The Council of Albany Neighborhood Associations welcomed a top Albany developer to speak at its monthly meeting Thursday.
Jeff Buell is well-known as one of the principals of Redburn Development Partners, a firm that has invested $200 million in downtown Albany. He's also known for his involvement with local eyesore Central Warehouse: Redburn's grand plan for reimagining the building came tumbling down as the economy took a turn for the worse.
“I genuinely did believe we could fix [it] and I pride myself on being able to say I was wrong, and it turns out I was wrong," Buell said. "And we are going to now move to demolish that building and give the land back to the county for future redevelopment... hopefully that becomes part of the canal system, long term, and an improved riverfront that we are all desperate for.”
Buell is convinced the vast majority of the building can be recycled. He adds his preservationist leanings are what led him to believe Central Warehouse could be rehabilitated.
“When I was making the case, originally to everyone, that we shouldn't demo Central Warehouse, and we should give it a legitimate chance. It was, you know, throwing out remarkably large numbers, like ‘the building weighs 22 million pounds,’ which you know, you, you do a take-off in a hilarious way that you have no idea of confirming, but let's just say it's really big. The take-off suggested that to, to put it into the Albany landfill, would actually close the landfill two years early, and just that building, which is obviously untenable. So we have gone out and, and we've gotten quotes, encouraging everyone to recycle the aggregate. And to do that, you first have to clean the building of asbestos. So I've been in the papers, throwing around numbers between $8 and $20 million. A lot of that is how do you clean the buildings so that you can recycle the concrete and use it in a better way? Right now, the two best bids that we have, actually contemplate recycling it fully. Because of the weight of the building, the real cost is in where you put it. And so I think it's actually going to end up being a huge benefit to the project, that it can't go in the Albany landfill,” said Buell.
Further uptown, the private College of Saint Rose is in its final weeks before it shutters amid mounting financial pressures and declining enrollment. A graduate of the college, Buell says there aren't a lot of people who can purchase the campus, stressing the importance of community input in determining the future of the property once the school closes after the spring semester.
He expects a collapse of the surrounding student-housing market, leaving the fate of the Pine Hills neighborhood’s many converted two-family homes that have generated thousands of dollars of monthly income for absentee landlords hanging in the balance.
"But if someone can create a home ownership program that suggests the de-densification of these units is possible: so we take them from the eight beds they are now and let's say we just turned them into two-, three-bedroom apartments or two-bedroom apartments with an office and a den, because we're now all working remotely all the time, then I think that that would work," Buell said.
Buell, who describes himself as an Albany native from a working-class family, sees the riverfront, downtown and Central Avenue as the city's biggest challenges and opportunities once interest rates calm down and the cost of construction stabilizes. He blames the closures of the Madison and Spectrum theatres on internet streaming of movies that took hold during the pandemic and falling public support. He says the Madison now becomes "part of the Saint Rose conversation," while hinting the Spectrum is in line to get a brief reprieve.
“I think you'll hear something in the next couple of days on the Spectrum. You know, the mayor has kind of been, you know, she's been kind of teasing it, that there was another operator. The other operator who's going to end up taking that over is a friend of mine. And I'm gonna let you in on the messaging, because I think the messaging is very important. Only people going to movie theaters will save movies, right. And part of the challenge here is that the movie business now sucks. And, you know, they stream things and our Amazon culture is destroying this minute by minute,” said Buell.
Buell stresses he's optimistic about Albany's future in the long term.
