NEW SCOTLAND — A martial arts studio is the latest business to receive approval to open at The Grove at Maple Point, near the intersection of routes 85 and 85A. 

The approval was made by the New Scotland Planning Board at its December meeting. 

Volt Martial Arts is now the third business slated for the new Maple Road shopping center. 

Trustco Bank is already operating at the site, while a daycare center was approved in June. The planning board on Dec. 5 was also told by project partner and architect Dan Sanders that he would be back before the board at its January meeting with a proposed convenience store. 

A fourth business, Delmar’s Savile Road bicycle shop, received approval in September 2022 to open a second location, but did not move forward with its proposal. 

Volt 

During the board’s Dec. 5 meeting Tim Tocco apprised members of his plans to open his second martial arts studio.

“I own a martial arts school in Glenville. I was not planning on opening a second location. I was driving around the area and saw this building. I thought a martial arts studio would do great in this area,” Tocco said, according to a draft of meeting minutes. “I have done martial arts since I was 5 years old, so 35 years. I have not seen a martial arts studio in the Slingerlands area.”

Chairman Baker cited a long-running concern the planning board has had with the plaza since its approval. “Our concerns are your hours and the traffic it will be generating,” Baker said. “How long are the sessions?”

Tocco told Baker that classes would be Tuesdays and Thursdays, starting at 4 p.m., with two to three 45-minute classes on those days, and “then expand from there.”

Sanders added that the studio’s location next to Trustco meant, by the time classes started, the bank would be “pretty much closed except for” the drive-up automated teller machine.

Baker was concerned that the martial arts classes would add traffic to the “added traffic [of] the daycare with their afternoon hours.”

Sanders said the businesses were on different sides of the site, and that the added traffic from the martial arts studio would be less than what was previously proposed during the last traffic study: a restaurant. 

Baker asked town engineer Dan Quiri  if he thought “adding this traffic in the late afternoon, early evening puts us over a tipping point where we are worried about traffic in the intersection.”

Quiri said, “No, this use alone isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back ….”

He later said he felt the combination of the site’s current approvals and what was being proposed — a restaurant — would “generate less traffic than what has already been approved in the traffic letter.”

After some more discussion, the board put the plan to a vote, and unanimously approved the proposal.

Other (almost) businesses

Work for the Learning Garden Childcare Center, according to New Scotland Building Inspector Jeremy Cramer, is 60 to 70 percent complete.

The 392 Maple Road location will be an approximately 5,500-square-foot full-time, year-round daycare center with enough room to accommodate 66 children from 6 weeks old to pre-kindergarteners; it won’t be offering aftercare for elementary students.

As with Volt,  the planning board had raised concerns about traffic generated by the daycare center because it’s not laid out like a traditional school, so pick-up and drop-off wouldn’t be a seamless experience.

With hours of operations set for 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, the facility will have staggered drop-off and pick-up procedures in place, according to its project narrative, with drop-off to take place between 7 and 8:30 a.m., and pick-up between 4 and 5:30 p.m. 

At its December 2022 meeting, after a long discussion to remedy the issue, Chairman Jeffrey Baker said, “We are satisfied with the traffic-flow issue and the traffic-count issues,” according to meeting minutes.

The Savile Road bicycle shop did not move forward with building permits “as they were supposed to be in and operating by July 2023, but [the certificate of occupancy] for Building #1 was not issued at the time,” according to Cramer. 

Savile Road owner, Steven LeBoyer, in response to an Enterprise inquiry about his shop’s New Scotland future, told the paper by email, “We decided to stay in Delmar when an availability, that met our requirements, opened up just down the road from our original location.”