By ERIN DUGGAN, Staff writer  First published: Monday, March 31, 2003

History collides with safety in Albany
Vacant, decaying buildings become focus of debate over how and when to try to preserve a cityscape 

Inside 51 Second St., the walls shared with the next house have crumbled to the point of transparency. The ceiling is falling down, and the back wall is separated from the foundation.

A city engineer and the public safety commissioner think the building should be razed -- soon. If it is, it will be the 20th building demolished in Albany this year -- the same number torn down in all of 2002.

Arbor Hill planners are undecided: They want to preserve the neighborhood's streetscapes as much as possible, but they also recognize a large rehabilitation job would be needed to save the house.

Historic preservationists think the building can be saved.

The difficulty of deciding what to do with a single derelict building underscores the complexity of dealing with the issue of the hundreds of vacant structures in the Capitol Region's cities. Albany's problem is particularly acute, not only because it is the largest city, but because, unlike Troy and Schenectady, it has no coordinated program to manage the problem.

Albany's abandoned buildings were hard hit this year.

The winter's record snowfall caused at least six buildings to be torn down because the heavy snow collapsed roofs and walls. As city, county and neighborhood groups tried to figure out how to deal with the buildings, five more came down last week.

While noting that the weather can undermine a vacant building in as little as two years, Historic Albany Foundation Executive Director Elizabeth Griffin said most of the buildings Albany loses are victims of long-term neglect.

"It's not like the buildings we're losing were occupied two years ago," said Griffin, who toured 34 vacant buildings Wednesday and Thursday with city and county officials, developers and members of the Arbor Hill Neighborhood Advisory Committee. "It doesn't happen that fast. There are a number of buildings that have been vacant, in some cases, for more than 10 years."

Just how many vacant buildings Albany has is not officially tabulated, but a group including Griffin, University at Albany students and faculty, government officials and neighborhood activists are close to completing a vacant building registry. So far, 841 have been identified in downtown Albany and surrounding neighborhoods.

One goal of the registry is to match potential homeowners with buildings before they're auctioned by the county, which forecloses on the city's tax delinquent properties. The county sells the properties at auction, but doesn't screen buyers and often finds that the new owners let the buildings decline further. They stop paying taxes, and the buildings end up back on the tax-delinquent list.

The task force planning the redevelopment of Arbor Hill saw the city and county beginning to work together on vacant buildings, and asked the city and county to be part of the discussion on how vacant buildings in historic Arbor Hill could fit into the neighborhood master redevelopment plan.

As the group toured buildings, it was clear there isn't one simple solution. They found houses that were great candidates for easy homeowner renovation. They also discovered some that would need more work, others that larger entities such as the city would have to rebuild, still more that likely need to come down, and a few that had been demolished.

"We were really looking for input as to what are good candidates for rehabilitation, demolition or infill construction," said Lori Harris, Commissioner of Development and Planning for Albany. "This is all a precursor to where we're going with the vacant buildings initiative."

The idea of matching potential homeowners with abandoned properties isn't new. Schenectady scrapped its auction program almost three years ago in favor of a similar project and cut demolitions by about two-thirds.

"A lot of properties were bought sight-unseen," said Schenectady Housing Rehabilitation Supervisor Steven Jacobson. "Then they'd see it, and say they didn't want it."

Schenectady uses sealed bids for its program, but doesn't sell to the highest bidder, as Albany does. Instead, bids are offered with a detailed proposal for the buildings. The buyer with the best overall proposal gets the building. Preference is given to owner-occupied projects.

"Even though revenue is extremely important to us," Jacobson said, "our number one consideration is how we're rebuilding our neighborhoods and our community."

Schenectady used to demolish about 40 buildings a year. This year, Jacobson estimates just 15 will come down, saving the city about $350,000. The city sold all the abandoned buildings it wanted to last year -- about 130 -- and the price kept rising.

They started selling for $4,000, and as the pickings got slimmer, prices rose to $16,000.

"Our demolitions are decreasing," Jacobson said, "because the demand for the houses is increasing dramatically."

Troy implemented a program similar to Schenectady's six years ago. No buildings in Troy have been razed this year, but Deputy Mayor James Conroy said the city is gearing up for it. The city likes to have a reuse plan before it knocks down buildings.

"Ideally, we demolish smartly," Conroy said. "We take the worst buildings, and we find out what's around them and what the most logical use of the land might be, and try to facilitate that reuse."

That way, said Conroy, "you have a plan set up from the demolition through to the redevelopment. That's not always the case, we're not always given that luxury, but ideally that's what we'd like to do."

Because Albany does not own most of the buildings it razes, it doesn't plan for reuse when it demolishes city buildings. Most fall under the city's "emergency demolition" ordinance, which gives almost no notice to neighbors or potential buyers.

While the registry is under development and Albany considers ways to approach the problem, a county program will take a few vacant buildings in need of major work off the auction block and put unions to work on them, according to Albany County Executive Michael Breslin.

The program will accomplish three things -- provide job training for construction trades, clean up blighted buildings and offer housing for lower-income families, Breslin said.

After years of the city and county wrestling over responsibility for vacant buildings, new programs are helping Albany catch up to its neighbors in dealing with abandoned houses.

Griffin said she hopes the new alliance between the city, county and interested parties will get homeowners into the buildings before demolition is inevitable.

"It's critical we've begun work on this now," Griffin said. "The buildings we saw this week are next year's collapses."

"I'm serious," she added. "Almost all of them."