County weighing in on St. Rose plans
ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – Officials have tossed around many ideas since the College of Saint Rose officially announced its closure late last year. Now one county official has a new proposal to repurpose the property to serve the public.
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy wants officials to get behind a county authority that could facilitate what’s next for the College of Saint Rose.
“I don’t want to be landlords, you know, but it’s going to take us time to find the right fit, the right partnership, the right vision for the property going forward,” said McCoy.
He said creating a new entity, through the Advance Albany County Alliance, would help the county mitigate negative impacts.
“If we do the local authority, we can bond through them, control the property,” said McCoy.
He proposed the county get involved to avoid the worst case scenario.
“These buildings will be shut down. They won’t have enough staff to really secure them and you’re gonna see problems happen,” said McCoy.
To prevent those problems from happening, he said the county is in a position to assist.
Abby Bravo has similar concerns about the property and the equipment and items inside. She is the editor in chief at the Saint Rose Chronicle. Bravo said the newsroom is full of copies of the chronicle and wonders where their archive might go.
“It’s been running for almost 90 years so I just hope that somewhere there’s a little archive of what we’ve done,” said Bravo.
She said unanswered questions were consistent throughout reporting.
“My main question that I have is why be so private and secretive about everything?” said Bravo.
Graduating junior Kyla Mayberry agrees. She majored in communications with a focus in public relations, taking 24 credits this semester to graduate a year early.
“The most frustrating thing is knowing that they were just actively hiding it. They were still accepting freshmen when they were deciding if the school was gonna close,” said Mayberry.
Although mistakes were made in the past, Mayberry sayid the closure could pave the way for a better future.
“I think the best thing that could be done is giving them back to the community, keeping them out of private hands. I think with the amount of housing that the college owns alone, it could be a great program for helping people who are houseless, people who are low income, people who are facing housing insecurity,” said Mayberry.
McCoy said he wants to see the buildings repurposed.
“We have a high school interested in moving in there, we have businesses that are interested in moving in there,” said McCoy.
McCoy is urging the public to reach out to his office with ideas. He said they want to hear from the community about what they want to see happen here.