ALBANY COUNTY — Building permits for multifamily housing outpaced those for single-family homes in the Capital Region in 2016 for the first time in recent memory, said Mark Castiglione, executive director of the Capital District Regional Planning Commission.

The same trend continued in 2017, he said, but to a lesser extent.

Several factors are driving the demand for apartments, Castiglionie said.

He listed the preference of the “millennial” generation — who are now aged about 22 to 37 — for apartments; the desire of senior citizens to downsize; and the economy of scale that makes developers prefer higher-density projects because they are more profitable than single-family homes.

Millennials are the generation that would typically be starting young families and waiting to start families, he said.

This group has a lot of debt including student-loan debt, he said, “and costs are escalating for those kinds of loans.” Millennials may not be able to afford a down payment on a house, as their parents had, he said.

“Where a starter home used to be a single-family home, now it might be an apartment in a quote-unquote ‘good school district,’” Castiglione said.

Those with median household incomes are struggling to keep pace with inflation, Castiglione said, and the prices of new homes are out of reach for some.

“The business proposition certainly seems to me a lot better with multifamily than with low-cost single-family detached homes, for the builder,” he said.

Builders are usually want to build the most profitable style of housing that they can, he said.

“Often the struggle is between what a community’s vision is of itself, and the builder’s desire to get a return on investment.”

Often, multifamily projects serve as a proxy for a larger planning process, Castiglione said, that should have happened earlier, in which communities try to iron out what they would like to see for the future, and whether multifamiliy is part of that.

Sometimes this happens, Castiglione said, because of unclear zoning laws, and in other cases it’s because zoning laws are not in line with what the community would actually like to see.

Sometimes problems arise as a community moves from a plan into actual project proposals, Castiglione said. “The calculus becomes different as they see the potential impact on themselves and their neighbors,” he said.

That’s where the back-and-forth between the planning board and the developer becomes important, he said, as they try to come up with a plan that will better suit the community.

It would not be fair to a developer to change the rules midstream, Castiglione said — to rewrite the zoning code in response to a particular project.

But, Castiglione said, putting brakes on the planning process and declaring a moratorium not related to a specific process, so that a community can discuss where it wants to go in the future, is fair.

Planner presents

Guilderland’s town planner, Kenneth Kovalchik, made a deeply researched presentation to the town board on Dec. 18, responding to the complaints and concerns raised by many town residents over the past months as one multifamily proposal after another has come before the town’s various boards.

He shaped his presentation around the eight main concerns that he says residents are raising, including the ideas that multifamily housing creates traffic congestion; the town is not addressing cumulative impacts; the town is approving projects too rapidly; and current plans are outdated and the town should pause development to create new plans.

Kovalchik geared his presentation around responding to various overarching concerns that town officials have heard from residents about the number of proposed apartment, townhouse, and senior-living facility projects.

He started out by saying that there is “a lack of housing stock catered to the 55-and-over group here in Guilderland.” Many residents have expressed doubt, in comments at meetings and in letters, about how many senior-living projects are really needed.

Kovalchik quoted census figures, through the most recent, of 2010, that charted the population of those aged 55 and over in the town as standing at 10,000 in 2010, when the overall population of the town was 35,303. He predicted growth, over the decade from 2010 through 2020, to 12,200 seniors, and then projected additional, but slowed, growth, through 2030, to 13,000.

Kovalchik said that the senior-apartment complexes in Guilderland that had been built since the town’s adoption of its comprehensive plan in 2001 were Omni Senior Living on Carman Road and Brandle Meadows in Altamont. A resident commented that Serafini Apartments on Western Avenue is also an existing option targeting specifically older residents. Kovalchik also said that the only apartments built since 2001 were Mill Hollow near the town hall and Brandle Woods in Altamont.

The town zoning code classifies townhouses as single-family homes, provided that they have an exterior door and green space in front and back, Kovalchik noted, saying that he would also follow that system of categorization.

He described the number of housing units currently proposed, approved, or under construction as 106 detached single-family homes, with 91 of those proposed; 388 townhouses, 374 of which are proposed; 484 apartments, with 420 of them proposed; and 876 senior housing units, 320 of which are proposed.

The total proposed number of units then is 1,854. The number of units of housing types other than detached single-family homes is 1,748.

Traffic

Kovalchik addressed traffic concerns, saying that apartments generate fewer daily trips than do single-family homes, citing the Institute of Transportation Engineers Trip Generation Manual.

He showed a chart stating that senior-living facilities generate the least traffic. For every 100 units, senior independent-living facilities generate 344 daily trips, with 19 in the morning peak hour and 20 in the evening peak hour, according to the data he showed. The assisted-living category of senior facilities generates fewer, with 274 daily trips, while acute-care or memory-care units generate just 215 trips.

Townhouses generate more than senior units, with 581 daily trips, 44 of them in the morning peak hour and 52 in the evening peak hour. Apartments, meanwhile, have 659 daily trips, with 46 in the morning and 58 in the peak evening hour.

Single-family homes generate the most trips, Kovalchik said — 952 a day for 100 units — with 75 in the morning peak hour and 100 in the evening.

Some residents have expressed concerns that multifamily housing will overburden the school district, Kovalchik said. He presented statistics from a Rutgers report, based on 2000 census figures, which said that multifamily developments of 100 units will generate 29 students, while single-family developments of 100 units will generate 74 students.

Kovalchik said that Guilderland currently has more apartment projects than Bethlehem and that, when he came from his former position as senior planner in Bethlehem in July 2018, Bethlehem had a total of 1,400 to 1,500 units proposed, approved, or under construction in all housing categories combined — single-family, apartments, and senior housing.

This was, he said, far less than the 1,854 total units that are proposed or approved or under construction in Guilderland.

Coordinating review?

Town Supervisor Peter Barber, former 16-year zoning-board chairman, suggested coordinating environmental impact studies so that the zoning board, which is considering the Hiawatha apartments, could work with town board, which is deciding on a planned unit development for Winding Brook Commons.

Kovalchik said that one study is underway now and another could be ordered in very close proximity. Both projects will require the state’s more thorough environmental review for projects expected to have more significant impact.

An economic impact study is underway for Winding Brook Commons at Winding Brook Drive and Western Avenue — site of the former Glass Works project that was approved but never built — and the zoning board of appeals could order one for Hiawatha Trails, currently the site of a golf course opposite Farnsworth Middle School on Route 155, where 256 apartments are proposed.

The two sites are separated only by a 50-foot strip of land, although they front on different roads.

The planning board has recommended site-plan approval of the Hiawatha Trails project and passed it on to the zoning board, which now will consider a proposed height variance for one of the buildings as well as the site plan.

The height variance is for just 11 percent of the building footprint, Kovalchik said this week, explaining that, because the building would be built into a hillside, the rooflines would all be consistent from Route 155, but part of one building would have an additional floor visible only from the back.

The town board is the lead agency on the Winding Brook Commons project, since it involves a PUD rezone to bring 283 apartments as well as 80,000 square feet of commercial space to the 71-acre site. The developer is Tri City Rentals, which owns many of Guilderland’s apartment complexes.

At the time of the Hiawatha Trails vote, on Dec. 12, one planning board member, James Cohen, abstained, saying that he found the number of applications for multifamily projects the town has received over the last six months “stunning.” Cohen said there seemed to be a new application every week, and recommended postponing the vote, saying that the board had not had enough time to consider the revised documents received from the developer.

They had been sent out a day later than usual — the Friday of the week before — Kovalchik said this week, so they were received later than usual, although they had been available for board members to view online as of Friday.

Board member Thomas Robert was absent, so the vote on recommending to the zoning board approval of the site plan for Hiawatha Trails was 5 to 0 with Cohen abstaining.

Saying no

At his Dec. 18 presentation, Kovalchik said, when asked by one resident why the various town boards never seem to say “no” to developers, that they do say no, over and over again. They say no, Kovalchik said, over the course of a long revision process that the public does not see, before a project ever proceeds to the proposal stage.

One of his slides had shown how long it had been since various projects were first submitted, and all but one were more than a year; the other, Winding Brook Commons, was submitted seven months ago but is still in an early stage.

If a proposal is a permitted use, and it receives a negative declaration under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, meaning the environmental impact is slight, and can minimize its impacts, “then it’s very hard for the town to say no,” Kovalchik said.

In a modification to the town’s zoning code in 2016, “Residential-care facility, independent living” projects were allowed, in an effort to avoid creating non-conforming uses, Kovalchik said. The point was to avoid disallowing types of projects that had been allowed in the old code of 1986.

The old code had had just one category for all types of senior residences, from independent-living to assisted-living and on to acute-care. More recent changes in the law, Barber said this week, saw this category broken into those three types, with the state taking over the regulation of assisted-living and acute-care facilities. The town code was changed to reflect that.

“We’re very careful not to create nonconforming uses, but also not to allow new uses,” Barber said this week. There already was an independent-living facility on Gipp Road, which is a town road, he said.

Barber said at the meeting that Kovalchik has been looking into the feasibility of amending the town code to put restrictions on these facilities on town roads. Barber said this week that he was referring to looking into placing limits on the density and the height of these facilities on town roads, so that they blend in better with their surroundings.

“Route 155 is a state road. If you’re not going to allow them there, where are you going to allow them?” Barber asked rhetorically. Route 155 is a state road from Route 20 southward, and a county road north of Route 20.

Kovalchik said this week that he had also been looking into the possibility of keeping senior independent-living projects off town roads, by limiting them to county or state roads, as is already done with planned unit developments.

Frank Casey, a core member of a grassroots group called Guiderland Citizens for Responsible Growth, commented that the census figures Kovalchik is relying on to show the need for senior housing were misleading. The decade of greatest growth, he said, ends in 2020, which is practically here. Growth in the next decade is slower.

What if these senior-living apartments cannot find enough seniors to move in, Casey asked at the meeting.

Something similar happened before with the Mill Hollow project in western Guilderland, which was originally intended to be condominiums for elderly residents but became apartments with no age restriction, when the developer returned to the town board to plead that he was unable to get financing for any project related to “senior citizens.”

The developer in a case like that would have to go back to the zoning and planning boards, Kovalchik said.

Casey then asked rhetorically if the developers would be made to tear down the buildings.

Bethlehem

In nearby Bethlehem, Director of Planning Robert Leslie said that the town is not seeing a proliferation of multifamily projects being proposed. There was more activity in the town in terms of multifamily development between 2011 and 2015, Leslie said.

He said there are currently eight applications for apartments before the planning department, for a total of 389 units, most of which are in two projects — one of 190 units, and the other of 96.

The town of Bethlehem also has proposals for 463 single-family homes, he said, noting that 54 percent of the proposed development is for single-family housing, and 46 percent for multifamily.

Of the current apartment proposals, only one is seeking a variance, Leslie said.

“For the most part, the apartments are meeting the code,” he said. “The other apartments under proposal are not looking for any variances,” he said.

The one seeking a variance is the 190-unit project on New Scotland Road, known as The Hamlets, proposed by Windsor Development. This project is in line with the New Scotland Road Master Plan developed for the area, Leslie said, to make the area more walkable.

The town has a two-storey limit on building height, Leslie said, but in this case the developer is saying to the town board, “‘You’ve laid out the vision, but I can’t achieve the vision with two storeys,’” Leslie said.

Bethlehem took a pause from residential development in 2004 as the town created its comprehensive plan, Leslie said. “During the moratorium, we accepted minor residential subdivision and site plans,” he said.

Recently Bethlehem conducted a cumulative traffic assessment for the Route 9W corridor within the Glenmont area of town, looking at impacts of existing projects, proposed projects, and possible future projects in that area, Leslie said.

“Last year we said, ‘We really need to understand the impact of current proposals,’” he said.

This 10-month comprehensive study was begun in May 2017 and completed in February 2018, Leslie said.

It asked, “What if these other lands got developed? What could go on those lands,” Leslie explained. “With that information before you, you can identify how well an intersection functions in that future situation,” he said.

The $31,500 cost of the traffic assessment was divided among the current proposed projects within the Route 9W corridor area, Leslie said. “Rather than having each one do their own traffic study, they contributed to one assessment that all could benefit from,” he added.

“We came to the conclusion that improvements along Route 9W were needed,” he said, citing, for instance, the corner of Route 9W and Feura Bush Road. “We applied for state and federal funding for a new roundabout,” he said, adding that the next public hearing on this improvement is scheduled for Jan. 17 at 6 p.m. at Glenmont Elementary School.

Not only the current development projects, but also future projects, would be asked to help pay for traffic improvements deemed necessary.

“The costs associated with identified intersection improvement would be provided through contributions from current proposed development and future development based on volume of trips generated from each development and their distribution to the Route 9W intersections,” Leslie said.

Colonie

Colonie Director of Planning Joe LaCivita said that the town, with more than twice as many residents as Guilderland, is seeing many projects with apartments.

“I think that if you go back five years or six years there are more apartments being proposed, much more than there ever had been.

“We have market-rate,” he continued, “senior-rated apartments, a mixed blend of market and senior, the town home-style developments for 55-and-older. We have a good blend of what’s coming in, in areas that permit commercial, office, and residential, or COR, development.”

LaCivita said that he thinks the reason many millennials prefer apartments is not because they can’t afford a down payment on a house but because they’re “more in the transient stage of life before they’re going to decide where they’re going to settle.”

For many millennials, LaCivita said, Colonie is exciting, and a good place to live even if it requires a 20- or 30-minute commute, perhaps because it is located right at the Northway. “A couple of hours north, south, west of here, you’re at the ocean or wine country,” he said.

Colonie cannot “compare to a Saratoga with that younger nightlife,” LaCivita said. “They’re that urban area, versus us being suburban with an urban feel.”

In addition to the millennials, seniors wanting to downsize are also driving the trend, he said, “because they want to stay in the town where they raised their families, close to the people they know.”

Colonie has had a number of moratoriums before, but never any specific to apartments, LaCivita said.

The town had a moratorium on motels at one point along its Central Avenue corridor, he said, as it considered revising the laws about them.

Colonie has three distinct generic environmental impact statement areas, LaCivita said, each with its own statement on recommendations for developers. These are the Boght Road area, the airport area, and the Lisah Kill - Kings Road area.