Albany

SUNY Polytechnic Institute's next big project is student housing.

The NanoCollege is planning 504 beds of new housing — the first exclusively for the high-tech campus — and a new student center on and around its Fuller Road headquarters by 2018.

Plans being circulated to local governments also call for an expansion of campus parking by nearly 650 spaces, much of it around Loughlin Street, a dead-end block off Fuller Road where a real estate firm tied to Columbia Development spent $3.78 million buying out homeowners well above market rate starting last spring.

The future of the street has been the subject of wide speculation since then, especially just over the city line in Guilderland's McKownville neighborhood, whose residents live closest to the rapidly expanding campus and worry about its encroachment on their homes.

In July 2014, when a real estate firm was quietly making offers on Loughlin Street properties, a spokesman for the college told the Times Union that the push to buy the homes had "nothing to do with us."

The NanoCollege recently split from the University at Albany and has no dorms of its own, even as undergraduate enrollment in Albany is projected to rise from 200 this semester to 500 in five years, spokesman Jerry Gretzinger said.

SUNY Poly also has about 200 graduate students in Albany.

In March, the college solicited dorm proposals from developers but did not say where the buildings would be located.

Under the plan, the 11 existing homes on Loughlin would be demolished to make way for 709 new parking spaces and, eventually, 400 beds of student housing nearby along Fuller Road, according to an environmental assessment drafted for SUNY Poly and its nonprofit real estate arm, the Fuller Road Management Corp. Some of those spaces would later be eaten up by the new dorm construction, resulting in a net gain of 644 once all three phases of the project are complete.

A copy of the environmental review, dated Aug. 27 and shared with several local governments, was reviewed by the Times Union.

Gretzinger said there are "no specific financial numbers yet" on what the project will cost.

Phase 1 of the project entails building 104 beds of student housing along Fuller Road between the CESTM and NanoFab East buildings on the existing NanoCollege campus in addition to the 709 new parking spaces to the south around Loughlin Street.

The parking would be in place by December, according to the plan, while the dorm would not open until September 2016. The dorm would also include 2,000 square feet for campus security and would require just over a half-acre from Albany County's Fuller Road right of way to position the new building.

The first phase of work would also include 202 parking spaces on the west side of the campus' newest building, the Zero Energy Nanotechnology building at the corner of Fuller Road and Washington Avenue Extension.

The pavement on Loughlin Street has already been spray-painted to mark the locations of underground utilities — a step that precedes work.

The second phase of construction would add a campus center just west of first dorm and 250 beds of additional housing at 261 Fuller Road, between Loughlin and Tricentennial Drive. That dorm would be open by September 2017, though the plan notes that timeline "may be delayed based upon growth needs."

An additional 150 beds would be added in the area of 263 Fuller Road, just north of Loughlin, in a third phase to be wrapped up by September 2018.

The environmental review says the college has an "agreement to obtain title" to the involved properties and that as a result the project would not be subject to city zoning review. Gretzinger said the college does not currently own the land. If the property were privately owned, the Planning Board would have to sign off on any permit to demolish existing buildings.

Mayor Kathy Sheehan said SUNY Poly's growth is good but that her administration will work to ensure Albany is compensated for the loss of tax revenue from property being transferred to the tax-exempt college — as well as more strain on city services.

City agencies are reviewing the plan and will provide feedback, she said.

Earlier this year the city and Fuller Road Management Corp. struck a landmark deal in which the nonprofit voluntarily agreed to pay the city $500,000 a year for at least the next three years.

"We certainly are going to be reaching out to them for an arrangement, and we have had conversations about these types of issues moving forward," Sheehan said. "As SUNY Poly expands, it's going to have a need for student housing, and we know that the more students that we have in the city of Albany, there is a direct economic benefit to that."

Councilman Michael O'Brien, whose 12th Ward includes Loughlin Street, said his primary concern is that the city be fairly compensated.

"I think it's a good economic engine for the Albany area," O'Brien said of the college. "My only beef with them is that we don't get a fair payment in lieu of taxes."

Sheehan said she will encourage the college to finance the construction through the city's Capital Resource Corporation, which would provide it with access to low-interest financing and provide the city with associated economic development fees.

Don Reeb, president of the McKownville Improvement Association, said the plan is likely to only further fuel concerns among residents that the college is creeping closer to their back yards — especially on Warren, Mercer and Providence streets.

"The first impressions are that the project is going to be much larger than we imagined it would be," Reeb said. "We thought that it was going to be a parking lot or a dorm – but not both."

The architect on the project is EYP, a firm whose headquarters is at the NanoCollege complex, and the design of the new buildings is described as "consistent with the visual landscape that currently exists on SUNY Poly" with an "emphasis on clean, white colors."

jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com • 518-454-5445 • @JCEvangelist_TU