ALBANY — A friend of mine believes that an Amazon warehouse should be built on the old Kenwood Convent campus, located on the city's southern border. He's not joking. This friend highlights the site’s excellent highway access, its location in an industrial area, and its proximity to Albany neighborhoods where hundreds of blue-collar jobs could make a significant impact. He makes a compelling argument.
However, a warehouse is not what’s planned for the 73-acre site between South Pearl Street and Southern Boulevard. Last week, Times Union reporter Steve Hughes and I met with the team hoping to transform the land, which is best known for its convent and glorious chapel that were destroyed by a massive fire last year. As Steve has reported, the EK Group plans to build a $250 million tech campus that could include office space, approximately 1,000 apartments, a workforce development center, and some retail space.
It’s an impressive and ambitious plan, but it seems to depend on finding a tech company willing to anchor the development and the county’s willingness to forgive $6.6 million in back taxes accrued under prior owners. Fingers crossed.
EK Group director Michael-Henry Elghanian-Krayem expressed confidence that something can be worked out and is encouraged by the early reaction from elected officials. He presented renderings showing an architecturally inventive office building connecting two older structures that survived the fire.
The idea is to create a campus that honors the site’s history as a place where women trained to become nuns and where teens attended the Doane Stuart school, now located in Rensselaer. Under the EK Group plan, the property would remain a unique place while also serving as a connection point between the city’s impoverished South End and affluent Bethlehem.
Of course, other plans to redevelop the property, vacant since the Society of Sacred Heart put it up for sale in 2009, have come and gone.
For instance, in 2015, Saratoga Springs developer Sonny Bonacio was part of a group that wanted to turn the former school and convent into 150 apartments and convert the chapel into a performance space. That deal fell through when the city and the development team couldn’t agree on tax breaks.
So, the EK Group proposal is far from certain. But if it comes to fruition as planned, it would undoubtedly benefit the city by providing high-paying jobs, much-needed housing, and more. With Elghanian-Krayem promising to respect and enhance the campus' sense of place, there’s little not to like in this plan, which aims to capitalize on the city’s nanotechnology industry.
Tech, tech, tech—it feels like the only word we ever hear and the only word that captures a politician’s attention here in Tech Valley, if we’re still calling it that. Tech is the future, as we’ve often heard, the Holy Grail of employment.
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