Schodack

Jeff Bezos has transformed the way Americans shop through Amazon. But some residents in the Rensselaer County town of Schodack are worried that Amazon's business innovation will also transform their way of life for the worse.

Last week Amazon revealed that it is behind a proposal to build a one-million-square-foot fulfillment center on 116 acres off Route 9 in Schodack, just south of Exit 11 of I-90, that would employ 800 people, with shifts around the clock.

"I think there's going to be a lot of positives from this," Schodack Town Supervisor David Harris told the Times Union last week.

Although the project appears to be ideal for Amazon due to Schodack's location along I-90, the site also happens to be located next to a neighborhood of 50 homes known as Birchwood Estates.

Many of the residents who live in the quiet neighborhood of raised ranches and capes have their concerns about the proposal, which was first presented to the town back in the spring.

Among them is Adam Brunner, who is part of a group called the Birchwood Association. The group has a variety of concerns, ranging from how the massive facility will impact the water quality in the underground aquifer to concerns over traffic jams along Route 9 from an influx of hundreds of cars and tractor trailers.

Although the Birchwood Association started a GoFundMe campaign to hire professional experts to help them study the issue — they had raised $3,670 of their $10,000 goal as of Friday morning — its members believe that the town should undertake a more intense review of the project and complete what is known as an Environmental Impact Statement that looks at all aspects of the project and examines the long-term impacts the town should consider.

"We expect the town to do the right thing," Brunner said. "New York state law requires it in no uncertain terms."

Such a document is triggered if the planning board decides to make what is known as a positive declaration, or "pos dec" — meaning they feel the project will have a significant adverse impact on the environment.

The document would also look at the zoning, a bone of contention for the Birchwood Association members who have petitioned the town in years past to have that section of Route 9 rezoned as residential instead of the current mixed-use zoning, which they claim is ambiguous.

Brunner points to downstate Orange County, where a similar project, also assumed to be an Amazon fulfillment center, has been proposed in the town of Montgomery, which calls itself the "Transportation Hub of the Northeast" and already is a hub for distribution centers and warehouses. The Montgomery planning board issued a positive declaration on what has been dubbed Project Sailfish and is the exact same size — 1,015,740 square feet — as the Schodack proposal.

"We expect the town to do the right thing and issue a positive declaration, just as the Town of Montgomery has done with respect to an identical project," Brunner said.

Scannell Properties, the Indiana-based developer that would lease the facility to Amazon, has submitted a variety of plans to the town that were the subject of a public hearing held by the planning board earlier in the month. The planning board is scheduled to meet next on July 2, although it is unclear if the board would decide on a positive or negative declaration by then or wait until a later meeting.

"Everything is under review," Schodack planning board chair Denise Mayrer said Friday.

Town planning and zoning director Nadine Fuda said the town engineer is reviewing all of the documents submitted by Scannell and will eventually make a recommendation to the planning board on whether a positive declaration is needed.

lrulison@timesunion.com • 518-454-5504 • @larryrulison