TROY – The Troy Community Land Bank voted unanimously Wednesday to hire Anthony Tozzi as its new executive director.

Tozzi returns to work in Troy where he began his career in the city planning department. He will retire from his job as building and planning coordinator for the town of Malta in Saratoga County to take the $75,000 post with the land bank.

Tozzi will trade overseeing suburban development in the Northway community for spurring redevelopment of North Central, the city’s poorest neighborhood and the bordering area of South Lansingburgh.

“As someone who was intimately familiar with Troy, I have been happy for the recent economic success in the downtown. I am genuinely excited to be a partner in expanding that success to other predominately residential areas of the city,” Tozzi said.

Tozzi is part of the land bank's move from relying on part-time employees and volunteers. Tozzi will work full-time and another full-time employee is expected to be hired. Tozzi succeeds Joe Fama, who has worked as the interim part-time executive director since April 2016. Fama is well known in the city’s planning and development world having led TAP for decades before retiring.

“He’s certainly qualified to get us moving quickly,” said Heather King, the chairwoman of the land bank board of directors.

Tozzi worked for the city’s planning department from 1977 to 1993. In addition to working for Troy and Malta, he has worked as an assistant planner in Saratoga Springs, principal planner in Schenectady, director of the Albany-Schenectady-Troy Enterprise Community Program and as a senior planner for the Regional Planning Commission in Asheville, N.C.

In Troy, he reviewed more than 1,000 site plan applications, performed grant work, did code compliance specifications for more than 100 residential and commercial units and supervised the surveying and mapping of the city’s playgrounds and parks. In Malta, he performed design review and inspections on the Global Foundries project Fab 8.1.

The land bank hired Tozzi to oversee its marketing and expansion of its services into other city neighborhoods. King said his past experience will help in these areas.

The state Attorney General’s Office and Enterprise Community Partners has supplied $2 million in funding to the land bank for its stabilization and revitalization work.

The land bank owns a mix of 29 buildings and vacant lots, mostly in North Central. These properties are in various stages of maintenance, assessment and sale.