Glens Falls can do better than big Stewart's shops

Homeless folks are hanging out in City Park

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Consider the Stewart’s project on Glen Street, between Bacon Street and Sherman Avenue. 

The Stewart’s team wanted a bigger store, which meant expanding into a parking lot on Sherman and buying and demolishing two existing homes on Bacon.

City officials could have said no. In Glens Falls, housing — especially multi-family housing — is a much greater need than square footage for gas pumps and ice cream.

If there is a municipality that features Stewart’s shops more prominently than Glens Falls, I haven’t seen it. You can enter the city four main ways, all of which take you past one or more Stewart’s, most of them the new, larger shops with two cash registers and a beer cave.

Stewart’s is a big company, with more than 350 shops, 5,000 employees and $1.5 billion in annual revenue. It is known for helping out local community groups with donations of cash and food. None of that is an argument for or against granting zoning variances.

To move the shop and the gas pumps back, Stewart’s needed city officials to OK zoning changes on a Sherman Avenue parking lot and two single family homes on Bacon Street.

All of the properties had other owners. The half-acre parking lot, which is always empty, was zoned multi-family residential, meaning an apartment building could have gone there. The houses were zoned single-family residential.

These two houses stand on Bacon Street, behind the existing Stewart’s shop on the corner of Glen Street and Sherman Avenue. They will be torn down so the shop can be enlarged.

Stewart’s has also purchased this parking lot on Sherman Avenue behind the existing store. The gas pumps will be moved into this area and there will be more room for parking.

So one project is eliminating two large, attractive single family homes and a downtown lot perfectly situated for an apartment building in a city short on space for housing.

In return, we’re getting a bigger Stewart’s. 

Company executives have agreed to contribute to the cost of putting in a turn lane off Sherman Avenue onto Glen Street, but that’s something they need for traffic flow into and out of the new store.

It’s too late to rethink granting the variances. But the expansion of yet another Stewart’s, at the expense of prime housing space, is an example of the aimlessness of Glens Falls development.

The city needs some guiding principles, or we will emerge from this period of high development pressure with a hodgepodge of new buildings and new businesses, our traffic backed up and the charm of our streetscapes spoiled.

Mayor Bill Collins laughed when I asked him whether development should be paused while the city comes up with a comprehensive plan.

“No, no I don’t think that,” he said.

The comprehensive plan process will take months, and perhaps the city can’t afford to put everything on hold.

But muddling along is just as bad and will leave us with development we regret. I wish I’d been paying attention when Chris Patten proposed the two apartment buildings he has just about finished jamming into a too-small space on Washington and Harlem streets.

 We can’t keep allowing exceptions for developers like Patten, whose buildings are cheap and dull, devoid of landscaping, color or ornamentation — just boxes for collecting rent.

We should also stop turning over single-family and multi-family lots to gas stations that sell soda and chips and lottery tickets, no matter how many Little League teams they sponsor. 

Preserving the city’s hometown charm — its parks, tree-lined streets, varied housing stock, sidewalks, free parking, wonderful downtown architecture and welcoming atmosphere — must be our top priority.

With our safe streets and neighborhood elementary schools, Glens Falls is a place where kids still gather to play — roaming around on bikes, exploring the woods, hanging out in friends’ kitchens.

The city’s intimate, friendly atmosphere is the reason I and my family have stuck it out here for decades, despite the nearness of Queensbury and South Glens Falls, where houses are newer and taxes are lower.

Saying “yes” to every developer promising to replace an underused parking lot or clump of trees with a cookie-cutter apartment complex or bigger, better convenience store is a formula for ruining the feeling that makes our city special.

Homelessness

I’ve been noticing this summer more people who don’t appear to have anywhere else to go than I’ve seen in past years, hanging out in City Park and around the library and on benches downtown. I haven’t had time yet to talk about this development with city officials, but I wonder whether readers have any of their own observations and thoughts about what, if anything, the city should do about this.

This man was pushing and pulling his belongings along the sidewalk past one of the plazas at the edge of City Park on a recent afternoon.

I don’t know if any of these folks are homeless, but they were among the growing number of people who are spending hours in City Park each day, seemingly with nowhere else to go.

In a development that I suspect is related, I’ve also noticed more trash in the park this summer, both in the trash cans and on the ground.