So what comes next for CARA, the central Albany urban renewal district? Mayor Sharon Konopa has an idea, and she mentioned it Saturday at the completion ceremony of the city’s two-year downtown streetscape project.
Eleven years after it got involved with the former Labor Temple on Third Avenue, the Albany City Council this week ended the city’s role by voting to sell the building.
On a stroll in downtown Albany the other evening, the buildings on this corner caught my eye. They show off the efforts of downtown owners to upgrade their buildings with the help of urban renewal.
Albany’s downtown renewal board may now be on its way to setting priorities for completing its mission. That’s the vague but hopeful main news from Wednesday’s monthly session of the CARA advisory board.
CARA is being asked to give $10,000 to another downtown Albany building venture, but the push for major projects to complete and then wind up the 17-year-old urban renewal program seems to remain stalled.
Whether anything comes of this is uncertain, but Albany’s downtown urban development board last week heard about an idea for turning a vacant store into shared office space and a couple of meeting rooms.
Now that the downtown streetscape project is winding down, Albany’s urban renewal agency will have to decide what to do next. One potential idea: Put on a push to improve the neighborhood east of Lyon Street by rebuilding the streets and upgrading the houses that need it.
Jim Ketter’s request to get rid of the barbed wire along the Albany-Santiam Canal in the Monteith Historic District, and maybe even lower the fences, has gotten nowhere so far.
In case you want to keep track, the anticipated cost of Albany’s downtown streetscape project has topped $10 million. But it’s still under budget, according to the latest update.
CARA wants to buy a downtown property
Albany’s urban renewal agency will try to buy a downtown property. They don’t want the public to know which one, but it sounds like the building and parking lot of the former Wells Fargo branch on First Avenue.
Tags: CARA, St. Francis, Wells Fargo