To the Editor:

On July 15, 2024, you posted an article about the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals considering an application to turn the former Peter Young Center in Altamont into a hotel and restaurant [“Will the former Peter Young Center become a boutique inn?”].

In doing so, you included gratuitous comments about a chapter of the late Father Peter Young’s history from over 10 years ago when he properly reported financial improprieties by a now deceased senior staffer. The comments had no relationship to the zoning story.

There is a wholly different direction you could have gone if you decided to vary from the zoning story and talk about Father Young. As the president of Father Young’s programs for the past 40 years, I know first hand all that Father Young did positively for the Altamont community that was not included in your story.

He opened the facility doors to the Altamont community members not just for treatment-related purposes, but he opened the gym to local Catholic Youth Organization activities for 25 years, opened the offices and bedrooms to emergency services and law enforcement exercises and training, and was always a responsible good neighbor to the Altamont community.

What you could have instead reported is that Father Peter Young’s programs today thrive, serving not just Albany County, but communities from Buffalo to Syracuse to Rensselaer and Schenectady counties and up through Warren and Washington counties, providing critical support for veterans, women in crisis, shelters for homeless, drug and alcohol clinics, and programming for people returning from incarceration requiring transitional services.

His dream is today more vibrant than ever, and rather than concentrate on the new zoning proposal by the current owners for the property or Father Young’s longstanding and programs’ active community-related and based support, you chose to spend multiple paragraphs on old financial issues that many for-profit and not-for-profit businesses uncover within their organizations. The selectivity of your negative focus is an injustice.

Kevin Luibrand

President

Father Peter G. Young organizations

Editor’s note: Our story focused on why the Peter Young Center is vacant and hence ripe for development.