NEW SCOTLAND — Presented with an aggressive project timeline yet facing little in the way of pushback, Plug Power’s new Slingerlands facility appears assured, but there are still a few things New Scotland’s Planning Board would like to see addressed. Also to be determined is a recent multi-million-dollar tax-break request made by the company. 

The company, which develops and manufactures hydrogen fuel cell systems that were designed to replace the conventional batteries used in forklifts and the like, is looking to build a 350,000-square-foot office, and a manufacturing and warehousing facility in the Vista Technology Park, most of which is located in Bethlehem. The park is also partly in New Scotland.

The facility would include:

— A 200,000-square-foot manufacturing building that would house Plug Power’s GenDrive fuel cells, the battery that goes in pallet jacks and fork trucks;

— A 100,000-square-foot building would be used primarily for servicing the units for the company’s customers; and

— 50,000 square feet that would be dedicated to office space.

Approximately 17,000 square feet of the manufacturing facility would be located in New Scotland. 

The proposal requires subdivision, site plan, and variance approvals from both Bethlehem and New Scotland.

On Jan. 4, the Bethlehem Planning board issued the project a negative declaration under the State’s Environmental Quality Review Act, meaning the new facility won’t have a significant adverse impact on the environment and therefore doesn’t need in-depth review. 

At its Jan. 18 meeting, the board held a public hearing on Plug Power’s subdivision application but took no action. A hearing on the project’s site plan has yet to be set. The Bethlehem Zoning Board of Appeals a day later approved setback variances requested for the project. 

The project, which first came before the New Scotland Planning Board in November, had a public hearing on its site plan and Vista Development Group’s subdivision request at a special Jan. 20 planning board meeting; the board kept the hearing open until its Feb. 1 meeting.

The developer is looking to subdivide 129 of its acres located entirely within New Scotland into 31-acre and 74-acre parcels. The 31-acre property would become part of the overall 57-acre Plug Power project, which requires 26 acres to be subdivided from the 97 acres of 125 Vista Boulevard in Bethlehem. 

Noise concerns

Pauley Lane resident Skip Reilly’s property abuts the 129 acres to be subdivided in New Scotland. During the Jan. 20 public hearing, Reilly took issue with the amount of noise coming from the site where building construction had yet to commence.

Reilly also was concerned about the project’s lighting, which planning board Chairman Jeffrey Baker said was being addressed by requiring the facility to have “all-downcast lighting.”

“I can hear bulldozer tread tracks rolling backwards, forward,” Reilly told board members. “But what annoys me the most are trucks backing up to the ravine that I co-share with this Vista Tech Park, and they’re dropping a lot of material.” Reilly said, the continuous “beep, beep, beep” of the trucks is “annoying … right now.”

Reilly’s issue with the noise was actually twofold: There’s the current commotion being made as the site is cleared and graded coupled with the eventual addition of construction clamour, but then there will be the noise of tractor trailers as they back into the loading bays. 

Vista Development’s Brandon Stabler said he hopes construction will start in February, and that it would run through the end of the year. He also made it a point to say the work would be within the “noise regulations and construction times that are permitted.”

The Bethlehem Planning Board was told in November, pending approvals, that Plug Power hoped to have the manufacturing facility up and running by the end July, with the remaining 150,000 square feet being turned over to the company by the end of the year.

Baker asked Stabler, “With those tractor trailers, are there going to be backup beepers or can we do strobes?”

Stabler acknowledged previous discussions he and Baker had about backup alarms but said, “No one has been able to tell us that there is a legal way around that.” Stabler believed the back-up alarms were a requirement made by OSHA, but admitted “I’m speaking a little bit out of turn here.”

Occupational Safety and Health Administration reverse-alarm requirements pertain specifically to vehicles used in the construction industry. The only time backup alarms are required in vehicles, according to the agency’s general industry standards (which apply to all industries except agriculture, construction, and maritime) are on off-road jobs related to “operation and maintenance of electric power generation, control, transformation, transmission, and distribution ….” 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration similarly also has no reverse-alarm requirements — save for electric vehicles. 

Baker responded to Stabler, “Well, in my experience in the past, I don’t know currently what the law is on them [now] … [but] I have seen conditions where they allowed backup strobes on loading docks or something, and it’s somewhat different for construction equipment.”

Stabler said the issue was something “we’ll we’ll look into.”

Stabler added that about 20 trucks a day would be entering and exiting the facility, mostly between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., and said, “It’s not the intention that the trucks are coming and going at all hours of the night.”

Viewshed considered

The town also requested a fairly specific viewshed analysis of the proposal, providing Vista Development with a dozen residential properties it felt would be impacted by the new project. 

Using laser technology that bounces beams of light off the ground, a consultant was able to determine vegetative screening on an individual tree-by-tree basis, whereas the technology used the first time the analysis was undertaken, sometime in 2005 when the park was first proposed, which used other data based on 100-by-100 foot grid squares and assumed 40 feet of vertical viewshed impediment. 

The results in 2005 and 2022 were still similar, the consultant said. 

About three properties would “effectively [see] the building foundation all the way up to the roof,” the consultant said.

Tax-break request 

Plug Power, with revenue that grew from about $86 million in 2016 to approximately $340 million in the first nine months of 2021, is seeking a tax break worth millions for its new facility, which is under the jurisdiction of the Albany County Industrial Development Agency. 

The request was made to the IDA at its December meeting. 

The IDA application says 1,265 new positions would be created, in addition to the 360 that are to be retained, that pay $57,300 per year. In return for the 1,625 jobs and a new $60-million facility — $47.5 million for construction; $7 million for land-related costs, likely lease payments; and close to $4.9 million in various fees — the company is seeking a $2 million sales-tax waiver, a nearly $468,000 mortgage-recording tax exemption, and a 12-year grace period from having to pay full taxes on the improvements made to the site.

The PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes) proposed by Plug Power would be a 100-percent tax abatement for the first two years of the agreement, declining by 10-percent-a-year every year after.