NEW SCOTLAND — Tee-time is out, the doctor is in.

Omni Development Company’s proposed office building for two doctors at 1882 New Scotland Road has been approved by the town’s planning board.

Construction will begin "in the summer at the latest," Omni Executive Vice President Charles Carrow told The Enterprise on Tuesday.

The building will be 10,457 square feet and have two main-door entrances, one for each medical group. One of the entrances will be to the side of the building, so the parking lot wraps around the building, civil engineer and land planner Dominick Arico explained to the planning board.

The building will be one story, with brick on the bottom and siding above the brick.

Omni used common design features of other commercial buildings and houses along the Route 85 corridor, so the office would blend with the surrounding community and be aesthetically pleasing, Carrow said.

Omni plans to have public sewer service from the Heldervale Sewer Extension, and public water from the town of Bethlehem. The water is there, Carrow said; he just needs to get a letter from Bethlehem.

Planning board member Robert Smith reiterated at last Tuesday’s meeting that the board’s approval is contingent on Omni’s securing water and sewer.

Based on planning board recommendations, the developers chose to have one driveway connection to Route 85, rather than two. Planning board member Cynthia Elliott commended Arico and Carrow for their "nice use of a single entrance" and "nice landscaping plans."

Omni will plant trees to "hide" the parking lot, Arico said, and more trees on the eastern side of the building to create a buffer for neighbors, Carrow said.

Carrow said this Tuesday that he has secured a physician’s group as one tenant, but occupants for the other half of the building have yet to enter into a lease agreement.

Dr. Angel Millora and his group of four doctors will be consolidating their current three offices, at three different locations across the Capital Region, into Omni’s new building in New Scotland.

Millora told The Enterprise that one of the group’s offices is just down the street on Kenwood Avenue in Slingerlands, another is on Delaware Avenue in Albany, and a third office is in Schodack.

The three other doctors in the practice are Virginia Lazaro, José Nebres, and Sumitra, who uses only her first name profession-ally, he said.

Millora said that his group is moving into the New Scotland building because the doctors needed a larger space and be-cause they wanted to update their equipment and offices. He also stated that this was a good location for them because it wasn’t far from one of their existing offices and their many Slingerlands patients.
He said that they practice internal medicine and geriatrics, and that Sumitra is a family practitioner who also sees children. They are all accepting new patients, he said.

Future plans
The medical building by the side of New Scotland Road is part of Omni’s larger plan to use the rest of the 8.44 acre site for condominiums for senior residents.

Carrow had explained this to the planning board in December and told The Enterprise this week that he plans to be back at Town Hall in the near future to move forward with the plans for Phase Two of construction.

He said, by developer’s standards, the town has been developer-friendly.

Omni’s proposal for subsidized senior apartments on Mountainview Road in the village of Voorheesville is currently in the concept review phase, Carrow said.

He said that the proposed senior condos on Route 85, the proposed senior apartments in Voorheesville, and the existing Omni assisted-living complex on Carman Road in Guilderland are all development projects that Omni got involved with because the company believes these buildings and services are tremendous assets to a town.