With nothing more urgent on my plate, I stopped on the Albany riverfront Tuesday evening to look around. What I saw was nothing sensational or new, but it prompted me to say:
The former Wells Fargo bank in downtown Albany is to be demolished and the site offered for sale to a developer who would build apartments.
It’s hard to imagine now what the old Oregon Electric Railway depot in Albany will be like once it has been fully restored and Sybaris Bistro has moved in. But Matt Bennett can imagine it very well, and he explained his ideas to me this week.
Where Albany downtown building revival projects are concerned, everything seems to take longer than expected. That includes the much-anticipated sale and restoration of the historic Oregon Electric Railway depot on Fifth Avenue.
Albany is plowing ahead with its $16.2 million project to upgrade the Willamette riverfront, but it’s not a unanimous decision.
Albany’s long-planned Waterfront Project comes up for a public hearing next week, not on the merits of the project itself but on the method of getting it built.
Bikman Building’s penthouse has new roof
I parked my bike at the foot of the Ellsworth Street Bridge in Albany, ignored the decades-old “closed” sign you see down there, and walked up the eastern sidewalk, high enough to look back at a new sight.
Tags: Albany history, Bikman, Bikman Building, Bikman penthouse, CARA, Kiev, Ukraine