2006 in review
Plans for continued growth in Guilderland



GUILDERLAND — The town has grown according to plan in 2006.

Although several public hearings were held throughout the year and some spot-zoning changes were granted, Guilderland has abided by its comprehensive plans as the expanding suburban town continues to cope with growth.

A massive $100 million development project named Glass Works Village is being proposed for a 52-acre wooded plot along Route 20 and Winding Brook Drive, and, further down the road, local developer Jeff Thomas has proposed construction of a large 72-unit senior housing project at the old Bavarian Chalet.

Town Historian Alice Begley worked with developers on the name Glass Works Village in honor of Guilderland’s glass-making history. Thomas donated roughly 4,000 square feet of his proposed project to the town for a community senior citizen center, in exchange for the town board re-zoning the area for the project.
As the town moves forward, Supervisor Kenneth Runion said, "new urbanism" designs of mixed-use residential and commercial projects like Glass Works appear to be the "future trend" when it comes to development in the area.
The concept of new urbanism created a "village-like" atmosphere where there is less dependence on automobiles and more walkable communities mixed with green space and development.
The town also saw its share of high-profile legal cases this year which garnered local, statewide, and even national attention. A Chinese scientist living in Westmere was charged by the federal government with international arms trading, but the government later withdrew the charges; illegal immigrants were detained from a pallet company in the Northeastern Industrial Park during a nationwide raid; Hashim Burnell was tried and re-tried for the shooting death of Todd Pianowski and found guilty before being sentenced to life in prison without parole; and three University at Albany freshmen football players were arrested for an alleged gang rape that took place on-campus — an incident which school administrators described as "unacceptable."

Also, Guilderland was at the center of a city-versus-suburbs struggle when it came to state and county Democratic representation.

Assemblyman John McEneny and New Scotland Democratic Chair Connie Burns challenged Albany Mayor Jerry Jennings and Albany city Treasurer Betty Barnette to state Democratic committee seats; McEneny and Barnette won and will help pick New York’s Democratic candidate for president in 2008.

Guilderland councilman and Democratic chair, David Bosworth, ran against the county legislator’s majority leader, Frank Commisso, for Albany County’s Democratic chair; Bosworth lost but the state’s Supreme Court ruled last week that the election is illegal and a new election must now take place.

After two years in court, Republican Lee Carman won the contested county legislature race of 2004 against incumbent Gene Messercola for the Fort Hunter district in a 510-to-508 vote. A federal court judge ruled that the final two absentee ballots being contested should be opened, and they were both in favor of Carman.

In town news, changes in Albany County’s Civil Service practices frightened some workers about losing their jobs in January, but only one worker from the assessors’ office actually lost her job due to new testing requirements. Supervisor Runion said all of the town’s workers have now passed all requirements and no more jobs will be lost.

The Pine Bush Preserve, which is bordered by the Rapp Road landfill, was also in the news this year as the city of Albany attempted to expand the dump into land that had previously been dedicated to the preserve. The landfill will be filled to capacity in three to eight years; another landfill site in Coeymans was halted due to federally protected wetlands.

The Rapp Road landfill was fined this summer by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation for litter violations and obnoxious odors coming from decomposing waste.
"We’re currently bringing our trailers there, but we have looked at other alternatives and will continue to look at other alternatives," Runion said about bringing municipal trash to the Rapp Road landfill. "We all have to be good stewards of the land whether it’s a transfer station or landfill, you still have to do it in an environmentally sensitive way."

Guilderland was the only municipality that pays to dump at the landfill which opposed expanding into the Pine Bush preserve.

Developing Guilderland

The Glass Works Village proposal will include 345 condominiums with 195,000 square-feet of retail and commercial space, a village green, a nature preserve, and three parks on 57 acres off of Winding Brook Drive and Western Avenue.
"It’s the largest project this present town board has seen," Runion told The Enterprise. "Only Crossgates was bigger," he said of the town’s dominant mall that draws shoppers from throughout the Northeast.

In comparison, the first phase of Crossgates Mall’s construction in the 1980’s was an $80 million project and the second phase of mall’s expansion was a $100 million project, according to Runion.

Atlantic Pacific Properties, Platform Reality Group, and DRA of Troy, are proposing the Glass Works Village.

The proposal came in May less than a week after a workshop was held at the Guilderland firehouse, giving residents a chance to participate in the planning for the future of a strip along Route 20.
The workshop defined the "Guilderland Hamlet" as stretching between routes 155 and 146 along Western Avenue, and surrounding areas south to the Normanskill and north to the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.
"I think that’s the trend"It’s part of the smart growth advocated by the state in the late ’90’s," said Runion, calling these types of development, "walkable communities."

Construction plans for Glass Works call for 200,000 tons of material to be excavated from the 52-acre wooded plot, and a draft environmental review has been given to the town by developers, which will be reviewed by town board members for compliance before being made available to the public in January.

The Guilderland Hamlet plan is also well underway with many ideas for the stretch of Western Avenue between routes 155 and 146.

The plan suggests installing sidewalks along sections of Western Avenue, Route 146, Winding Brook Drive, and Willow Street.

The preliminary plan also calls for a number of biking and hiking trails that would connect the parks with neighborhoods and surrounding areas. A footpath along the Normanskill would connect Nott Road Park to Tawasentha Park.

Jeff Thomas’s senior housing project at 5060 Western Ave. was given a conditional re-zone — but only for seniors over the age of 55. In addition, Thomas had to donate a minimum of 4,000 square feet to the town for a community center as well as install sidewalks along the road.

The re-zone changed the 13-acre site of the old Bavarian Chalet restaurant from Local Business to Multiple Residence. This will allow for denser development.

According to the developers, the average housing price in Guilderland is around $267,000 and, they said, Thomas’s senior housing units would likely be priced at around $220,000.

Runion said he considers the project, called Mill Hollow, to be affordable housing for seniors.

The project calls for 86 units, along with a pond, greenspace, and possibly a putting green. The senior homes will be 1,200-square-foot two-bedroom condominiums, stacked above one another. More than 80 will have garages.

The Western Avenue entrance to the senior-housing project off of Route 20 will be rerouted to Frenchs Mill Road, Thomas said.

In November the planning board approved the site plan review for Mill Hollow.
"It’s a great design," said Thomas. "It has a village feel."

He hopes to begin construction in 2007, he said.

Thomas, who is the founder and head of WeatherGuard Roofing, has three separate senior housing projects in the works, including the Western Avenue project. The other two are in the Hilltowns and just outside of Altamont.

Runion told The Enterprise last week that senior housing projects are becoming more frequent as an aging baby-boomer population begins to retire and people begin moving out of their larger homes in search of more manageable living spaces.

He added that he likes Thomas’s plans and believes many more projects likes Thomas’s will be proposed in the near future.

Zoning

Some spot zoning also took place in town in 2006.

The re-zones changed 2026 and 2028 Western Ave., where a new Italian restaurant is opening, from Local Business to Business Non-Retail Professional (BN-RP). The areas within the Normanskill Flood Plain, near Church Road, were also re-zoned from RO-40, a residential zone with a minimum size of 40,000 square feet, to RA-3, a zone which is meant to promote low-impact development patterns to conserve natural resources.

The re-zones will limit future commercial development at the Western Avenue locations and increase the minimum lot size from one to three acres for development in the flood plain.

During public hearings, neighbors called for the re-zoning along Western Avenue because they said it was affecting their quality of life and they believed it was being over developed. Landowners affected by the flood plain complained to the board that the re-zone would affect the commercial and residential price of their land because of the development constants involved.

After all of the public discussions were finished, the town board re-zoned the areas.
Some small-business owners banded together in February to fight what they described as an "anti-business" government in Guilderland.

James Ryer, president of Techniconsults Corporation in Cosmos Plaza at 1800 Western Ave., said he was threatened with citations and a court appearance over a small sandwich-board sign he put up in front of his computer store.

In response, he founded a group called the Coalition for Guilderland Small Businesses, which had monthly meetings to discuss various topics.

The town does not allow sandwich-board signs or any signs not approved by the zoning board.
Runion said letting businesses use these types of signs to advertise a sale or event would turn Western Avenue into a "landscape of signs" and signs would get bigger and bigger and quickly become out of control.

Ryer maintained that the town’s zoning laws were too restrictive on small businesses simply trying to make a living.

As for the town’ zoning board, while most votes are unanimous, several controversial cases saw rare split votes during the year. Among the most noteworthy decisions:

— A 4-to-3 vote denied the Across the Street Pub a special-use permit to build a deck;

— A 6-to-1 vote approved three variances for an Italian restaurant to be built at 2026 Western Avenue;

— A unanimous decision denied Insurance Auto Auctions to store and sell total-loss vehicles out of the Northeastern Industrial Park, determining it would be a junkyard;

— A unanimous decision granted a special-use permit for Gordon Development to be a self-storage facility off of Wagner Road in Guilderland Center;

— A unanimous decision amended the special-use permit of McDonald’s on Western Avenue to have a 24-hour drive through; and

— A 5-to-1 vote reinstated the building permit of David and Loretta Cox after they were erroneously granted the permit and were issued a stop-work order on construction after they had already torn a part of their Frenchs Hollow Road home for an addition.

Railroad Avenue, which borders the city of Albany, was designated as an Empire Zone by New York State this year. The industrial area will now have access to state subsidies to entice businesses to come back to the area.

The road, which is already zoned industrial, has many closed buildings, abandoned after the trains stopped running through.

High-profile immigration cases

A national raid in April conducted by the Department of Homeland Security saw the arrest of nine Capital Region managers, five of whom worked at the Northeastern Industrial Park in Guilderland.

The nine were all arrested in connection with knowingly hiring illegal immigrants to work in the area.

The 14-month investigation by the Department of Homeland Security began in Guilderland after workers at the industrial park were seen ripping up their W-2 tax forms, according to a government affidavit.

According to authorities, IFCO Systems North America, a German-based pallet-service company, was raided in sites across the country because the company hired thousands of illegal immigrants.

A score of the illegal immigrants working at the industrial park’s IFCO plant at the time lived in two separate houses in Guilderland — one on Western Avenue and the other on Route 155.
"We want to get back working, that’s why we’re here," a 23-year-old man from Honduras told The Enterprise, through a translator. "Our families back home depend on our money."

IFCO took $50 directly from the men’s paychecks each week to pay for the homes they were living in. They made 30 cents for each wooden pallet they rebuilt and five men lived on each floor of the two-family house on Route 155.
The nine managers of IFCO employees were charged with "conspiring to transport, harbor, encourage and induce illegal aliens to reside in the United States for commercial advantage and private financial gain." The charges carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each alien, according to a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security.

The immigrants said they heard about the Guilderland jobs in Texas when they crossed the border and that they were asked if they had proper documentation, but were told that, if they did not, they would still be hired.

The homes where the men used to live are currently up for sale.
In another immigration-related story, Jun Wang, 36, was accused in March of "conspiring to defraud the United States" by selling military munitions to China. The government considered him a danger to the community.

A microbiologist who grew up in China, Wang was shipping palm-sized reference systems made by Crossbow Technology Inc. to China. The devices were described by the government during the first detention hearings as a weapons-grade system.
They were determined later not to be weapons grade, but, rather, were used in aviation research. Wang said at the time he was sending them to his brother in China because they were cheaper to buy in the United States than in China.

Wang was taken into custody at his home on March 17 by federal and state agents.
"I heard a loud banging at the front door"My wife went downstairs first, and then people rushed into my bedroom," Wang told The Enterprise. "They pointed a gun at me and told me to turn around"I was in my underwear."

Wang said he wasn’t allowed to get dressed and wasn’t told why he being arrested for several hours, he said.
His lawyer, Kevin Luibrand, said the government "destroyed a good portion of his life."

Wang was then held at several county jails before being sent to the Batavia Federal Detention Center, near Buffalo. He was held in government custody for nearly a month before he was allowed to go home.
Losing his job shortly after being indicted on federal charges, Wang’s employer said he was fired because of "misusing his computer at work" by looking at ESPN, a sports network, during working hours.

As a result Wang lost his working visa and faced deportation.

In April, Wang was home, after the government acknowledged its mistake, and a federal judge eased the bond restrictions that were originally placed on him.

The Wangs live on a residential street not far from Crossgates Mall, and have a baby daughter. They both said they love America and that they did not want to be deported.
When asked, after he was home, about the whole incident, Wang responded by saying, "My mood is up and down. Sometimes I say, ‘Why did this happen"’ Then I look at my baby and say, ‘Wow! At least I have her in my life.’"

Guilty verdict

A trial this year revealed the little-seen world of small-time drug dealers in suburban Guilderland. One former Guilderland High School student, Hashim Burnell, was found guilty of murdering another, Todd Pianowski.

After a mistrial in May due to newly admitted fingerprint evidence by State Police nearly a year after the crime, Burnell was found guilty in September of killing Pianowski on May 5, 2005, and robbing his girlfriend, Lauren Parker, at gunpoint.

It took the jury 11 hours to deliberate over the course of two days and he was sentenced in November by Albany County Judge Steven W. Herrick.

Burnell, 21, got the maximum sentence of life in prison without parole for shooting Todd Pianowski to death in his Guilderland apartment. He was also sentenced to serve another consecutive 25 years for robbing Parker.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Bruce Lennard, who depicted Burnell as a desperate drug dealer who needed cash in a hurry and saw Pianowski, whom he knew through various drug deals, as an easy target. Paul Edwards, the lawyer appointed to defend Burnell, said his client was simply the wrong man, and that he had no motive because his father gave him money and he lived with a girlfriend who also had financial backing from her parents.

The Burnell and Pianowski families expressed frustration and emotion throughout the lengthy ordeal.

At the sentencing, Pianowski’s parents describing their son as a loving, caring man who was just beginning to embark upon life and that he was robbed of his future and taken away from them. The Pianowski’s thanked the court as well as the Guilderland Police and the State Police for their work on the investigation.
Parker told Burnell that she hated him. Describing him as "a monster," Parker stated she hoped Burnell would die in jail alone; she wept as she spoke about how much she missed Pianowski.

Brunell’s family said he didn’t kill Pianowski and blamed the Guilderland Police for a poor investigation and using teenagers as drug informants instead of taking drugs off the streets.

The Burnells vowed to appeal the verdict.

Suburban shift

Guilderland Democrats are beginning to make a name for themselves on the county level.

Councilman David Bosworth challenged Frank Commisso, who is an Albany ward leader and business manager of Albany’s Port Authority, for the leadership of the county’s Democratic party.
Bosworth lost to Commisso in a 253 to 219 "standing vote" at the Polish Community Center in Albany. Proxies, which are essentially absentee ballots, were not accepted.

Betty Barnette was the former county chair, who took over after Mike Burns died, and she ran the party election in September.

The challenge for the chair was the first in the more than 80-year history of the county’s party. It is usually an appointed position. An apparent urban-verses-suburban rift has begun between Albany city Democrats and Albany County suburban and rural Democrats.

There have been claims of inequality and uncooperative participation from party members on both sides of the argument.

With over 600 people at the Polish Community Center in Albany, Barnette who decided to step down as chairperson, had committee members stand to vote rather than taking a roll-call or weighted vote.

A roll-call vote, where members individually walk to the front of the room and announce their choice, was asked for, but, in accordance with the county’s bylaws, one-third of committee members had to vote on its use. The measure was defeated by a handful of votes and Barnette called for a vote where members stand for their favored candidate.
Some party members called the procedure "undemocratic," recommending legal action, or calling for a re-vote.

A weighted vote uses the last gubernatorial or legislative election numbers of enrolled Democratic votes for the Democratic candidate.

Last Thursday, New York State Supreme Court Justice, Thomas McNamara, ruled that the county election was invalid and that a weighted vote has to be used in accordance with the county’s bylaws.

McNamara, a Republican from Saratoga, took the case after two previous judges recused themselves.

The weighted vote is now based on Elliot Spitzer’s 2006 gubernatorial election, and the new numbers, according to Colonie committee member Dick Barrett, favor the suburban Democrats of Albany County 2 to 1 verses the city Democrats.