Democracy In Albany

The club is in a high traffic area and the entrance is simply too small for the traffic generated.   Something really should be done.

The two buildings in question are, I believe, empty. They really are not all that architecturally significant and their potential as office buildings are extremely limited because there is simply no parking around for them.  No one in their right mind will put their business in them and if they were not already owned by the Fort Orange Club these buildings would have already become derelicts.  4 Central Avenue, which is two blocks away is a large office building. It is empty.  You cant give office space in that area away.  Just up the street is an empty store front where the cigar shop was- that they cant keep rented.  

I challenge anyone to go down and try to find a parking space within walking distance of those buildings during regular business hours.  You can't do it.  You have literally tens of thousands of people who work within a thousand yards of the two buildings. You have hundreds of visitors competing for parking spaces already.

The State has made matters worse by closing the underground parking at the plaza and by its own short sighted parking policies.  Most days you cant even get a parking spot at the few commercial lots. The one on Hamilton is always full these days.

Do I like the idea of knocking down buildings and turning them into parking lots? No.  But I understand the necessity.  Albany, like most cities, had its main commercial areas laid out and developed long before automobiles.  Times change, needs change and accommodations have to be made.    

I also understand that a lot of the opposition to the Fort Orange Club comes from the fact that my neighbors resent having a bunch of perceived elitists commuting into our neighborhood to hob- nob with each other before going home to their palatial estates.  Resent it all you want.  If they want to knock down a couple of buildings so they can park their cars let them.  It's not like they are bad neighbors or attract drunken college kids who barf and piss everywhere like Lark Street does.

Will the parking lot really have any impact on the street scape or change the fabric of the neighborhood? No.  I challenge anyone, without the use of Google Maps, to describe what the parking lot across the street looks like.  The street scape was wrecked long ago when they built the ugly 1950s monstrosity where Citizens bank is, 99 Washington and those union buildings.  As soon as they are gone no one will be able to remember what the two buildings even looked like.  Can anyone tell us what the old bar building that was knocked down a couple of years ago looked like?  Probably not.

And Jim, before you get overly impressed by the neighborhood association opposition to the demolition maybe you should take a look at how many people actually participated in the discussion.  While I am all for a strong neighborhood association the fact is that out of the hundreds of people who live in the boundaries of these things less than a dozen usually participate in the meetings.  I think that if the neighborhood was actually more involved I would give the neighborhood associations more weight.  I would also give them more weight if they were not opposed to just about any development that is proposed.

So many that we can afford to lose these?

All the seventeenth century Dutch buildings Albany still had standing well into the 20th century were demolished by people who thought "What's so special about those buildings?" "They're just old firetraps anyway, so who'll miss them?"

Just because you own property does not give you the unconditional right to do as you please with it. This situation is exactly one of the reasons we have zoning laws in effect at all.

So right now we know of no famous personage or event associated with these buildings, but wouldn't it be a shame to discover that there was, a week or two after they were demolished?

And for what great purpose will they be demolished, should the ZBA grant its approval?

To protect the public's safety?

For some essential building for public benefit?

No! For a private parking lot for a few cars.

They want these buildings demolished just because a few members of the FOC, after dropping off their passengers at the clubhouse door, are too lazy to walk ONE BLOCK from a public parking lot back to the club.

Perhaps you didn't live here twenty five years ago when the FOC dissappeared forever a fabulous example of an Arts & Crafts building, the only one of its kind in Albany. Why was it they felt the need to demolish that unique building? They wanted seven parking spaces.

Now this makes more sense.  I had a hard time understanding why no one cared when they knocked down the building between these two buildings and the Christian Science Reading Room a couple of years ago when one of the other neighbors wanted more parking.  SO this is retribution for something that happned 25 years ago.  

Why didn't anyone care when they knocked down the bar with the atrium? Was it because it wasnt owned by the FOC?

Some of us are fine taking the bus or walking.  And because of that, parking lots are not a big concern.

Are you forgetting that there's a huge parking lot a block away on Elk St? Hundreds of spaces available there.

Most of the events at the FOC that draws a large attendence are in the evening, after the state workers have escaped the city and vacated the lot.

And in that you mentioned 99 Washington Ave., they have underground parking available directly across the street from the FOC.

Just because the buildings have crappy facades doesn't negate the fact that there's a treasure buried behind them.

By the way Al, who owned the bar that was "ripped down"? Wasn't it the FOC?

Preservation is in no way retribution for past deeds. If it weren't for preservation minded folks like me, you wouldn't now be the proud owner of your building. It would have seen the wrecker's ball back in the eighties, like they wanted.

Zoning should be flexible enough to allow for progress without unnecessarily impeding it.  Zoning is supposed to protect the character of the neighborhood from development and businesses which would harm.

First the "freeze in place."  How many buildings in Albany were built with a specific purpose in mind and then, through economic forces, became obsolete and were ether abandoned or converted?  The Hinckel Brewery was converted into apartments after standing vacant for years.  Should zoning have prevented the conversion?  After all it was a industrial complex not an apartment building.  

What about all these houses that started their lives out as stables?  Should the zoning laws have been used to prevent that?  How about all the houses that were converted into other uses? Should Lark Street have been forced to remain strictly residential?  

The buildings on Washington Avenue started their lives as residential buildings. They did not start as office buildings.  They were converted into offices when their usefulness as residential buildings came to an end.  Now their usefulness as offices has come to an end.  Why shouldn't they be knocked down?  They are no longer useful.

Do these buildings fall into the "crucial to preserve the streetscape" or the "character of the neighborhood" argument?  No.

These two buildings are not arts and crafts. They are simply old three story buildings with bad replacement windows with one having a first floor façade stuck on the first floor and the other having a dumb looking commercial window.   They are not in the historic district.  They are on a main commercial corridor and are opposite some of the worst examples of 1950s and 1960s shlock.  The streetscape will largely be unaffected.  Instead of seeing nondescript buildings opposite the FUGLY FASNY building and the vomit worthy green paneled seven story office building people will see a fence.  

Second, the demolition will have no effect on the character of the neighborhood.  Its in a commercial district- not a residential neighborhood.  If anything it will improve the parking on the northern end of Dove Street by allowing the Fort Orange people to get the hell off our streets.  

The Elk Street lot is not open to the public and if you park there you will get towed. Its also a wind tunnel down Washington Avenue there and do we really want 75 year olds blowing down the street?

If they cut holes in the roof and leave many of the windows open and wait a few years like what happened at the Wellington then will it be acceptable to tear them down?  

I love the attitude "if you don't want/like to walk you can always move out of the city."   That's the hospitality I expect from Albany.

At least 50% of downtown's surface is devoted to those beastly automobiles. The same automobiles that KILL more of Albany's children then handguns.

I don't understand how a 1830 building has more historic building then one built in 1980. Historic virtue never made much sense to me. Shouldn't we be measuring functionality, rather then measuring what we perceive to be purty at any one period of time?

Regardless, we devoted way too much of our society to management of the automobile. We spend too much money on cars, we murder too many people with them, and we pollute too much of our air with them.

I'm absolutely against replacing good buildings with pavement, but the NeoAlbany blog isn't exactly playing it straight with the photos. Clever, but disingenuous to put the Fort Orange Club itself in the group of images of "endangered historic buildings."