The Town Board has approved plans for a large granite identification sign at the main entrance to the Luther Forest Technology Campus, and a free-standing monument sign at the Stonebreak Road entrance.
The sign plan was approved at a meeting June 6, in anticipation that GlobalFoundries will seek a temporary certificate of occupancy for its Fab 8 computer chip plant next week.
The tech campus zoning requires the sign plan be approved before the first certificate of occupancy for a business at the campus is issued.
Under the plan, the main campus entrance on Route 67 near Round Lake will have a large sign with “Luther Forest Technology Campus” appearing in granite laid into an earth berm. Trees would be planted on top of the berm.
“We wanted to keep it simple, elegant, and maintainable,” said C. Michael Ingersoll, a principal in the LA Group of Saratoga Springs, which developed the sign plan.
“I think it’s wonderful. It sets a tone for people who are entering the campus,” said town Building and Planning Director Tony Tozzi, who recommended the LA Group’s plans be approved.
The plan’s goal is to ensure consistency in signs throughout the 1,414-acre campus, even though it may eventually contain dozens of different businesses.
“What we didn’t want is each business plunking down its own sign, when it’s obviously a whole,” Ingersoll said.
Smaller monument signs are planned at the Stonebreak Road entrance and at the Cold Springs Road campus entrance in Stillwater.
Luther Forest Technology Campus President Michael Relyea said he hopes the entrance signs will be installed in 2012, though it will depend on securing funding.
“It’s all tied to development. Development raises funding,” Relyea said Tuesday.
Inside the campus, there will be signs on the internal road system to direct people to particular businesses or areas of the campus. The signs will be consistent in appearance, using earth tones.
The campus, which began $80 million in major infrastructure construction in 2008, is nearing completion. Kubricky Construction of Queensbury is currently building roundabouts at the Route 67 and Stonebreak road entrances that will complete the road system. They are due to open this summer and fall.
Town officials hope completion of those roundabouts will alleviate a problem with construction workers using Dunning Street, which runs through the Luther Forest housing development. Some residents have complained about the extra traffic, according to town officials.
Earlier environmental studies emphasized that there should be efforts to keep technology campus traffic off Dunning Street.
But with more than 1,000 construction workers and hundreds of GlobalFoundries employees now at the campus, and construction work under way at the roundabouts, many of the workers are using Dunning Street.
“If the roundabouts were done, I don’t think the problem on Dunning Street would be anywhere near what it is,” Tozzi said.
Town Supervisor Paul Sausville said the town can ask GlobalFoundries and the construction contractors for voluntary compliance, but probably doesn’t have any enforcement power.
The $4.6 billion GlobalFoundries plant is about to start installing manufacturing tools, in anticipation of commercial production in late 2012.
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