GUILDERLAND — Three different assisted-living facilities are currently being considered in Guilderland.

Concordia will have a conceptual site plan before the town’s planning board on Jan. 11 for its proposed "senior living and care community” at 2298 through 2316 Western Ave., at the corner of Western Avenue and Foundry Road.

Pine Bush Senior Living will be coming back to the planning board soon with its proposal for a senior-living complex at 20 New Karner Road, near the intersection of Western Avenue and Route 155 and stretching along on vacant land behind several buildings that front Western Avenue.

Promenade Senior Living wants to convert the Best Western Sovereign Hotel at 1228 Western Ave. in McKownville into a 200-bed assisted-living facility. The site currently operates as a hotel.

Asked whether three facilities are really needed in Guilderland, planning board Chairman Stephen Feeney said, “I think there’s probably a need, and I think that’s why people are coming in. They do their market study.”

Concordia

Concordia Senior Housing Residences would involve demolishing a number of derelict buildings, including the former Master Cleaners, and then building new. It is in a “very preliminary” stage, according to Feeney, of requesting a zoning change from local business to planned unit development, or PUD.

Plans call for a campus divided into four different sections, of independent-living residences, an enriched housing program, enhanced assisted-living residences, and special-needs assisted-living residences, the application on file at the town hall says.

This would provide continuity of care, said developer Ronald J. DeVito, managing member of The Genitor Organization in Melville, New York, up to but not including the very highest level, for clients needing around-the-clock skilled nursing care. DeVito said that Concordia would be an enhanced assisted-living facility, able to provide some, but not continuous, skilled nursing care.

— Site plan from Ronald J. DeVito 
The Concordia Senior Housing Residences project at Western Avenue and Foundry Road would involve tearing down several long-abandoned buildings on the town of Guilderland’s main thoroughfare and rebuilding. The planning board will consider this conceptual site plan Jan. 11.

DeVito has told town officials that he would be willing to donate part of the property to widen the top portion of Foundry Road, he said, creating at least one more lane in the section of Foundry Road that lies between Western Avenue and the facility’s driveway, to make it possible for trucks to turn left there.

The current owners of the site, Charles Bohl Incorporated, have applied to have it named a brownfield cleanup site and are awaiting a response from the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation, according to DeVito.

This project has been the subject of discussion with building and zoning officials since 2010, DeVito said, with the officials providing him guidance on issues including “some steep slope angles.”

The project became active again recently, he said, because the current owner has finished cleanup of the properties other than the Master Cleaners site. DeVito told The Enterprise that he will work with the current owner to complete that site. DeVito said that he and Charles Bohl, Incorporated are currently applying to amend the brownfield project by adding Concordia to it.

No official response yet has come from the DEC about the brownfield cleanup application, although DeVito said that, unofficially, “DEC has indicated its approval.”

DeVito is aware of the two other projects proposed for Guilderland, and aware of other competitors in the area as well.

“We consider the competition to include everything within seven or eight miles of our site,” he said. “We’ve got some facilities in Latham, for example, that we think will be competition. But we’re confident there will be sufficient demand for all of us.”

Currently, a towing service with a month-to-month lease is the only business operating from the site, DeVito said.

In addition to Guilderland, the developer has four projects in various stages of development: in Fishkill in lower Dutchess County, Calverton in Suffolk County, Spring Valley in Rockland County, and Milan in upper Dutchess County between Rhinebeck and Red Hook.

Pine Bush

At 20 New Karner Road, Pine Bush Senior Living plans call for one building with 96 units of independent living and another with 96 units of assisted living and memory care, according to developer Tim Cassidy of Pine Bush Senior Living, LLC.

The site would also have a lifelong learning center, with programs open to the public, Cassidy said.

This plan has been in the works for some time, Cassidy said; the stormwater pollution prevention plan is complete, and work is now being done on a site plan.

He expects the project to go before the planning board on Feb. 8. Recently, Pine Bush Senior Living has been working closely, Cassidy said, with the Westmere Fire Department and the town engineer on details such as turning lanes for fire trucks, and possible walking paths into the Pine Bush.

This project would dedicate about 39.9 acres of the site to become part of the Albany Pine Bush Preserve.

The project would have a private-access roadway, about 156 parking spaces, outdoor courtyards, and a stormwater collection system, according to the documents on file at Town Hall.

In August 2014, Pine Bush Senior Living, LLC sought a variance to allow construction of a senior-living facility beyond the intersection of a 12-degree angle of repose. In November 2015, the town board approved a rezone request for the site, from Business Non-Retail Professional to Planned Unit Development.

Asked if he thought there would be enough demand for more than one new assisted-living facility, Cassidy said that he had spoken before to Concordia’s DeVito and called DeVito “a good man.” He added, “There’s certainly room in town for two projects.”

He also said, “We’re new construction targeting middle- to upper-middle-income residents in state-of-the-art facilities, whereas a conversion [of an existing building] typically cannot provide that level of ambience or the same type of residence.”

Promenade

Promenade Senior Living will be a 200-bed facility in the current Best Western, said Steven M. Laufer, chief executive of the company by the same name that already has facilities in Pearl River, Chestnut Ridge, Tuxedo, and Middletown. This would be the company’s first facility in the Capital District.

Promenade appeared before the planning board on Dec. 14 and will next appear before the zoning board on Jan. 19.

It would be a “very residential community,” allowing people to move once and then age in place, Laufer told The Enterprise. The only exception, he said, would be those who come to need “24/7 continuous care”; these residents might need to seek placement in a nursing-home facility, he said.

Promenade would be nondenominational and celebrate all holidays and all people of the community, Laufer said. It would accept all forms of insurance, including private-pay and long-term-care insurance and Medicaid.

The company expects to have a new site plan in a week or so, said Laufer, that incorporates all of the suggestions from the planning board, including breaking up the parking lot so that it is not such a “sea of asphalt,” as one member of the board called it.

The current site plan already calls for creating additional outdoor spaces, Laufer said, in the form of walking paths, a gazebo, and a courtyard.

Feeney told The Enterprise that this project seemed like a “good reuse of a tired hotel.”

He said that the board had recommended approval without conditions, but had made a few suggestions for Promenade, including eliminating some of the asphalt, which he said seemed excessive even for a hotel, “and certainly for what’s proposed.”

The board also suggested that the developer talk with Ryan Jankow, owner of 2010 Western, who plans to turn that property and an adjacent small lot at 2006 Western, into a small strip mall, to explore the cross-connection between the two projects, to give the assisted-living facility access to the traffic light on Route 20. It also suggested that the assisted-living facility plant some deciduous street trees, Feeney said.