Saratoga Civitas by Jim Kunstler

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Malta Chip Plant Deal Collapsing, and other tidbits from the groaning table

by Jim Kunstler

Sources tell us that the Saratoga Economic Development Council (SEDC) will shortly "pull the plug" on the computer chip plant they have proposed for a 700-acre site at Luther Forest in the town of Malta.
     Worries about suburban hyper-development in connection with the plant have soured Malta voters on the idea, and they have put so much pressure on the Malta Town Board that the approvals are not likely to be granted. Malta Supervisor David Meager is also feeling the heat and doesn't want to end a long career to a chorus of jeers from angry townspeople (or with a development albatross around his neck).
    The proposed Intel chip plant - and the suburban housing tracts and commercial crud it would have spawned - were to have been the main beneficiaries of a county scheme to pipe water from the Hudson River. This has been the long-cherished dream of the Republican-dominated county board of supervisors (with Governor Pataki and State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno working behind the scenes). The wished-for real estate development bonanza, and the political pressure induced by it, is what has kept the Republican-dominated Saratoga city council stalling the Public Works Department's own plan for a city-owned and city-controlled system drawing water from Saratoga Lake. The Saratoga Public Works Commissioner, Tom McTygue, is the lone Democrat on the council.
     SEDC is a quasi-governmental county agency that takes tax money and private funds to entice businesses to locate in the county. In this case, SEDC took the unusual step of purchasing the option on the Luther Forest land itself. It used to be, in such development gambits, that the company coming in would purchase the option. But the competition is so stiff, and the blandishments offered are so huge everywhere in this desperate national economy, that coddling of companies has reached extremes. Thus, the SEDC is stuck with large monthly option payments while the approval process remains in limbo at best and a loser at worst, and the option payments will not be recoverable if the deal goes up in a vapor.
     Civitas is not against economic development, but we note several conceptual problems with the chip plant:
     First, it was conceived as conventional suburban sprawl, meaning it would have generated huge volumes of car traffic, which the Malta voters did not fail to notice. Second, the scale of the project would have been hugely destructive to what remains a largely rural township. Third, chip makers are precisely the kind of companies that pick up and vamoose to greener pastures on short notice, leaving behind a wake of empty buildings, paved-over corn fields, and ruined home-builders.

     We hear that city councilman Stephen ("Mad Dog") Towne, has assigned new city attorney Matt Dorsey the task of figuring out a way for the council to get around the city charter on the water issue. The trouble is, there's no way around it. Under the charter, the commissioner of public works has the sole authority to direct the city's water system and manage any construction entailed by it. The current commissioner, Tom McTygue, has a new and improved water system all designed, permitted, approved by the state environmental watchdogs, and ready to go. But Towne and his fellow Republicans, who make up a 3 to 2 majority on the city council, won't allow it to go forward.
     Dorsey assigned his assistant, Tony Izzo, to find a loophole. Izzo came up with the nutty opinion that the charter doesn't authorize the DPW chief "to determine the source of the water." We hear that Dorsey recently paid a visit to DPW in order to run this opinion by the commissioner and McTygue read him the riot act. "I'll stay here in office ten more years if I have to," McTygue said, "until that water system is operating."
     Meanwhile, we also hear that the planning board will soon declare that they cannot approve any more major city development projects until the water issue is resolved. This could affect the start of a major new hotel proposed for the site of the old Otto Chrysler dealership on Lake Avenue, and another apartment building by Sonny Bonacio on Railroad Place. If that were to happen, fingers could reasonably be pointed at city council members Towne, Curley, and Lenz for thwarting the downtown building renaissance now underway.

Gordon Boyd of the local energy consultants Salerni & Boyd has an excellent solution for the city's affordable problem: induce Skidmore College to build more dormitories. The apartment rental market is so dominated by students that lower-wage working people such as hospital employees are not able to live in Saratoga. Right now, over 400 Skidmore students live in off-campus apartments.
Another way to address the affordable housing problem is legislatively. The city council could pass a law permitting accessory apartments in neighborhoods where they are currently zoned out, or where they exist only in 'grandfathered' properties.

     There's a reason why citizens have a pathological hatred of developers. In our time, developers can almost always be counted on to do the wrong thing the wrong way, especially where rural land is at issue.
     Now we learn that Rossi Marketing Services is preparing to buy the polo fields off Bloomfield Road at the edge of town and put up something they call "senior housing." Do they mean something like Prestwick Chase, one of the ugliest and most poorly-designed elder-pods in upstate New York?
     On general principles, we believe that housing intended for only one age group is a terrible idea, and it is even more deplorable to isolate old people in an elder-ghetto two miles outside of town so that a car trip is mandatory for all the daily chores of life.
Is our culture is so politically stupid and brain dead that the phrase "senior housing" should be an automatic ticket to official approvals and permits? Is "senior housing" a code to let town officials know that there will be no people of breeding age invited in to clutter up the school system with expensive children? If so, what kind of a society have we become?
      Until fairly recently, this area was the last rural gateway into Saratoga Springs where there was a clear distinction between the town and the country. The town of Greenfield has authority over the property. Unfortunately, they subscribe to obsolete single-use-zoning regulations that can produce only suburban sprawl. Tragically, the land will now become another piece of America not worth caring about, in a nation that soon may not be worth defending.