County Executive Dan McCoy predicts Albany’s Central Warehouse won’t come down until 2027.
Anyone traveling along Interstate-787 in Albany will no doubt notice what is widely considered the city’s most notable eyesore – The Central Warehouse.
Built in 1927 as a cold storage facility and left abandoned since the 1990s, the 495,000-square-foot blighted building stands at 11 stories.
And, yes, despite announcements this year about planned demolition, the warehouse does indeed still stand.
Albany County purchased the property for $50,000 at the beginning of the year, and after a summer court battle regarding contractor bids, the warehouse was cleared in July to come down.
Then, in August, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the demolition of the warehouse, which has unapologetically overlooked the Hudson River for decades, would be backed by more than $11 million in state funding.
“This building built almost exactly 100 years ago has deteriorated, declined and really been a mocking structure to this entire community since 1990,” Hochul said.
According to County Executive Dan McCoy, the demolition process led by Gramercy Group – a demolition contractor – is already underway.
“Gramercy has been in there, they are removing the asbestos, that’s what they are dealing with now, that is going to take a couple months with asbestos, that’s probably going to take through the winter months,” McCoy said.
He says the asbestos within the building must be removed before the actual demolition can begin, otherwise the lung-damaging chemical could fly into the city.
While this work is happening, residents may not notice any changes.
“They’ve been at the asbestos for about a month now, so I would say probably, the latest May, you will probably see people outside of the building working, that’s if the asbestos takes that long, you might see it in early April,” McCoy said.
The project is part of broader redevelopment in Albany.
In addition to the Central Warehouse demolition, the Livingston Avenue Bridge is undergoing construction for upgrades, and a project to re-imagine I-787 is in the planning stages.
The city as a whole is also undergoing developments as part of Championing Albany’s Potential or CAP – a state initiative headed by Hochul to revitalize the city.
As part of this initiative, $25 million has been set aside to renovate the Empire State Plaza, and roughly $150 million in state funding has been allocated to make improvements to the New York State Museum.
As for the Central Warehouse, McCoy said he’s hopeful the demolition will be done by 2026 but predicts it most likely won’t be completed until 2027.
“Once the asbestos is fully removed out of the building, then they will move into Phase 2, where they are going to start knocking the building down, it depends how much asbestos they find and how long it’s going to take,” McCoy said.
As it stands, there isn’t a clear plan for how to redevelop the land that the warehouse currently occupies, but McCoy said he has some ideas. One involves re-opening Albany’s portion of the Erie Canal.
“You’ve got a blueprint to reimagine that whole area, if you open up the Erie Canal, you got green space you can do affordable housing with storefronts, you can make it a destination park that people want to come there and do stuff,” McCoy said.
