CLIFTON PARK >> Conceptual plans for renovating two commercial plazas in town show projects that will give the community another hotel and a second renovated and expanded Price Chopper.
DCG Development Corporation’s revised plans for its Clifton Corporate Plaza, 872 Route 146 would transform four nearly vacant office buildings into a 110-room hotel, a 4,000-square-foot restaurant, and an unspecified number of apartments. The plans were submitted to the town’s Planning Department April 6.
That same day, Nigro Companies also submitted plans to the Planning Department seeking approval to renovate the Clifton Park Plaza at the corner of Vischer Ferry Road and Route 146.
Those plans seek to demolish much of the old plaza, which holds a Price Chopper supermarket, and build three free-standing buildings that will house an expanded supermarket, a pharmacy with additional retail space, and a bank.
DCG’s plans revise an earlier proposal submitted in September calling for luxury, high-end apartments on the 7.5 acre parcel that holds the four office buildings. The original approval for the office space was made as a planned unit development. DCG officials are requesting an amendment to the PDD so it will conform to the town’s recently approved TC-3 (Town Center 3) zoning.
The DCG submittal also seeks to change the zoning on a vacant 6.8 acre parcel adjacent and to the west of the office buildings parcel. Company officials are asking to have that parcel’s B-1, business, non-retail, zoning changed to TC-3 also.
If approved, the company wants to put a building on the site suitable for 120 multi-family residential units or 60,000-square-feet of commercial office space or a combination of the two.
Nigro Companies’ plans for the Price Chopper site will demolish all the plaza’s existing structures. In their place will be a new, 54,286-square-foot, free standing Price Chopper supermarket, an 11,115-square-foot pharmacy, and a 10,000-square-foot bank. The two latter structures will be built with additional space for the rest of the plaza’s existing retail businesses.
The plaza is owned by WRJ Associates of Franklin Lakes, New Jersey.
This is the second plan in the past 15 months that Nigro Companies has submitted to the town that involved a new Price Chopper supermarket at the corner.
In December, 2013 the company submitted plans to build a 61,000-square-foot Price Chopper, two restaurants, and a bank on the corner’s northwest parcel.
The size and the location of the project brought out numerous neighbors who opposed the plan.
During a public hearing on the project several residents asked why Price Chopper officials were not putting their money toward renovating the market that was already operating on the corner.
The proposal died with the Town Board for lack of support.
Nigro Companies president John Nigro said Price Chopper, like many companies, sought the earlier proposal because starting new is easier than refurbishing an existing business.
“It’s easier when you start from scratch,” he said. “There’s no renovation to contend with, no closure and the possibility of loss of business, and you’re not dealing with old mechanicals.”
He acknowledged, however, the community’s opposition to the earlier plan played a part in moving forward with the new plan for renovating the plaza.
“When we met resistance from the community the directive we got was to see what we could do with the existing store,” he said. “Things have worked out, and in the end it was the right thing to do, but it was a tough site.”
Nigro said he has discussed the plan with the plaza’s other longtime businesses and all will relocate to the new retail space built into the plan’s design. He was philosophical when asked the cost of the renovation.
“It’s a lot more than we would have liked,” he said.
Within days of the submittal, a letter from a law firm representing the owner of the car wash adjacent to the site on the east was sent to Planning Board Chairman Rocco Ferro.
In the letter, attorney Edward Kowalewski, representing Sitterly Road Realty, the owner of the car wash, asked Ferro to remove the application from the April 28 Planning Board agenda. Kowalewski contends the Nigro proposal will block easements across the plaza that Sitterly Road Realty received with the deed to the property.
Kowaleski said in his letter that his client will not consent to the relocation of the easements and, without Sitterly Road’s approval, the relocation of the easements cannot be done. The attorney contends that without the easement issues being worked out, the new site plan from Nigro cannot be approved by the planning board.