To the Editor:

Thank you for your excellent article regarding the Pine Bush Preserve Commission receiving $5 million to improve the Discovery Center [“With $5M from state, Discovery Center plans to better reflect the pine bush,” The Altamont Enterprise, May 29, 2025].

However, your article left out one important part of the story — why, exactly, was a land trade done? Why is it that this building, built originally for the State Employees Federal Credit Union, is now the Pine Bush Discovery Center?

I hope The Altamont Enterprise will tell the story about why the Discovery Center looks like a bank.

The Discovery Center is in the former State Employees Federal Credit Union building. SEFCU is a credit union, a financial institution (or bank) owned by its members.

In the late 1980s, Save the Pine Bush learned that SEFCU wanted to build in the geographic center of the Pine Bush on Route 155. Save the Pine Bush’s lawyer, Lewis B. Oliver Jr., filed suit on our behalf. While the suit was in court, SEFCU built their bank building on Route 155.

Save the Pine Bush won the court case. Judge Robert Williams ruled in Save the Pine Bush’s favor, citing the fact that the Generic Environmental Impact Statement prepared by the City of Albany failed to take a hard look at the minimum acreage required to ensure the survival of the Karner blue butterfly and the Pine Bush ecology.

SEFCU never received zoning approval for its office building located on Route 155 and is a nonconforming use since its construction in 1989.

One of Save the Pine Bush’s members who regularly attended the monthly Save the Pine Bush lasagna dinners was also a SEFCU member. At SEFCU meetings, he asked about our lawsuit and was told not to worry. Then, he would attend Save the Pine Bush meetings only to discover that we were winning.

After our win, our members would ask about bringing a lawsuit to have the SEFCU building torn down, since obviously it was built illegally. People were so angry at the construction of the SEFCU building that some sent Save the Pine Bush donations asking to have the building torn down.

Talk of Save the Pine Bush suing to tear the building down reached SEFCU. One day, Rezsin Adams (one of the founders of Save the Pine Bush) and I were invited to speak with SEFUC officials at a fancy law office in downtown Albany.

The officials said that they would give Save the Pine Bush some of their land (less than an acre) if Save the Pine Bush would agree not to file a suit to tear SEFCU down. Rezsin and I said no; we would make no such agreement.

A few years went by. In the legislation that created the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission, a provision was made to allow the creation of a “museum” or “discovery center.” The original proposed location for this discovery center was on Kings Road, on land already under control of the commission.

On this site was a historic farmhouse. Members of Save the Pine Bush argued that the historic farmhouse should be preserved. The commission did not agree, and the farmhouse was bulldozed on Earth Day.

Sometime after the historic farmhouse was destroyed, SEFCU wanted to expand its credit union facility. However, SEFCU had a problem. SEFCU could not sell its building on Route 155, because no one was going to pay millions of dollars for an office building that was zoned residential.

SEFCU would have a very hard time going to the city of Albany and asking for an expansion, because such a request would open a whole can of worms, including questions about why the building was built in the first place.

The solution? SEFCU went to the state of New York and a land trade was worked out.

 New York state would give SEFCU land it owned north of the Harriman Office Campus in exchange for the credit union building and surrounding land. New York state would then give the SEFCU site over to the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission for its Discovery Center.

This story of citizen advocacy and litigation is not told at the Discovery Center.

The only reason the Discovery Center is located in the former SEFCU building is because Save the Pine Bush sued the city of Albany over approving the construction of SEFCU in the Pine Bush and won.

If Save the Pine Bush had not brought this suit, the Discovery Center would probably have been built on Kings Road on the site of the historic farmhouse. This is an important example of citizens working together and using the courts to have environmental laws enforced.

Save the Pine Bush believes that it is extremely important to tell this story of citizen advocacy. There would be no Pine Bush left today if it were not for Save the Pine Bush’s lawsuits. What better place to educate people about the power of citizens than at the Discovery Center?

And what a great story, a rag-tag bunch of people fighting the powerful government and institutions to save a unique ecosystem. Save the Pine Bush’s role in preservation of the Pine Bush ecosystem is important to tell, not only because it is part of the  history of the Pine Bush, but because it shows what a group of caring citizens can accomplish.

Lynne Jackson

Volunteer

Save the Pine Bush