Albany program to link buyers, 
vacant buildings

By SARA FOSS
Gazette Reporter


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ALBANY - Sometime soon, the Historic Albany Foundation will start providing
homeowners with free doors and windows.

In return, all a homeowner has to do is buy and renovate one of the city's
vacant buildings.

Historic Albany is getting ready to launch its new vacant buildings
initiative.

The goal of the initiative is to increase home ownership rates and reduce
the number of abandoned properties in the city, said Elizabeth Griffin,
executive director of the Historic Albany Foundation.

"If we want to keep our neighborhoods whole we need to start paying
attention to these buildings and find people who will fix them up and
hopefully live there," Griffin said.

The group hopes to become a clearinghouse for abandoned buildings by
identifying empty structures, figuring out who owns them and finding ways to
get people who are interested in restoring the buildings to purchase them,
Griffin said.

Historic Albany is a non-profit organization that promotes preservation
through tours and educational workshops. The group also operates an
architectural parts warehouse stocked with items salvaged from old houses,
such as bathtubs, doorknobs and moldings.

Right now, a handful of neighborhood leaders are in the process of compiling
lists of the abandoned properties in their neighborhoods for Historic
Albany. Eventually, an inventory of abandoned buildings will be created.

Preventing the decline of city neighborhoods is something that needs to be
done, said Steve Winters, president of the Second Avenue Neighborhood
Association.

"Any sort of attention that we can draw to abandoned property is wonderful,"
he said. "It's important to do something about vacant property."

The number of vacant buildings in his neighborhood has increased
dramatically in recent years, said Winters, one of the neighborhood leaders
who is making a list of abandoned properties.

"There are about 23 abandoned buildings within two blocks of my house," he
said. "Five years ago there might have been one or two."

Griffin, who spoke about the initiative at a recent Council of Albany
Neighborhood Associations meeting, plans to contact every neighborhood
association leader and ask them to help identify abandoned buildings.

"Every building is going to have a story and part of the initiative is to
get people to tell those stories," Griffin said.

Saving abandoned buildings helps preserve Albany's historic housing stock,
Griffin said.

"Tearing down buildings is not the answer," she said. "We don't want to see
the buildings come down and we don't have to do that. There are other
solutions."

Historic Albany doesn't plan to purchase any of the buildings. Instead, it
will help connect interested buyers with possible sellers.

"For some of the buildings, all we'll have to do is find their owners and
talk to them about selling," Griffin said.

Historic Albany will hire someone to coordinate the vacant buildings
initiative, Griffin said. The group also plans to meet with city and county
officials and neighborhood leaders to discuss the project.

People who decide to purchase and renovate an abandoned building will
receive free windows and doors from Historic Albany's architectural parts
warehouse on Lexington Avenue.