This plan is dead on arrival. Not one business on Erie Blvd supports it. First National Bank will leave if it proceeds. The Gun Shop has left for Troy and Amsterdam. Sue the City before they destroy your business too. The answer to these idiots is always new curbing, bike paths, planters AND higher taxes and fees. Anything that discourages customers. The same failed dusty plans over and over.

     Nobody, except Son of Sam and a couple rubber stamps on the do nothing City Council, is pushing this idiotic "plan". Stop wasting time on this nonsense. Plenty of real issues from the failure to reform the Police Department to your failed reassessment fiasco. Move on.

basically they dont want drive-thru traffic....they want park and walk downtown.....NYC anyone? although not, nor ever will be NYC
the only other option would be college town traffic.....the days of old are gone and those in driver's seat of the past
have taken and sown exactly what they are getting.........time to move on.......

Quoted from senders

basically they dont want drive-thru traffic....they want park and walk downtown.....NYC anyone? although not, nor ever will be NYC
the only other option would be college town traffic.....the days of old are gone and those in driver's seat of the past
have taken and sown exactly what they are getting.........time to move on.......

very well said....Bravo

I am with Captain America. The urban schemers and controllers are nutjob liberals who envision a day without automobiles. There will be anarchy before the politicians get to take away our cars. Wait and see. This is America and Americans love the open road and their cars. Europeans may take well to being encapsulated and enslaved by their dictators but the people with guts left there and deposited their genes HERE, leaving the wimps and inbred peasants to squirm there and be overridden by Muslims, trapped like rats in their ghettos where they will soon be segregated and abused by their 'Turk' conquerors. Kind of sad but they get what they deserve.

Americans don't give up their right to self defense, or their right to drive the highways and byways. Sorry, Somebody, it ain't happening.

Ok...so make up my mind. Years ago everything was park and walk. You either drove or took a bus downtown and walked to all of thestores on state street. People who worked at GE walked up Erie blvd to state street everyday on lunch break.

In Rotterdam, everyone went to shoporama. Everyone walked to crane street (when it was safe) and shopped in the great little businesses there. There use to be 'park and walk'. So what happened? MALLS AND BIG BOX STORES! Yup...and that just about killed off all the mom and pop small businesses. So now we do park and walk....through the malls.

I'm sure there are other areas, but Saratoga comes to mind on how they kept the integrity of their downtown area. People still park and walk in Saratoga.

So are they just trying to bring back 'the good old days'?

No.....just,,,,'nothing new under the sun'.....and we are fickle....next park and walk generation, on deck.......let's see who
hits the homerun....it will be easy.....
runs batted in:

1.national healthcare
2.bios info for paychecks/punching in out
3.Real ID for travel
4.continuous information/contact via u-tube facebook, ie: lack of privacy and lovin' it like a good American Idol should

sh*t....and we're worried about a stupid round about?

Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
City might seize Erie parcels
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

City officials may use eminent domain to seize two Erie Boulevard properties needed for a massive road reconstruction project, including the Adult World bookstore and the former location of Special Arms & Munitions. The grant-funded reconstruction also will require property owned by Schenectady County and Pantalone Construction, but the acquisition will not involve demolishing structures.
    Members of the City Council have scheduled a public hearing for next month to discuss taking the properties as part of the $14 million project.
    Scott Lewendon, a landscape architect from Clough Harbour & Associates, said Adult World and the now-vacant gun shop will need to be demolished for the project. He said the buildings stand in the way of realigning South Ferry Street so that the “safety and operations” of the thoroughfare can be improved.
    “There’s a need to realign the central intersection so that it’s perpendicular to Erie Boulevard,” he said following the City Council’s committee meetings Monday. “It’s the best way to design a highway and street.”
    But Adult World owner Rocco Palmer has no intention of relinquishing the store he has occupied.................>>>>....................>>>>>.............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....3&Continuation=1

Quoted Text

Adult business owner says he's not departing
As city sets hearing on acquiring buildings, a note of defiance raised

By LAUREN STANFORTH, Staff writer
First published in print: Tuesday, July 7, 2009

SCHENECTADY -- The city is starting proceedings to tear down one of its last adult bookstores.
     
City leaders have said for years they need to raze Another World bookstore and a neighboring gun shop as part of the planned $14 million reconstruction of Erie Boulevard.

Now that the project's final designs are in place, the City Council Monday night formally called for a public hearing on the acquisition of the properties from owner Rocky Palmer. The public hearing will take place Aug. 10.

Palmer, a well-known local figure who opened his first nightclub in the 1940s, said he will not sell the buildings to the city. He said the city is manipulating Erie Boulevard's redesign to justify the demolition. The gun shop that rented space from Palmer has already moved out. Schenectady Corporation Counsel L. John Van Norden has said if Palmer will not negotiate, the city will begin eminent domain proceedings to seize the property for a public purpose.

There is only one other adult bookstore left in the city on Altamont Avenue.

"Am I going to sit down in a chair and go to hell?" Palmer said about not retiring from the adult bookstore business. "I can still go three rounds with the best of them."

City Council members Monday night simply voted on scheduling the public hearing and did not discuss it.

Scott Lewendon, one of the project's designers from Clough Harbour and Associates, said Palmer's buildings need to be removed to make the boulevard's intersection with South Ferry Street a conventional one in which the streets are perpendicular to one another.

Mayor Brian U. Stratton has pointed to a settlement Palmer signed in 2005 that allowed Palmer to buy property on State Street in exchange for acknowledging that one day the city would attempt to take the Erie Boulevard property by eminent domain.
................>>>>..............>>>>.............http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=817224

I would appear the only reason for wasting 14 million dollars on the Erie Blvd remake is to push the adult bookstore out of business and are bent on doing just that no matter what it takes.

This is just wrong on so many levels.  No matter what you think of the bookstore (I may agree with you) - doing it this way just to close them down isn't right.  If the improvements ARE done, they'll loose Sunoco.  Then what?

Ya, that's economic development.

The city itself isn't doing any improvements to Erie, or State. It's Metroplex doing it - let THEM evict or force out by eminent domain WHEN there's an approved project in place.  

How old is Mr.Palmer??? Is he willing the business to offspring?? Although I dont agree with 'the bookstore' or eminent
domain.....why not take the deal??? He's almost OUTA HERE anyhow-----1940's.....yay,,,,give your ideas then move along....
it's 2009........

The mouthpiece for the developers actually had the nerve to state on CBS-6 that this idiotic, auto unfriendly plan will "create jobs"! LOL!

    How do you create jobs when every business on Erie Blvd. has announced they are moving if Son of Sam's stunad plan continues? No matter what anyone says they continue to push this (check out the hacks on their website). Nobody wants this. It will be another nightmare like State St-permanently removing customers and businesses. Many are hanging on by a thread. The rubber stamps on the pathetic City Council need to kill this-stop paying planners for something that will never occur. Kill it at the next meeting.

Quoted Text

SCHENECTADY
Erie Boulevard redesign changes
Adult bookstore owner to oppose latest plan at Monday public hearing

BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
Reach Gazette reporter Kathleen Moore at 395-3120 or moore@dailygazette.com.

    The Erie Boulevard plan is evolving yet again, this time losing the access road that could have taken some tractor-trailers off the busy thoroughfare.
    To make room for the access road, the city would have demolished parts of several businesses and taken valuable backlot parking spaces from them. Business owners protested vehemently.
    Mayor Brian U. Stratton said he’s abandoned that idea now.
    “We’re holding off on the access road at the request of some of the business owners,” he said. “It could still be done — in the distant future.”
    The next step in the plan is Monday’s public hearing on whether to seize and demolish two businesses — an adult bookstore and the nearby former gun store. The owners of the gun business have moved it to Perth in anticipation of seizure. Another World bookstore owner Rocco Palmer owns both buildings.
    The City Council will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Monday at City Hall. The council will consider whether to take the buildings through eminent domain, which gives the government the authority to buy property at fair market value for public benefit even though the owner doesn’t want to sell.
    Palmer and his attorney plan to speak publicly against eminent domain at the hearing. Palmer has offered to give the city permission to demolish 25 square feet of his bookstore instead, which he believes would allow for the planned improvement of the intersection near his store. That intersection has been deemed unsafe, which gives the city grounds to take Palmer’s property.
    He’s hoping his proposal will be an acceptable compromise, but at a meeting a week ago, city officials didn’t seem interested, he said.
    “They showed me property behind the Gazette building [off Maxon Road Extension]. They want to get me off Erie Boulevard,” Palmer said.
    The Maxon Road Extension area is one of the few parts of the city zoned to allow adult businesses under relatively new rules. Palmer’s Erie Boulevard store opened before that zoning was enacted, so it is allowed to remain.
    He could also move to a property he owns on Broadway, but he leases that to a welding company with 13 employees. He doesn’t want to evict them, and the neighbors don’t want an adult business there, he said. .......................>>>>.................................>>>>.............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01501&AppName=1