GUILDERLAND — A former seminary turned treatment center is now seeking new life as a boutique hotel. 

On Aug. 7, the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals will hold a public hearing on a proposal from Kent Hansen to turn the former Peter Young Center at 1180 Berne-Altamont Road into the Inns of Altamont.  

The location operated as a Catholic seminary from 1925 to 1979, then as a treatment center for people battling substance-use disorders. 

It won't be the first time that the Berne-Altamont Road property will look to host guests. The Kushaqua, a once-lavish Victorian Era hotel, was built on the site in 1885.

A series of inns and a golf club followed before the building became a convent and then, in 1925, a seminary for men studying to be priests. The original remodeled Kushaqua building burned in 1946. 

The LaSalette Fathers built a new brick building on the same site, opening in 1953, which served as a seminary until 1979 when the lack of men wishing to enter the priesthood led to a change in the use of the building.

For a time, it was known as LaSalette Christian Life Center and Shrine but then, in 1984, the LaSalette order sold the building and land on the west side of Route 156 and Peter Young began to use it as a treatment center for alcoholic and later drug addicts who had been convicted of nonviolent offenses

The property sits on the shoulder of the Helderberg escarpment overlooking the village of Altamont.

Work at the 16-acre site would include renovation of the center itself into a  30-room hotel with a 45-seat restaurant and multiple event spaces, both indoors and outdoors. There is also a proposed 18-hole putting golf course as well as indoor and outdoor pools.

Included in the project narrative is a traffic study that estimates the inn would add an additional combined — meaning combined peak a.m. and p.m. hours, typically 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., respectively — 14 weekday and 16 weekend trips; the restaurant would add 30 weekday and 77 weekend trips; and the events venue would add 185 weekend trips.

Father Peter Young, a Catholic priest for whom the 1180 Berne-Altamont Road location was named, began working with addicts in Albany in the 1950s. At one point, Young headed more than 90 in-patient treatment centers and halfway houses in the state. 

After Young’s organization self-reported an internal theft, a far-reaching multi-year investigation was launched by now-disgraced former Attorney General of New York State Eric Schneiderman. 

The legal scrutiny in addition to changes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act — HIPAA — that made it so no other programs could be held in the same location as Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse programs forced Young to close the 1180 Berne-Altamont Road site in 2014. 

In August 2015, the former chief operating officer of Peter Young Housing, Industries, and Treatment pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree offering a false instrument for filing, a misdemeanor. Father Young was not implicated but the charges affected funding for his programs. 

The broader organization Young built in still in operation today and continues to bear his name.

The property at 1180 Berne-Altamont Road was sold in August 2023 for $1.2 million by an LLC associated with Young’s former organization to an LLC associated with Hansen, who did not immediately respond to an Enterprise request for an interview.