On the sixth of January, 2022, a correlated pair of articles appeared in Albany County’s leading periodicals.

In this newspaper, my annual shriek for the Central Warehouse’s demolition lambasted both the building’s then-owner and the local political establishment for their inaction. The Times Union, meanwhile, published a report on the death of Richard Garrity, one of the Central Warehouse’s many erstwhile owners.

This concurrent reporting accentuated what several successive generations of Albanites long ago accepted as twin inalienable truths: that the Central Warehouse is an unconquerable eyesore, and that it will outlast us all.

Yet there persist visionaries who rage against this sorry state of affairs from opposite sides of the same ideological camp. On the one side are those who dream of a rooftop bar atop a rehabilitated Central Warehouse o’er which the sun rises each morning to cast its fiery glow upon a downtown in the throes of renaissance.

On the other are those who dream of a rooftop bar atop some other building constructed in the cratered footprint of a demolished Central Warehouse, the rehabilitation of which would constitute an unconscionable taxpayer boondoggle were it even remotely feasible, which it isn’t.

As a proponent of that pessimistic latter perspective, I felt compelled to get my message out. Thus I’d included in last year’s column an antagonistic broadside calculated to bait upstate New York’s fastest-growing web media company into giving me access to its expansive audience.

Proving once more that The Media loves discussing nothing more than itself, three weeks later I was summoned to appear on Two Buttons Deep’s “Behind the Buttons” podcast to defend myself against the online retaliation I’d invited.

Ever the survivor renowned for my “strategic cowardice,” I immediately disavowed all prior criticism and passionately tongue-kissed the ring while nonetheless advancing my cause. Listeners later called my appearance “a cringeworthy display of opportunistic weakness”; I called it “Tuesday.”

Yet in the days that followed, I received dozens of gushing emails/texts/DMs thanking me for so rationally advocating the Eyesore’s demolition. My message had been sent; it was now upon Destiny to receive it.

But I wasn’t the only savvy partisan postured to manipulate the media that month. I’ll get to Jeffrey Buell in a second.
 

For posterity

Though out of fashion in contemporary journalism, taking a yearlong beat to opine on a topic allows for a more deliberative evaluation of trends. And in contemplating the jagged thorn that’s been side-stabbing Albany for generations, the “long view” is more instructive than the hysterical amnesia wrought by social media’s turbocharged 60/24/7 clickbait battlefield.

So with an eye towards the historical record, here’s an accounting of the last twelve months:

In early March, notorious Eyesore owner Evan Blum — illiterate to the writing on the wall — sought a judicial order to vacate a Feb. 15 foreclosure judgment against him. The action languished in state court for months.

Then, in April, Mr. Blum turned to the federal courts, filing for bankruptcy for the second time in a year to demand that he be allowed to sell the property — the one on which he paid zero taxes after purchasing it for a single dollar — at auction for a minimum of $500,000. The presiding judge dismissed the motion that same day.

In response — and forgetting that Mr. Blum moonlights as a neurotic terminator zombie immune to both compromise and exhaustion — the Times Union triumphantly announced that the Central Warehouse owner’s bankruptcy bid had ended. This prompted Mr. Blum to whisper “hold my beer” while repurposing his state court motion from March to initiate an identical federal lawsuit seeking $1.5 million in damages for Albany County’s alleged “failure to follow the proper steps” in seizing the Central Warehouse via tax foreclosure.

And so it was that on my 40th birthday — with the judicial system thoroughly tied in knots by the money Mr. Blum wasn’t using to pay his overdue school and property taxes — I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Turning to a more ancient arbiter of justice, to wit, God, I made a single birthday wish: that the Central Warehouse immediately implode. And in what initially seemed proof that the Almighty works faster than municipal government, just one day later, on July 28, 2022, a vertical portion of the Eyesore’s façade crumbled onto the railroad tracks.

I later learned this had less to do with prayer than with physics. Because the day prior — on my birthday — the city of Albany had received a structural engineering report warning that the Central Warehouse was in danger of imminent collapse. And though inexplicably caught off guard by the exact scenario of which I’d previously warned, Albany mobilized with a seriousness of purpose heretofore maddeningly absent.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan declared a 30-day state of emergency, County Executive Daniel McCoy ratcheted up the smack-talk with which he’d been lashing Mr. Blum for the better part of six months, and Albany Building Commissioner Rick LaJoy toiled through the weekend alongside work crews to stabilize the Eyesore’s rotting exterior.

Within four days, Amtrak had restored commuter rail service and the public servants who’d rallied in response to this latest of the Eyesore’s potentially lethal hazards were rightfully commended for their diligence.

But because I’m dispositionally prone to drown in the glass half full, I’m obliged to note that our municipal officials were reacting to a predictably avoidable threat. Indeed, this wasn’t even the first time that the Central Warehouse’s state of decay had compelled suspension of Amtrak rail service.

To adapt an old adage: Some leaders make the trains run on time; others arrange for buses when the trains can’t run at all.

Neither politician nor pundit could reasonably claim excuse for their surprise. But that didn’t stop Chris Churchill — the Times Union columnist who on at least three prior occasions has proposed “fixing” the Central Warehouse by painting murals on the very walls which now splattered across the tracks — from seizing the conch shell.

“[The] Central Warehouse is everyone’s problem now,” he declared, as though it hadn’t been everyone’s problem throughout the half-century that it economically condemned an entire urban quadrant while intermittently catching on fire.

And that was just the title. Within the column itself, Mr. Churchill — who’s practically turned unsourced reporting into an art form — derisively claimed that razing the building would cost more than $20 million. Whether this unsubstantiated figure was parroted or concocted, the investigative reporting Mr. Churchill didn’t do now confirms that there exists no agency-led assessment of competing demolition bids, no formal evaluation of environmental mitigation metrics, and no documented examination of deconstruction-and-removal feasibility.

Yes, there are lots of enablers whose gut-reflexive contrarianism has had a pernicious impact on the inertia surrounding this building. But Mr. Churchill is in a league of his own. The man is silent about the impact on Amtrak routing when Assemblymember Patricia Fahy trots out yet another call to dismantle Interstate 787, but when confronted with a four-day demonstration that there exists a successfully workable contingency with which to ameliorate the suspension of rail service, he declares that demolition “isn’t a realistic option.” Unlike wall murals.

Penetrating the cacophonous din of elected leaders spouting from both sides of their mouths should be easy for sophisticated columnists like Mr. Churchill. Yet he’s never once noted that the very same officials who refuse to even consider leveling the Eyesore because “its debris would overwhelm the capacity of area landfills” also just allocated $5 million to study the demolition of I-787, as if the rubble from that fancy could just be left curbside on trash day.

Whatever. For all but a single upstart/upstate web media company to clearly see, the fiasco of July 28 was the willful fault of one man:  Evan Blum, the tax-dodging charlatan hellbent on holding Albany’s skyline hostage.

In the crisis’s immediate aftermath, the city gave Mr. Blum ten days to implement all due repairs and then stuck him with a $225,000 bill. He busted that deadline (along with a half-dozen others) and added the invoice to the cancerous mass of unpaid debt he’s been flagrantly expanding since 2017. As of press time, Mr. Blum hasn’t paid a dime. His litigation continues, as does local media’s curious tendency to keep publishing the bullying emails sent by his attorney.

This historical accounting doesn’t intend solely to consolidate castigation of Mr. Blum. No, my principal objective is to remind municipal officials that the charming, visionary developer they’d once held in such high esteem (and to whom they gave inordinate tax advantages) ultimately betrayed them, weaponizing the judicial system in a costly multiyear campaign of obfuscation and delay.

You’d thus think that city, county, and state officials would require the next smooth-talker with big ideas about the Central Warehouse to agree to certain express conditions before receiving title thereto, like waiving procedural rights to contest foreclosure, agreeing to an automatic reversion of the deed if deadlines are missed, and reinstatement of forgiven back-taxes if deliverables go undelivered.

But that didn’t happen. Bear with me; I’m getting to Jeffrey Buell.  
 

Two Buttons Loose

In the midst of Mr. Blum’s self-immolating temper-tantrum, Two Buttons Deep (2BD) again inserted itself into the fray. Following an intrepid live-recorded Aug. 12 phone call with Mr. Blum, 2BD’s Jack Carpenter issued an out-of-the-blue demand to know what Mr. Blum intended to do with the building.

It was a jaw-dropping display of tabloid fortitude; Mr. Carpenter’s uncharacteristically aggressive tone was more than justified by a shameless Mr. Blum who displayed no compunction about making deranged excuses for his inaction. “I wanted to go into the building so I could start doing repairs,” Mr. Blum claimed, speciously, “but the city won’t let me in. If I [walk in] they’ll arrest me  ... that’s what they told me.”

Yeah OK, Evan. Roger that.

Mr. Carpenter’s call was rabidly entertaining, and he was clearly having fun. (“I’ll make you a deal:  I’ll pay you $2, you’ll double your investment, and I’ll take the building over.”) Then, flexing his innate business savvy, he extended Mr. Blum a chance to tell his side of the story — deftly slipping in a shoutout to one of 2BD’s commercial sponsors in so doing.

Lo and behold, on Aug. 26, 2022, having scored his exclusive interview on location in New York City, Mr. Carpenter again warranted instant praise for deploying the only journalism yet to determine how Mr. Blum’s last name is actually pronounced (rhymes with “slum” as in “slumlord”).

But the rest of the interview crumbled into a misguided approach to journalistic objectivity. Mr. Carpenter accepted without challenge Mr. Blum’s self-anointed victimhood, he credited Mr. Blum’s publicly verifiable misrepresentations, and then he went to great pains to show even-handed empathy towards a “misunderstood guy” ostensibly down-on-his-luck. 

“I want my audience to decide how they feel about the issue,” he said in behind-the-scenes comments before telling his audience how to feel about the issue.

More egregious was the propaganda 2BD released just days later in its “Behind the Buttons” treatment of the excursion. Now joined by his venture partner, Taylor Rao, the 2BD team went full Soviet.

“I’m sorry [the Central Warehouse] is not good to look at…. The entire issue citywide is a little bit blown out of proportion,” said the *checks notes* resident of Saratoga Springs.  “People care, seemingly, more about what the outside of it is than what the inside is, because they just don’t want to look at it on the highway.”

“This building isn’t hurting anybody,” Ms. Rao continued, either unaware of or unconcerned by the mortal peril to firefighters that the Eyesore has repeatedly posed in the past. Her comments were flippantly oblivious to the recent raft of Eyesore-inspired statewide legislation proposed “to better combat the property neglect and abandonment that inhibits healthy development and which costs taxpayers millions of dollars every year in lost property taxes and remediation expenses.”

In fact, the building is hurting anybody, which was something for which Mr. Carpenter allowed in a rare burst of self-awareness: “I have no problem with the building, except when it interrupts interstate commerce with Amtrak.”

“Yeah but that was a week ago,” Ms. Rao retorted, as if the interruption of a major arterial rail line were an irritant as forgettable as a Kanye tweet, as if the quarter-million-tax dollars that this ticking time bomb required to finance emergency repairs were just a rounding error in a 2BD merchandising report.

The podcast was reckless; 2BD had handed to Mr. Blum a megaphone through which he could softly articulate his persecution while fluttering his eyelids and wondering why the critics had been silent until now.

And this is why reading is important, folks, because the press record shows that people had been clamoring for the building’s restoration or demolition — for decades — roasting the many former owners whose neglect had blighted the area. That was why municipal officials had been so eager to offload the Eyesore to Mr. Blum when he rolled into town promising progress.

“Is Mr. Blum a freaking Jedi?” I wondered as the podcast approached its denouement. How could one man so deleteriously impact Albany’s skyline from a plush Manhattan residence while making a couple upstate influencers feel so sorry for him?

While the 2BD team could be forgiven for being seduced by the same congenial charm with which Evan Blum had manipulated the city of Albany, their commitment to propaganda was impossible to excuse. By the end of the podcast, the hosts were literally depicting Mr. Blum as the perfect suitor for their mothers. No, like, literally.

I’m not trying to invite the ire of the regionally powerful Buttonista army; trust — I have a monthly budget dedicated to 2BD merch. But it’s precisely because “Jack and Taylor” are so likable that their stamp of approval is so dangerous.

Their interview with Mr. Blum was their “Jimmy Fallon tousles Donald Trump’s hair moment,” humanizing a man who continues to commit measurable harm to New York’s capital city and its financial ecosystem.

Jimmy Fallon came to regret his moment, but 2BD never atoned for its own sins, despite the fact that just three weeks after the gang’s self-congratulatory exclusive, Mr. Blum blew his legally-obligatory deadline to make repairs to the derelict building. His justification?  “I didn’t see the point,” he said.

Oh, well, in that case.

The essential fallacy of the “fairness doctrine” — and the reason it was wisely abolished — is that while there may be two sides to a story, there’s one side to a building about to collapse on commuter rail. When does an advertiser-driven entertainment platform inherit the solemn mantle of journalistic integrity? It’s hard to say exactly, but it’s a Rubicon that 2BD crossed long ago.

This increasingly influential operation — run by a humble team of Millennials genuinely oblivious to their emerging power — has become a central part of the Central Warehouse.

If you’re not tracking 2BD, then you’re unaware of this company’s capacity to define Millennial and Gen Z perceptions within the Capital District. You’re missing out on entertaining, compelling, irreverent, authentic, and estimable original content. And you’re overlooking the extent to which 2BD directly, tangibly, and unaccountably influences local development.

And that, at long last, brings me to Jeffrey Buell.
 

Saved by the Buell

At a press event on Dec. 22, 2022, Jeffrey Buell — the most conspicuous principal of Redburn Development Partners — became the Eyesore’s latest hot-potato recipient of the Central Warehouse deed. A late October court ruling had cleared the way for the forcible transfer of property, and Mr. Buell was again poised to steal the limelight after trampling all over my call for demolition eleven months earlier.

He had meticulously laid the groundwork for this moment more than a year and a half prior, having assembled an impressive brain trust to submit a bid to develop the Eyesore in partnership with Columbia Development Companies. Though openly acknowledging that he wasn’t sure how the Central Warehouse would be salvaged, he’d remained committed to his cause throughout Mr. Blum’s yearlong litigation circus.

By all accounts, this charismatic 42-year-old is a wonderfully selfless man with a proven track record of bringing dreams to life and a beard sculpted to perfection in a secret government lab somewhere. No wonder local media tripped over itself to fawn over Mr. Buell’s swashbuckling bravado.

But almost immediately there were troubling indicia of déjà vu, the first instance of which was the tax holiday. Albany County wiped out $549,708 in back taxes in consideration for a single payment of $50,000, which, to be sure, was a better deal than the $1 giveaway Mr. Blum enjoyed in 2017, except that the “plans” Mr. Buell’s consortium articulated were just as riveting in their vagueness and disregard of basic accounting.

On Valentine’s Day, the Albany Business Review reported that Mr. Buell’s estimated cost of renovation had been revised upward from the initially-bid $68 million to $100 million — an increase of more than 47 percent. From where would that $100 million materialize? From “everybody and their brother who might have money to help us out,” Mr. Buell said.

If I’d known my own bid would be taken seriously despite misstating the projected cost by a third and documenting no discernible source of financing, I would’ve tossed a set of blueprints into the ring.

I wasn’t the only one to recognize the implication of Mr. Buell’s astronomical cost estimate. In a letter to the Times Union, Albany County resident William Cooney put a finer point on what CW Skyway — the subsidiary consortium owned by Redburn and Columbia — meant when it said the project “would rely heavily on public support.”

“[Y]ou and I will have to pay for this concrete cubical whimsey in this desolate location abutting Interstate 787,” Cooney complained. “The Albany County Legislature needs to let its voters know the cost of development or demolition of the Central Warehouse and let them vote their preference,” Cooney later wrote in this paper, echoing public comments he’d made at the March 14 meeting of the Albany County Legislature whereat legislators resoundingly ignored his sentiments.

Interestingly, Mr. Cooney’s underlying presumption that the $100 million restoration was defensible in the first place actually begged the question. Because a comprehensive and mathematically responsible report published last February by both the Albany Parking Authority and Capital District Transit Authority established a baseline as to what downtown money could do.

At a projected cost of $81 million, the report laid out a path to demolishing Albany’s perennially disintegrating bus station and replacing it with a seven story “transit center” megaplex complete with a parking garage amenable to nearly 900 vehicles.

So even granting Mr. Churchill his $20 million demolition price tag, Redburn and Columbia could raze the Eyesore and still have $80 million left over to construct a major hub of public transportation.

And if that doesn’t cock an eyebrow, consider Mr. Buell’s concession that it would be “some time” before the public would notice any improvements to the Central Warehouse. “Probably the first $20 million, you won’t even see,” he said.

A state grant of $9.75 million for the resurrection of the Eyesore was the impetus for the Dec. 22 news conference, which I attended for want of friends and a life. I was triggered from the jump.

“We’ve always known this building would require public dollars to bring it back into use,” Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan stated in opening remarks. “And that’s why we need to have an open mind. Let’s not take any idea off the table.”

That is Olympic-level obliviousness, friends. Because the idea of demolition has never even made it onto the table, which was a point I drove home by raising my hand to inquire of Mr. Buell what, as an alternative, the cost of demolition could be. He answered honestly: “I don’t know.”

All of Mr. Buell’s answers were refreshingly frank. Maybe too frank. For example, without batting an eye, he conceded that the cost of renovating the building would exceed the dollar value of the resultant outcome.

Then, after cavalierly acknowledging that the $9.75 million grant would be just enough to let him “figure out what to do with the building,” he invited the public to submit ideas as to what could be done with the very structure he’d had an extra year to plan out and finance.

Pro tip: A project assessed to be underwater before ground is even broken should not inspire confidence. It should, however, inspire tough questions. Especially when even the Times Union is noting the Groundhog Day parallels.

That paper might’ve misspelled “Punxsutawney” in its March 2022 editorial about the Eyesore, but at least it got the gist right this past August in summarizing the perpetual musical chairs: “A new owner takes over only to run into trouble. A bank takes control, sells it for a dollar. A new owner, new promises, new dreams, only to be sold again.”

Even the Times Union editor got in on the action, satirically channeling the Central Warehouse in a first-person commentary that went entirely unheeded by the dignitaries at that Dec. 22 presser: “For decades, I’ve been handed off from one developer to another, each promising what quickly proves to be an even less viable scheme to spiff me up. And every time, local elected officials act like it’s the dawn of a new day.”

Yup. And so it was that I found myself up close and personally watching once again as Albany — county and city — stumbled headfirst into well-intentioned ambitions without a single iota of requisite due diligence. There was no indication that any of the state money — which has yet to be allocated towards specific uses — would be apportioned towards a formal and good faith “demolition feasibility study” the results of which could be published and scrutinized.

And by refusing to commission a competitively-bid demolition assessment with a portion of that “free” state grant, the officials in attendance were denying both reality and the will of their constituents.

Instead of devising a fail-safe kill-switch off-ramp, city and county officials evidently decided to accept as a matter of faith that this newest developer’s plans will work — no need for contingencies — and that Mr. Buell is somehow different than the dozen-plus contenders before him, all of whom are on public record screaming “Bingo!” with the same garbage heap of buzzwords: affordable mixed-use residential-commercial green space.

When it was her turn at the mic, Assemblymember Fahy turned to Buell with a plea: “Tell me this isn’t throwing good money after bad!” But I have it on good authority that she meant to ask the following:

“What is the total public financing you’re seeking, from what specific sources, and how will the project be impacted if you’re unable to secure that entire sum given emerging recessionary pressures? What is your timeline for assembling private financing, how much money are your investors intending to recoup and in what period, and what are the loan terms dictating your monetization of the property?”

Relatedly: “Given the regionally-unparalleled cost to rehabilitate this building, what are the projected lease and sale prices for the planned residential and commercial units? What socioeconomic demographic are you targeting for residential tenancy? What data indicates that this demo will be eager for high-end housing directly adjacent to both an interstate highway and active railroad tracks?”

Twenty years ago, my friend Lukas Snelling coined a maxim by which I’ve come to live: “If you say it can’t be done, you’re the problem.” Well, Luke, I’m not saying it can’t be done; I’m saying it won’t be done. And that’s because in the twenty years since you uttered those immortal words, I’ve cyclically borne witness to developers who overpromise just enough to keep baseless hopes alive.

Years after Mr. Blum purchased the Eyesore, this newspaper published the results of cursory Google searches which first brought to light Mr. Blum’s troubled past. So has Albany learned the right lesson when it comes to vetting?

A felony “bid-rigging” charge against the head of Columbia Development was dismissed pursuant to a prosecutorial cooperation agreement in 2018. And barely six weeks ago, a subsidiary of Redburn Development made headlines for allegations of racism and a toxic workplace culture. Even taking as false all of these past allegations, there remain legitimate questions — and if the honor system worked, we wouldn’t need the very public officials who should be asking them.

What happens if funding sources dry up, or a catastrophic structural defect is discovered, or retail lessees don’t materialize? How will Albany ensure that its tens of millions of dollars in public resourcing won’t amount to yet another giveaway if the developer walks?

Time and again have we foolishly taken at face value the representations of the Eyesore’s owners. Instead of praise and accolades, Mr. Buell needs timetables, oversight, and a wary demand that he prove himself every step of the way. As Albany once again kicks the can down the road — this time with $10 million stuffed in it — Albanites deserve assurances of accountability.

And, they deserve a local media apparatus that does its job.

When WAMC reports that Mr. Buell “sets an aggressive timeline for completing the project” and then quotes him saying “it would be really lovely to have everyone on the roof on New Year’s Eve ’24,” it’s seducing a city back to sleep with wildly unrealistic implications. That’s eleven months away. And who’s “everyone”?

When Mr. Churchill rightfully notes that “the context around the old cold-storage warehouse has changed, increasing the building’s value and making its redevelopment much more viable,” he should also emphasize that more modest development — composed of modern accouterments and requiring no reengineering — situated atop the former site of a demolished Central Warehouse is at least a plausible alternative.

When the Times Union editorial board spurs the public to “keep the pressure on, keep things moving forward,” it needs to take a hard look in the mirror and at its own Eyesore coverage over the last 15 years.  Whereas William Randolph Hearst once used his Morning Journal daily newspaper to foment the Spanish-American War, the daily rag his great-grandson inherited is more interested in uncritically publishing cool graffiti photos than in independently verifying any of the stated cost estimates.

And when 2BD turns toward the Central Warehouse the lens of a money-printing enterprise it’s built out of a genuine love for the Capital Region, it needs to remember that there’s still an imperative in advertiser-driven business models to be a dispassionate champion for truth.

Mr. Buell credited 2BD for inspiring the redevelopment of the Huck Finn’s Warehouse complex. He’s been a fixture in 2BD programming for years, and for good reason: He’s passionate about improving his communities, and he wields a résumé filled with accomplishment.

His inspirational exploits — such as buying a drink for every frazzled passenger on a chronically delayed flight home — give even Santa Claus a run for his money, and make for the exact type of content that 2BD has fashioned into a juggernaut entertainment platform.

But it’s our job as Albany residents, journalists, pundits, personalities, and politicians to make Jeff Buell be the hero we seek — not by following him blindly, but by testing his sense of direction.

Because exactly one year to the day before that correlated pair of articles appeared in Albany County’s leading periodicals, the horrific consequence of false narratives, delusion, and a skepticism unvoiced was on full display in our nation’s capital.

The sixth of January is a stark reminder that when superstition is allowed to occupy the space abandoned by rational inquiry, buildings crumble.

This will be my last column about the Eyesore until its centenary in 2027; a half-decade breath will allow for more measured conclusions. But if the Central Warehouse is to outlast us all, I hope it’s because Jeff Buell had the courage to manifest his vision, and that his far-off obituary commends him for the optimism that I lost the strength to muster.

Editor’s note: Jesse Sommer is a lifelong resident of Albany County. 
He welcomes your thoughts at jesse@altamontenterprise.com.

On Sept. 23, 2021, the Honorable Andrew Joyce — Chairman of the Albany County Legislature — took to Facebook with a particularly galling sentiment. “Many of us see the Central Warehouse property as an eyesore,” he wrote, his finger momentarily on the pulse of his community. But then, he just couldn’t help himself.

“What I see are opportunities,” he said, ticking away an outlandish series of proposed uses that will never come to fruition. “This site is ready for development right now.”

So it was that, on Sept. 23, 2021, Chairman Joyce succumbed to the tired and dissonant siren song that has seduced three generations of Albany developers, journalists, and politicians into pummeling common sense to a bloody pulp against the Eyesore’s colossal cement walls. And this perpetual Groundhog Day paralysis will persist like long-haul COVID until what must be done is done:

Knock it down.

This is my fourth installment in what has become an annual chronicle of whatever psychological trauma stymies honest consideration of “the terminal option.” Since last I spouted off in these pages, there’s been a lot of what the untrained observer might confuse with “activity” down at Albany’s old Central Warehouse.

But my fool-me-twenty-times-shame-on-me complex counsels caution; if there really are plans to rehabilitate the Big Ugly Eyesore, they need to be specific — I’m talking budgets, blueprints, receipts — and the community deserves to know what they are. Now.

It was The Altamont Enterprise that prompted last year’s overdue display of intestinal fortitude. As I confirmed in interviews the autumn before, the prevailing wisdom among local officials and columnists was that there existed no lawful process by which to seize the Eyesore from its interloping slumlord.

But just a few short months after this paper published a step-by-step tutorial of the legal mechanism by which the government could conduct a tax sale, Albany County did so. Score one for the Fourth Estate.

And lo, the cavalry cometh, parachuting in to inject a new hope for the Central Warehouse. The white knight with the shiniest armor is a coalition composed of a who’s-who-slew of notables, to include Columbia Development Cos. and Redburn Development Partners — the latter of whom has already made commendable headway on a $65 million plan to redevelop the nearby Warehouse at Huck Finn into a complex consisting of 260 residential apartments, a gym, a pool, a beach volleyball court, gardens, a dog park, and a smaller furniture warehouse, thereby finally fulfilling a prophecy foretold in song for the better part of 40 years: “Huck Finn’s Warehouse, and more!”

But these developers have declined to disclose with any specificity their visions for the Eyesore. One of the potential buyers won’t even disclose his/her/their/hir/zir/eirs identity. And just as I postured to deliver a tongue-lashing indictment of such opacity, current building owner and professional hoarder Evan Blum stepped back into the line of fire, adorning himself in 2021’s hottest fashion statement: victimhood.

“It’s unfortunate that [officials] say they want to work with you but stab you in the back at the same time,” Mr. Blum told Times Union columnist Chris Churchill, omitting that officials tried in vain to work with him throughout the half decade that he paid precisely zero taxes on the building. “I’m not the bad guy,” he said, further omitting that the only aesthetic contribution he’s made to the property since his purchase — and I swear I’m not making this up — is the petulant installation of a porcelain toilet atop the building’s second-floor overhang.

Yup: We’re being trolled. But at least this time the media wasn’t buying it. Even Mr. Churchill — who for fifteen years peddled all manner of farcical garbage as to what could be done with the building — changed his tune, publishing a column that exhaustively detailed Mr. Blum’s abject failures in rehabilitating an array of crumbling edifices over the past quarter century.

I forgive Mr. Churchill’s non-attributive reliance on the exact source material to which I’d linked in my own prior article on Mr. Blum, since it’s entirely possible to replicate my research with the most routine of Google searches. Indeed, the laziest due diligence would’ve revealed what a disaster Mr. Blum would be for the city when he bought the building back in 2017.

Mr. Blum — whose name rhymes with “boom,” as in *cough* the sound dynamite makes — told Mr. Churchill that he wanted to create an arts venue for hundreds of artists, as though oblivious to the vast expanse of graffiti which already leaves nary a square inch of the building’s interior untagged. His wildly impractical 3D-rendered designs were proof positive that he hadn’t the basic grip on reality necessary to manifest a responsible restoration.

But the more salient deficiency in his conceit of what to do inside the building was that it completely ignored the rotting exterior. Read the room, Blum: Albanites are ashamed of the Eyesore because, from the outside, it looks like something Nipper excreted after getting into the Halloween candy. An antiques showroom in the atrium? Whatever. Until your building doesn’t look like dog feces, I really don’t give a buck.

A buck, incidentally, is what Mr. Blum paid for the building. That’s $1 more than what he’s invested in it since, and the reason his bankruptcy filing to thwart the county’s lawful seizure was so maddeningly disingenuous. It would take several dozen million dollars to make a dent in fixing up the Eyesore, but Mr. Blum elected to waste his money (and ours, as taxpayers) by persisting in frivolous litigation.

Mr. Blum’s petition pledged only $318,500 in building upgrades while bizarrely disregarding both the $520,823 he owes in delinquent taxes and a $78,000 penalty resulting from his flagrant code violations. I’ll spare you the suspense: On Dec. 20, 2021, a federal bankruptcy court judge rejected Mr. Blum’s fanciful Chapter 11 petition. Foreclosure can finally proceed to the only logical Step 2:

Knock it down.

Demolishing the Central Warehouse would be a massive undertaking, but it’s a course of action at least as realistic as the blithering nonsense that’s been bandied about since the Reagan Administration.

Yet, rather than commission a study on the economics, environmental impact, and logistics of leveling Albany’s Eyesore, municipal officials remain slaves to the cult of blind optimism, hysterically chanting incoherent babble like “wall mural!” and “mixed-use!” and “food market!” and “rooftop bar!”

For decades have they impotently genuflected before an endless parade of successive developers while concurrently entertaining far grander ambitions like razing Interstate 787. (Time was that local planners would test out the C-4 supply on decrepit abandoned buildings within city limits before taking on the federal interstate highway system. Sigh.)

But if government has enabled the private sector’s neglect, it’s only fair that voters take brief stock of our own culpability. Because the Central Warehouse has served as the backdrop to nearly a century of incestuous nepotism, as if deliberately constructed to accentuate Albany’s Stockholm-style commitment to family dynasties and interminable political tenures.

It was there during the ascent of Congresswoman-cum-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, whose grandmother was a de facto leader in a Democratic political machine that just last year celebrated a century of uninterrupted viselike dominion over Albany politics — a feat unrivaled in any other self-respecting American city.

It was an eyesore during the 41-year administration of Erastus Corning II, throughout each of Gerald Jennings’s five mayoral terms, and over the course of the two terms to which Mayor Kathy Sheehan pledged to limit herself, plus the bonus one.

It was there for both Governors Cuomo, as back-to-back Frank Commissos plodded through local government, and during the administration of an earlier Honorable Joyce for whom the Albany County Office Building is named.

Dedicating buildings is easier than detonating them. That’s why — no matter what you may read to the contrary — the “Big Ugly” will still be just as Big and just as Ugly in 2025 when Albany Common Council President Corey Ellis mounts his third-time’s-the-charm campaign for mayor. Unless, of course, we:

Knock it down.

With “Blum’s Blight” on the verge of a 10th title transfer in two decades, sanguinity abounds. The most recent entrant into the cottage industry of rehashing wearied delusions about the Eyesore’s potential is Albany’s upstart new media company Two Buttons Deep. Last November, 2BD’s co-founding gonzo journalist trespassed about the (negligently unsecured) Central Warehouse and puked all over the internet a toxic sludge of unoriginal fantasy. But even blog reporters who go by the name “Cap’n Jack” have enough journalistic integrity to concede in a Dec. 10 podcast that the building is “too far gone” to be salvaged.

Ladies and gentlemen, on my knees will I thank the Almighty if someone shoves my pessimism directly back in my face, just as I’ll gladly buy the entire city its first round of whiskey in that elegant rooftop bar atop a former eyesore. But whom are we kidding?

By square footage, this is the largest warehouse in all of Albany County — a hulking tumor murder-sucking the commercial potential out of what can’t straight-facedly be called a neighborhood. The lack of self-awareness our municipal leadership displays in again kicking this can down the road while expecting a different outcome is the definition of (govern)mental illness.

How do we know that razing the building is too expensive, too dangerous, or too whatever-you’re-about-to-tweet-like-you’re-the-first-person-to-think-it? The only thing we know is that, for the past four decades, not a single developer has undertaken his promised remodeling, renovation, or reconstruction. And not a single elected representative has been held accountable therefor.

Until we have a projected cost of demolition and a sense of how the resultant debris would be removed, we have nothing against which to contrast any “plans.” We need a tangible sense of the contingencies — an explication of how and when we’ll execute the terminal option if new hopes never blum (I mean bloom). After all, the Empire State Plaza wasn’t rehabbed into existence; first there were bulldozers and a mayor’s tyrannical zeal to use them.

I therefore call on the Albany Common Council, the Albany County Legislature, State Assemblyman John T. McDonald III, State Senator Neil D. Breslin, Mayor Katherine M. Sheehan, and County Executive Daniel P. McCoy to jointly facilitate the financing and publication of a strategic evaluation of the costs, challenges, and efficacies of wholesale demolition.

I call on the New York State Department of State, the Capitalize Albany Corporation, and National Grid to pledge as much financial support towards the objective of leveling the Central Warehouse as they invested in redeveloping 11 Clinton Street.

I call on municipal managers at the city, county, and state levels to assemble a “Plan Omega” backstop to assure Albanites that, if inaction yet awaits us five years in the future, there exist preparations for demolition fireworks so astounding that Price Chopper tries to sponsor them.

And if those bidding would-be developers oppose demolition, then I call on them to immediately release their projected plans for public review and comment. In this, their silence will sound like a scream.

On Dec. 20, 2021, Chairman Joyce was at it again, performatively on-site at the Eyesore to declare to ABC-affiliate WTEN that “I don’t see … an old broken down warehouse. I see it for what it can be.” His comments come as Mr. Blum’s stage-left exit from this sordid half-century saga is imminent, rendering the moniker “Blum’s Blight” no longer apropos. So perhaps the Big Ugly Eyesore is due for rededication.

To ensure that the chairman personally dedicates himself to manifesting a skyline about which Albanites can be proud — to incentivize him to make as his top priority the refurbishment of an eyesore about which he so frequently opines — I propose that the Central Warehouse henceforth be known as “The Joyce.”

Branding like that will no doubt help spur municipal action, resulting either in a testament to visionary leadership, or in additional incentive to — say it with me — knock it down.

Prove me wrong, chattering classes. Extract from this noxious behemoth the splendor you foretell on social media, and lay rightful claim to the Key to the City! Until then, I’ll be standing by with the T-handle and blasting caps. Because we’ll need more than hope and Instagram posts to rid our city of its festering disgrace. See you next January.

Knock it down.

Jesse Sommer is a lifelong resident of Albany County. He welcomes your thoughts at .

 

Curse you, Mark King.

Curse you and your Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy.

Curse you for safeguarding so many of New Scotland’s rural and agrarian traditions, and for ensuring that our Town lives up to its moniker as the “Jewel of Albany County.”  

Curse you, Alan Kowlowitz and Dennis Sullivan, for so diligently preserving New Scotland’s rich historical legacy, and you too, Melissa Hale-Spencer, for so faithfully recording in these pages the life and times of every New Scot.

And, while we’re at it, curse all you municipal officials whose comprehensive plans and commercial districts and zoning schemas have conspired to make our hometown something worth fighting for.

A pox on these pillars of the New Scottish identity for having secured a cultural inheritance that’s now incumbent on all of us to preserve and pass on to the generations yet to come. No one asked these relentless busybodies to make our community so special, nor to foist onto our shoulders the solemn burden of defending a way of life against the pressures of modernization and economic exploitation.

So curse you, I say. Thanks to you people, there are countless shows on Netflix I’ll never get to watch, since remaining vigilant in the face of never-ending efforts to pave over our fields and forests is so time-consuming. You guys are jerks.

But what’s done is done. And now that these graying local boomers have gone and opened Pandora’s nostalgic toybox, I guess the first order of business is to figure out what questions should inform our vote in the upcoming town board elections on Nov. 2.

After all, the arrival of the 2020 United States Census data compels serious contemplation. Among other eyebrow-raising data points was the revelation that New York City now accounts for 44 percent of our state’s entire population, after having registered a completely unanticipated increase of 629,000 people since 2010. Well, good for y’all; stay there. There’s nothing to see up here.

Yet the encroaching horde isn’t relegated to downstate. To our north in Saratoga County, towns like Malta, Halfmoon, and Ballston have registered population increases anywhere from 16 to 21 percent in just the last 10 years. Meanwhile, Albany County grew by over 3 percent this past decade, a rate which itself was outpaced by New Scotland’s growth of more than 5 percent (to a total of 9,096 residents). As The Enterprise reported last week, “no other municipality in Albany County saw a bigger jump in its population rate than New Scotland.”

I welcome this influx of an additional 448 inhabitants. In expanding the tax base, patronizing the local business community, and augmenting our neighborhood’s creative energies, these new New Scots have injected vibrancy into a hometown they can now rightly claim as their own. There’s a whole slew of commercial opportunities and quality-of-life upgrades that our new neighbors make possible; their presence powerfully argues for New Scotland’s open-armed reception of those who would follow in their wake.

But it’s also true that what draws people to New Scotland is precisely what could be lost if population expansion continues unrestrained. And in the short-term, as new trappings of luxury enterprise arise to cater to this larger civic community, New Scotland’s appeal will further surge.

So to my mind, there’s only one compound question that matters for our town board candidates — from it, all other inquiries derive.  *Ahem*:

Should there be a practical limit on New Scotland’s total population and, if so, what should it be? 

Is it the current 10,000 residents? Should it be 20,000? 50,000? Or should New Scotland’s population growth be entirely unconstrained, its hamlets buried beneath an onslaught of cul-de-sacs and memorialized merely as the branding of massive new residential complexes, sporting names like “Clarksville Commons,” “Unionville Apartments,” “Tarrytown Meadows,” and “Feura Bushes"?

A question derivative to the one about population is whether the town board candidates are prepared to utilize the authorities at their disposal to strategically influence our municipality’s size, relying on a mix of development restrictions, zoning regulations, and a campaign to incentivize conservation easements.

To those who would argue that the right of property alienation should be unfettered, unimpeded, and unlimited, I’ll just say this: I hear you, I acknowledge the merits of your perspective, I unconditionally reject it, I extend you my sympathies for having chosen to purchase property in New Scotland when Bethlehem clearly would’ve been a better fit, and I’ll spare us both further lip service, since our positions are deeply-held and philosophically irreconcilable. And I really do need to get back to Netflix.

To those who would argue that logistical hurdles or the town’s natural peculiarities — e.g., lack of municipal water — will inherently prevent significant population growth, I say: “Hold my beer.” Where there’s money to be made, there will always be communities and ecosystems to destroy. Let’s not forget how close we came to the installation of Stewart’s Shops petroleum tanks in the Vly Creek floodplain across the street from an elementary school.

What’s therefore required is the continuation of a proactive and deliberate regulatory regime that channels expansion, construction, and new arrivals in a manner consistent with what makes New Scotland so, well, New Scottish.

Worried that New Scotland Town Supervisor Doug LaGrange wouldn’t give me the exact pull-quote I needed for this column, I elected not to call him for comment. Instead, readers, let’s together conjure a reality wherein, last week — I don’t know, say, on Monday — Supervisor LaGrange courageously strode to the flagpole outside Town Hall and delivered a rousing address wherein he declared, “The town of New Scotland is closed for further development.” Everybody take a second; have we all joined in that shared experience? OK, let’s proceed.

Last Monday, New Scotland Town Supervisor Doug LaGrange courageously strode to the flagpole outside Town Hall to declare that New Scotland was closed for further development. It was a truly audacious pronouncement. I, for one, was shocked.

This so-called “LaGrange Doctrine” has already become a cornerstone of New Scottish domestic policy, antagonizing would-be developers and the capitals of Europe alike. Supervisor LaGrange reportedly remains unperturbed in the face of criticism. “I am a servant loyal not only to my neighbors’ interests,” LaGrange told me by phone, “but also to the interests of those who came before us and those who will one day take our place.”

(Um, yeah, so I forgot about that part. We now also all have to jointly experience a reality wherein I called up Supervisor LaGrange and he said, “I am a servant loyal not only to my neighbors’ interests, but also to the interests of those who came before us and those who will one day take our place.” Which more-or-less sounds like something he’d say, right? Take a second. Got it? Keep reading.)

I readily acknowledge the deeply deleterious impact of restrictions on New Scotland’s residential growth, to wit, housing scarcity. Already, home values in New Scotland are skyrocketing; limits to development will only accelerate this trend. Absent tactical intervention, New Scotland risks someday becoming an elite enclave of smug granola-crunching capitalists and effete self-congratulatory professionals who import the fruits of the very family farms that can no longer afford to operate in town.

But in that case, maybe the solution is to build “up” and not “out.” Maybe the essential question isn’t one of limiting New Scotland’s population, but rather one of fortifying our undeveloped acreage.

After all, I’d love to live on a revitalized east side of Voorheesville’s South Main Street, wherein residents of adjacent four-story multi-unit apartment buildings, row houses, or condos live above first floors inhabited by dry cleaners, hardware shops, convenience stores, and existing staples like Star + Splendor, Purity Hair Design, and Gio Culinary Studio. A neighborhood in the vein of Albany’s Center Square would still afford access to a Blue Ribbon school district without the attendant lateral sprawl that too often devours what would’ve otherwise been picturesque upstate towns.

So perhaps the LaGrange Doctrine requires a bit of reinterpretation. I mean, who does that blowhard think he is, anyway? (OK, I’ll fix it: Now pretend I rang Supervisor LaGrange and he clarified that what he meant to convey is that New Scotland is closed to any further development that results in the destruction or clearing of existing open space, wetlands, and forests. Everybody good? Sheesh, constructing “alternate facts” is way harder than it looks on cable news.)

This reconstituted LaGrange Doctrine should now assist New Scotland’s town, planning, and zoning boards evaluate the application to construct six two-story buildings about a quarter-mile down from Town Hall on New Scotland Road. Yes, the proposed 72 units of affordable housing might offer New Scotland more of the socioeconomic diversity it increasingly lacks, but does it incorporate a due commitment to open space? Irrespective of how this particular matter is resolved, town officials must reconcile ambiguities in the applicable hamlet zoning law with an eye towards the preservation of New Scotland’s bucolic sensibilities. Because once gone, they’re gone for good.

Illustratively, there’s still time to express your thoughts on what to do with the historic Bender Melon Farm, which was saved for posterity by the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy in 2020. (Visit https://arcg.is/aOHDK to learn more.) And I have no doubt that veterans of the “Big Box Wars” greeted news of the Bender Melon Farm’s acquisition with assured self-satisfaction, having thus firmly consolidated the gains of their 2008 uprising. Yet their achievement has counterintuitively created a back-country paradise that’s now even more inviting to those who would capitalize on New Scotland’s character at its very expense.

So what’ll it be, candidates? In 2050, will New Scotland look like Delmar? Like Clifton Park? Or will it look like New Scotland? And if the latter, what is your plan to shepherd the woodland hometown of today to the one of mid-century?

There’s a reason that New Scotland has long been known as the “jewel of Albany County.” On November 2, 2021, vote for the candidates who will unreservedly pledge to ensure that our jewel shines as brightly tomorrow as it does today — thanks very much to the efforts of those cursed aging boomers who seem to fundamentally misapprehend the concept of retirement.

Editor’s note: Jesse Sommer’s father serves on the New Scotland Zoning Board of Appeals.

As we prepare to bid June adieu, it’s worth tying together a few historical threads that tangled in this, the first month of summer. That’s the lofty status most of us primarily associate with June, despite the shadowy abstract authority that somehow imbues these particular 30 days with a slew of other significances.

For example, June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual Pride Month.  More commonly referred to by the shorthand LGBTQIA, this ever-expanding initialism currently clocks in at nearly 27 percent of the entire alphabet.

Or, following President Obama’s 2009 update of the antiquated “Black Music Month” created by President Carter in 1979, June serves as “African-American Music Appreciation Month” — celebrating the legacy of those who “lifted their voices to the heavens through spirituals” amidst the injustice of slavery — while simultaneously offering the perfect backdrop to last week’s institution of Juneteenth as the first new federal holiday in 38 years.

And, coming on the heels of Albany’s deadliest month (there were six shooting homicides in May alone), June is also Gun Violence Awareness Month. Which brings me to an Albany Common Councilman’s call this past January to change Albany’s flag.

Stay with me.

Back in the heady days of a brand spanking new New Year — before the Capitol Siege and an inadvertent Suez blockade, before the spectacles of impeachment and inauguration, before the death of a King (Larry) and a Prince (Phillip), before Kim divorced Kanye and the vaccine finally freed us to expose the bottom third of our faces — Councilman Owusu Anane introduced a resolution to examine whether New York’s capital should continue flying a flag whose original inspiration was adopted by Nazis (who, to put it mildly, ruin everything).

Anane was parroting a cause championed by Adam Aleksic, whose online petition at www.AlbanyFlag.com advocates redesigning Albany’s current city flag, which was first introduced in 1909 as part of Albany’s tricentennial celebration of Henry Hudson’s discovery of the river that — wouldn't you know it — bore his name.

The flag’s design had intended to emulate the so-called “Prince’s Flag” (of Prince William of Orange fame) flown by the Dutch East India Company for which Hudson sailed in 1609. With an eye towards history, Albany adopted the horizontal orange-white-blue tricolor, replacing the Dutch East India Company’s logo with the city’s own coat of arms.

And that might not have been problematic if Albany’s coat of arms — adopted in 1789 — didn’t look as though it’d been designed by a xenophobic third-grader using clip art from Microsoft Windows 95. 

“Vexillologists (flag experts) have five rules of good design,” Aleksic wrote in a letter to the Times Union late last year. “A flag should be simple, use no more than three basic colors, contain no lettering or seals, have meaningful symbolism, and be distinctive from other flags.” Albany’s flag fails on all counts.

To his credit, Aleksic accompanied his criticism of Albany’s flag with a proposed design for a new one, and urged Albanites to “make a bold change and choose to promote unity and commonality instead of this unknown, intolerant eyesore.” (To his further credit, he used the word “eyesore,” which now grants me a not-to-be-missed opportunity to declare that Evan Blum should be ashamed of his cynical abuse of the legal process to forestall action on the Central Warehouse.)

Even absent the coat of arms squarely centered on Albany’s flag, the tricolor Prince’s Flag has the awkward distinction of having been: the colors of the slave-trading Dutch East India Company; a backdrop for the Dutch Nazi Party in the 1930s; the base flag design for South Africa’s 20th-Century apartheid era government; and the current pattern of choice for worldwide white supremacists. Whoops. Where’s that cartoon-style “sweaty collar-pull” emoji when you need it?

When you add that coat of arms back in, things get downright uncomfortable. That’s why Aleksic and Anane aren’t alone in their distaste for the centerpiece design of Albany’s seal. Indeed, Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan has already stopped using Albany’s seal on official letters and documents unless legally required to.

What force of law might so compel her? How ’bout the fact that the seal’s coat of arms design is enshrined in § 15-1 of Albany’s city charter, which rather embarrassingly describes the dude on the right as “an American Indian, savage proper.” Gulp; collar-pull.

No wonder Aleksic calls Albany’s flag “a racist, poorly designed symbol that isn’t instilling pride in our residents.” And, while it’s perhaps unreasonable to expect every quarter-millennium-old art project to age flawlessly, it’s also unreasonable to go another 250 years before taking action. I mean, this isn’t the Albany Central Warehouse, am I right? (Ba-ZINGA!)

Whereas tackling the design of Albany’s coat of arms may be more legally daunting, replacing Albany’s flag needn’t be. I already mentioned Aleksic’s draft flag design, which you can see on AlbanyFlag.com. It’s snazzy, simple, and sleek — exactly how’d you describe Albany if you spent three straight hours drinking-with-a-purpose at Fort Orange Brewing down on North Pearl Street.

Why the gratuitously-contrived commercial endorsement? Because Fort Orange Brewing’s namesake antecedent offers inspiration for a new Albany flag that might even be superior to Aleksic’s proposal.

In 1624 — exactly 40 years before it was renamed Fort Albany — Fort Orange emerged in the midst of Mohican territory as New Netherland’s first permanent Dutch settlement. It was named in honor of the Dutch House of Orange-Nassau, from which Prince William of Orange had emerged just a few decades prior to kick-start the Dutch revolt against the Spanish.

And when the English took control of the fort in 1664, they inherited a simple concept for that someday capital city’s future flag — unforgivingly obvious, right there in the name.

Because what if Albany’s flag were just — orange?

“That’s outrageous!” you scream, since change is scary and it’s fun to be loud.

Think about it. The simplicity of solid orange would make our flag uniquely defining; Google reveals no other national, provincial, territorial, state, municipal, or organizational flag composed of a single solid orange.

“Lock him up! Lock him up! Lock him up!” you chant, increasingly confused as to why.

Well, just hold on a second. Think about my proposal in the context of June.

There is one cause, one commemoration, which is inextricably linked with orange: National Gun Violence Awareness, for which orange is the official color.

Among other less imperative distinctions, June is Gun Violence Awareness Month, and it just so happens that right now, “Cap City” is grappling with a second year of unprecedented lethality. Cap City also finds itself in need of a new flag.

Gun deaths in 2021 are already on track to beat the record set last year, during which 129 people were shot — 17 of whom were killed — in one of Albany’s most lethal years on record. (And, in a tangentially eerie report linking my current whereabouts to life back home, the Times Union also reported last week that a handgun used in four Albany shootings from 2017 to 2018 had actually been stolen from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.)

So let’s acknowledge the synergistic trends intersecting at this particular point in time and space. Can the cause of reducing gun violence spur a long overdue replacement of city icons, and vice versa? Can we eliminate the ancient indignities depicted on our guidon while working to spare mothers the devastation of needlessly burying children caught in the crossfire?

National Gun Violence Awareness Month does not mean that June is open season for mass confiscation of personally owned firearms. And celebration of LGBTQIA communities or African-American music doesn’t mean that June is officially the month where we set out in search of state symbols to skewer.

But, like, come on; the seal of Albany features a Dutch farmer, a Mohican warrior, a beaver, and a boat.  Can’t these concepts almost be better represented by the color orange, which harkens back to those courageous New World adventurers — instilled with the revolutionary spirit of William of Orange — who constructed a foothold in the heartland of the proud Mohican confederacy?

And, like, do we need a tricolor flag, when a solid orange one would symbolically align Albany’s identity with our life-or-death struggle to eradicate the horrendous gun violence plaguing streets in the heart of state government?

These are the questions. And sometimes the answers are right in front of you. Other times they’re on the label of the locally-branded beer you’ve been drinking, which you notice for the first time only after your third hour at a bar on June’s summer solstice. But regardless of how you arrive at those answers, orange you glad I didn’t say “Central Warehouse?”

Captain Jesse Sommer is an active duty Army paratrooper and lifelong resident of Albany County. He welcomes your thoughts at jesse@altamontenterprise.com.