management is asking the city to rezone the 5.6-acre area from single-family low-density residential (R-1A) to multifamily high-density residential (R-4). Loughlin Street would be renamed Sandidge Way.

Engineer Daniel Hershberg explained that the proposal is for a total of six buildings, four of them five-story; one four-story; and the other a fitness center and rental office with three apartments above.

The ground floor of the five taller buildings would be devoted to parking spaces. The plan calls for parking for 303 cars. Parking would also be allowed, as it is now, on Loughlin Street, said Spencer Jones, an executive with Dawn Homes Management, the developer.

Dawn Homes will buy the properties from current owner Columbia Development, contingent upon approval of the rezoning, Jones said.

Hershberg explained at the meeting that a traffic study done by Creighton Manning Engineering found that the peak traffic time will be the evening rush hour, with a total of 114 vehicles departing or arriving. Morning rush hour, he said, is projected to be slightly less busy.

The developer anticipates, said Hershberg, that some people who live in the complex may be employed nearby and walk to work. There are also four Capital district Transportation Authority bus lines that come through, he said.

“We’re excited about this project, and see it as a great opportunity for walkable workforce housing,” Jones told The Enterprise. “We’re just a third of a mile from Stuyvesant Plaza and surrounded by employers.”

Hershberg and Jones said at the hearing that they had met with the Pine Bush Neighborhood Association. They called the Pine Bush the project’s “host community,” rankling many of the residents of McKownville who were present. One, Don Reeb, president of the McKownville Improvement Association, said, “The Pine Bush is as close to Sandidge as City Hall is to Delaware Avenue.”

The developer “chose,” Reeb said, “not to meet with us.” He noted that the improvement association had had a meeting scheduled with Columbia, but that it had suddenly been canceled two days prior.

Reeb said in a document he read to the council that the request for proposals and the original purchase of Loughlin Street, when it was scheduled to house a SUNY Poly dorm, is the subject of an investigation by the state attorney general’s office. He said in the statement that “some of us suspect that once the 173 units are built the property will be sold to SUNY Poly, removing it from the tax rolls, and leading to the purchase by SUNY Poly of the two remaining privately owned homes in the city on Fuller [Road] that are near Loughlin Street.”

Michael A. Lawlor of 4 Warren Street suggested that the rezoning proposal should not be approved before the investigations related to Loughlin Street are complete.

Helen Bickmore of 6 Warren St. voiced concerns about increased traffic. She said that the six residential streets between Executive Park and Loughlin Street had 143 living units, and that this project, by comparison, will have 173 living units on one street. She also said that those same six streets had about 200 cars, whereas this project will add 303 cars on one street.

Bickmore said that traffic already backs up on Fuller Road when the light at Executive Park is red, and that now there will be 303 more cars coming out at Loughlin Street to turn right onto Fuller or left into the traffic circle.

She mentioned that she has seen many impatient drivers speeding down the central turn lane along Fuller Road to avoid backed-up traffic, and has already nearly been hit multiple times while sitting in that lane, before an oncoming driver noticed her there waiting to turn into her own street.

Bickmore told The Enterprise it’s only a matter of some yards from Warren to Loughlin, and only a matter of some yards from Loughlin Street to the traffic circle, where students are crossing all day long.

“There are impatient people driving along that road, on their way to work or shopping. It’s a catastrophe waiting to happen,” she said.  

Albany County Legislator Paul Miller, who represents the McKownville area, told the council that he has already seen several students “almost get hit at the traffic circle” on Fuller Road.

“Traffic is supposed to yield to students crossing there,” Miller said, “but it doesn’t happen very often.”

John Barnum, who live at 275 Fuller Road, said, “It’s dead-stop traffic right in front of my house.” It happened just last week, he said, “and SUNY is out of session right now.”

Vincent Rigosu, of 13 Beach Ave., asked how firefighters would be able to respond to his home at times when Fuller Road is impassable.

The proposal will go before the Albany County Planning Board and also be back before the Albany Common Council again, possibly in July, Jones said.