GUILDERLAND — A green apartment proposal has been reduced from two buildings to one, while the request is to drop the number of units from 120 to 105. 

Rosenblum Companies is asking to change its Planned Unit Development (PUD) in the Great Oaks complex, located off of Church Road, just west of the Northway, and to the south of Western Avenue, a 17-acre property that is already home to three office buildings. 

Jeff Mirel, a principal with the company, told the Guilderland Town Board at its Aug. 16 meeting, “As the project design has evolved, you know, we found it would be more efficient to construct a single building than two buildings and reduce the overall unit count, but include more units in the single building to achieve efficiencies.”

The project still has to go to the planning board for its review and recommendations. The town board is the lead agency because a PUD requires a rezone, which requires a new local law.

The current PUD allows for the construction of a five-story building with 78 units and a four-story building with 42 units, totaling 120 residences. 

Rosenblum does not intend to build the four-story structure, and is seeking instead to construct a five-story building with 105 units. The 171,000-square-foot building will have 117 underground parking spaces, a fitness center, a community room, bike storage, and an outdoor patio. 

Councilwoman Christine Napierski asked what will take the place of the building that won’t be built, and Mirel told her it will stay in its current capacity as a landscaped island and parking place.

In keeping with PUD goals, said a narrative submitted to the town, the Great Oaks apartment complex will have a “variety of residential and nonresidential uses, contains common space, preserves trees and natural topography, efficient use of land, utilizing existing infrastructure and in keeping with [Transit Oriented District] principles (transit stops on Western Ave.).”

Resident Robyn Gray, who chairs the steering committee for Guilderland Residents for Responsible Growth, told the board,“This is an excellent example of what a PUD should be.”

Gray said for “all of the things that they’re incorporating” into the project, the proposal “should be an example for other developers in this town.”

As Rosenblum turns the office park into a mixed-use neighborhood, the developer has taken to calling the project an “Eco Park.” 

For example, Rosenblum will be using Passive House construction when it builds. The movement began in Germany and, while there are tens of thousands of passive-house buildings across Europe, there are only several hundred in the United States. Passive House construction typically features building for tightness with a ventilation system that lets fresh air come in and stale air go out, resulting in ultra-low energy use.

“Sustainability is actually at the core of our development practice,” Mirel previously told The Enterprise. Rosenblum has a dozen properties across the Capital Region. “We have a 10-year goal to make all of our new development projects net-zero carbon. We have taken an iterative approach on our path to net zero, deploying high-efficiency assemblies and systems like geothermal heating and cooling and a significant amount of owned rooftop solar systems.”

“We’re going to maximize on-site solar PV,” he said in March of last year, referencing photovoltaic cells that convert sunlight directly into electricity, “and the Passive House design and that includes an airtight envelope that’s coupled with continuous filtered ventilation … energy-recovery ventilation and controlled humidity. That will allow us to achieve not only the net-zero energy goal but also superior comfort for our tenants and resilience for future climate hurdles.”

Comprehensive plan update

Also during the Aug. 16 meeting, Supervisor Peter Barber provided the board with the latest information on the update to the town’s comprehensive plan.

Barber said three consultants were recently interviewed to run the update process. He hopes to make an announcement about a pick in the next few days. 

Barber said the town still wants residents to apply to be on the nine-member committee. 

He reiterated that, unlike the 2001 plan that was set up around neighborhoods, the 2022 update will focus on specific topics — like senior needs, first-responder issues, or infrastructure, for example — with corresponding subcommittees. He also said, “I don’t want people to be one-issue advocates, you’ve got to have a much more expansive view.”

Barber said other towns whose comprehensive plan committees had too many one-issue advocates got bogged down “too much on one topic” while “ignoring other topics.”

“It just stops the whole process,” said Councilwoman Rosemary Centi, echoing Barber’s sentiment on one-issue advocates.

“[But] the bottom line is we’re just starting this process,” Barber said. “Check back in two years and let’s see how it all plays out.”