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SCCC to break ground on $20M dorm
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
SCHENECTADY — Schenectady County Community College officials expect to break ground later this month on a $20 million dormitory for 313 students next to the campus. The building is expected to open in time for classes in September 2009. The college needs student housing to remain competitive, officials said. The massive 105,000-square-foot, five-story building will help SCCC increase enrollment, help provide additional college revenues and help spur further development along lower State Street, county officials said. Schenectady County legislators plan to set the project in motion by creating a local development corporation at their meeting Aug. 12. They discussed the proposal in committee Monday night. Once established, the LDC will issue tax-exempt bonds to the developers, Columbia Development Companies and BBL Construction Services. The college itself is prohibited from building or contracting for housing, so its foundation is running the project. Before January, the Schenectady County Industrial Development Authority would have issued the bonds. But state law changed then, preventing IDAs from issuing them to nonprofits. Hence the need for the LDC. “We are standing on the edge and ready to move forward. We need the LDC,” said Ray Gillen, chairman of the Metroplex Development Authority. Metroplex is working with the developers on the dormitory project. “This is a major project for Schenectady. It is in a good location and it will jump start development on lower State Street at no cost to the county,” Gillen said. Legislator Gary Hughes, D-Schenectady, chairman of the Legislature’s Education Committee and an SCCC trustee, said, “Student housing is integral. We have some programs that have potential to attract students from out of the area and the state.” The county owns the land at 117 Washington Ave. on which the dormitory will be built and the building will revert to county ownership once the bonds are paid off. The county will have no liability over the bonds and the bond issuance will affect the county’s bond debt ceiling, said Schenectady County Finance Commissioner George Davidson. Officials said the college foundation and a private bank are backing the bonds. Hughes said easily accessible and affordable student housing would attract students to the college’s flagship programs in culinary arts, aviation and music. Student housing could also help reduce the amount of money the county spends in chargebacks, Hughes said. Through chargebacks, students can attend and pay in-district tuition at a community college outside their home district if they are pursuing a certificate or degree. Chargebacks are available only when the home community college does not offer the certificate or degree program. Hughes said the county, which is responsible for the cost, is spending $2.3 million on tuition paid to other counties in chargebacks this year. “The logical strategy is to increase the amount the money to our own college by enticing our own residents seeking community college education to remain and to entice other students to come here,” Hughes said. Hughes offered no guarantees the county would pass any chargeback savings to the college. “I would suggest the savings would go to the college. And I would prefer that it not go to the county,” he said. “We will have more wide ranging discussion on this.” The college struggled financially for several years and has used its surplus to close annual revenue gaps. This year, college trustees asked the county to boost its annual sponsorship contribution by $120,000. The county Legislature responded with an $80,000 increase, bringing its annual contribution to approximately $2 million. Legislators will vote on the proposal next week. Davidson said the college can no longer afford to tap its surplus each year. At the current rate, the fund balance would disappear in two years. It will contain $1.3 million next year. Hughes is suggesting the college undertake a marketing survey to determine why residents go elsewhere for their education and what SCCC could do to make itself more attractive. “This is my idea, but I am one voice. We can look at what the gaps are and whether we doing everything we can to offer education in areas directly connected to job growth in area, such as green power and renewable energy,” Hughes said. The housing project is tied into a strategy by the land-locked college to expand into Washington Avenue area. The area contains the former Armory and several parking lots. The college hopes to use the armory for its sports program, add additional structures there and connect the section to the main campus by a bridge. The city’s Zoning Board of Appeals will review the student housing project on Wednesday. The college is seeking two variances. One would allow the building to have 18 parking spaces where 78 are required. The other would allow the building’s primary entrance to be located not facing Washington Avenue. The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in Room 110 of City Hall. Get ALL of our news...Click here to subscribe to our online edition, a complete replica of our print edition.
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July 4, 2009
9:07 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
i am very bothered by this whole situation. i have been a resident of schenectady living in the more poverty stricken areas. houses out here run between 25,000 and 70,000 dollars. the property taxes alone will kill you. and let's face it, no one wants to live in schenectady. in a city where the reality is ongoing violence, drugs, prostitution, and a corrupt police force that can barely protect the average hard-working citizen, we choose to invest 20 million dollars into a college dorm. schenectady community college is not even that large of a campus. the city residents are being raped in taxes because the city is broke and has no income. but how are we supposed to be able to fund 20 million dollars to a project that is only going to house 315 students at a two-year COMMUNITY college?! i am very sure that we could put that 20 million dollars to other uses other than a dormitory for college students.
10 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
Voodoochild, I hope to lessen your concern. The $20 million sum is the amount of the bond financing. Bonds are just another type of loan. The lender is the investor who buys the bonds, typically a large pension fund or financial institution. The borrower is the LDC and the college's foundation. The payments on the loan come from the rents students pay. It might help to think of the $20 million as all the rents those 315 students will pay for the next 30 years. The county is not funding the project and it has no $20 million that it could put to other uses.
As to why nobody wants to live in downtown Schenectady, there is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn't there? They don't want to live there because there isn't any nice housing and there isn't any nice housing because people don't want to live there. This type of project could help break that cycle.
6:56 p.m. [ Suggest removal ]
i appreciate your commentary. and i do understand what you are saying about the funding and everything else. i am only 20 years old, so i guess i didn't understand. as to the second part of your commentary, i don't believe that this project will break the cycle of people not wanting to live in schenectady. schenectady is ruined. i don't believe this town will ever come back from the hell that has been infused into it. thank you.
3:28 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
I don't think thats true. I think no matter how messy something gets you can always clean it back up again.
If we can get people to stop thinking like voodoochild, than this city could come back, and it takes the ingenuity of programs like this one to do so. There was a time that the streets of Schenectady were the equivalent to those of downtown Manhattan at 5:00. I think that potential still lives within this city. Once you have something like that its always there. It may lay DORMant for a while, but its still there. And its up to us to revive it, because we all live here, so we need to start taking responsibility for our community. And as the buildings go up so will the prosperity, and when the prosperity goes up the drug and crime rate will go down. Because no drug dealer is trying to live in a rich well to do town were its citizens are looked after by not only the police force but one another. And that it is how it started, it only took one of them and they scared all of that away from us that we once had. With that said I will have to agree with you, this project isn't going to break the cycle, it's going to bring the people here that can, the question you need to ask yourself voodoochild, is can you? will you be part of that change. If you can make one person believe who isn't a believer and all it takes is one, than imagine what can happen when we bring 313 of those people together.