Aug. 24–ALBANY — The Albany Convention Center Authority has told its consultants to draft a plan for a scaled-down facility that will cost about $58 million, the authority’s chairman said Friday.
While that figure is not the official price tag for the smaller facility on Eagle Street, it marks the most specific signal yet of what officials expect the roughly 80,000 square feet of meeting space to cost.
In announcing its retreat last month from a $220 million plan at a site off Broadway that had languished for years, officials said they were confident that the two-story structure off Eagle and Howard streets could be built for the roughly $63 million remaining in state seed money for the project.
Building it without additional state cash has increasingly been seen as crucial to the project’s survival after Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration balked at paying for the more expensive 300,000-square-foot Broadway plan.
“It should not be structured as a project that is not affordable in these economic times,” authority Chairman Gavin Donohue said of the $58 million figure.
Donohue said the remaining state money has to be kept in reserve to buy the land on the new site, appraisals for which are underway, as well as for pre-construction work. He said some of the money may also be needed for improvements to an adjacent walkway that connects to Empire State Plaza and county-owned Times Union Center — as well as improvements to the county arena itself.
Some of the costs could also be covered by the hotel tax money the authority receives every quarter from Albany County, he said.
The authority voted Friday to begin the early stages of the state environmental review required for construction as it awaits the results of a $14,000 market study expected to outline how large the facility should be and what it will likely cost.
In addition to the meeting space, preliminary plans call for 350 parking spaces on three underground levels. Columbia Development, meanwhile, plans a $48 million renovation of the nearby vacant DeWitt Clinton Hotel from low-income apartments to a 204-room Renaissance by Marriott Hotel, which could meet any new demand for hotel rooms envisioned in the market study. That project is backed by $4 million in state economic development money.
At one point, the estimated price of the Broadway project had crept as high as $400 million before the authority spun off plans for a new hotel and parking garage to the private sector.
jcarleo-evangelist@timesunion.com, @JCEvangelist_TU
