To the Editor:

Like many owners of retail space, Pyramid — owner of both Crossgates Mall and Crossgates Commons — wants to reorient its business: More entertainment, a hotel, residences, and other new uses for its extensive property holdings.

It has completed two hotels. It now wants to build 222 apartment and townhouse units on the Crossgates Mall property near Rapp Road.

It should not be approved until Pyramid solves two major problems it created.

The proposed apartment complex, because of its location, will have a negative impact on the Pine Bush preserve. That is not acceptable.

Pyramid — its Crossgates Commons property on Washington Avenue Extension — dumps a portion of its traffic into Springsteen Road and Rapp Road, negatively impacting the residences along those roads as well as those living on Gipp Road nearby. Both Gipp Road and Rapp Road connect to Western Avenue and thereby attract drivers wishing to travel between Washington Avenue Extension and Western Avenue.

The proposed 222-unit complex will add to the traffic on the three roads — each of which are narrow, curvy, rural in character, and not built as anything other than low-traffic roads.

Moreover, the historic Pine Bush Community — 27 properties and home sites — also borders Rapp Road. It was founded in 1930 by ex-residents of Mississippi during the “Great Migration” when many fled from the poverty of the rural South to the North to build for themselves a possible middle-class future — which they did.

The 27 properties are a monument to what America means to many — opportunity, fairness, and betterment.

So Pyramid needs to find a way to reduce its negative impact on the residences along Rapp, Springsteen, and Gipp and to remove its negative impact on the Pine Bush Preserve.

Pyramid destroyed a perfectly fine neighborhood — between Rapp Road and its hotels — when it purchased many homes for the expansion of its retail property.

Now that retail is less profitable, Pyramid cannot be permitted to destroy yet one more neighborhood and lessen the quality of the Pine Bush preserve.

Don Reeb

McKownville