Public browsing at the Guilderland Public Library will wait until at least mid-January since massive construction work as well as restrictions to control COVID-19 make the planned reopening unsafe, trustees decided after hearing staff concerns. “Our lives depend on it,” said one library staffer of the delay.

Pyramid is not above the law. And the Guilderland residents who are appointed to serve on the town’s zoning and planning boards need to follow the law as they review plans that affect all of the residents of Guilderland.

A judge has denied the sale of Picard’s Grove to developer Michael Biernacki for $500,000, requiring that other offers be considered and also that the property be appraised and that the owner’s personal property be properly inventoried.

Developer Armand Quadrini is willing to pay the cost of remediating the polluted site where he hopes to build a residential-and-commercial project called Foundry Village, with 140 apartments and a convenience store with fuel pumps. 

“A huge number of people have expressed interest in [finding] an alternative to development,” said Mark King, executive director of the Mohawk Hudson Land Conservancy. “We’re trying to wrangle those interests into something we could present as an alternative.”

Until litigation against the project resolves, no progress will be made on the question of what the approved Hiawatha Trails project needs to do to meet the state fire code. 

Pyramid has agreed to convey to the Rapp Road Historical District five properties that it has bought within the district; the properties could be used, it says, to build a cultural center. The district denotes a rare intact neighborhood of homes built by African-Americans who came north from Mississippi during the Great Migration. 

“The last time I talked to my sister we agreed the vultures are just waiting to pounce,” Herman Picard said.