Scotia mayor wants new Village Hall

The village Fire Department was built in 1909 to hold horse-drawn fire wagons. With a basement below, its modern firetrucks have to be specially designed so they won’t break through the concrete floor.

At the connecting Village Hall, there’s no elevator to the upstairs courtroom, so when people unable to walk up the 16 stairs are summoned to court, the judge has to come to them.

In a rush to find a bathroom? Try Stewart’s across the street. The only restrooms at Village Hall are in the Police Department, and those aren’t open to the public.

Those limitations are a few reasons why

Mayor Kris Kastberg, whose own office doubles as a jury room during trials, says a new Village Hall and Fire Department are needed. The mayor, re-elected to his third, four-year term in November, has a vision for what the new facilities would look like.

Kastberg said he would like to see a new Village Hall, including the Police Department and courtroom, built next to the Schenectady County Public Library’s Scotia branch on Mohawk Avenue in Collins Park in the same architectural style as the library. That portion of the park is currently used for the Memorial Day service.

The old Village Hall located behind the Fire Department would be torn down, and the firehouse would be expanded into that space to house a larger apparatus bay and showers, he said. The current firehouse, an iconic part of the village at the corner of Mohawk Avenue and Ten Broeck Street, would be renovated to house new offices, living quarters and storage space for the Fire Department, and its brick facade would be preserved, he said. The mayor also envisions that the station’s large garage door would become two rounded doors, a throwback to when the building stored fire carriages.

Kastberg said the idea to build new village facilities is not new. In the 1980s, a laundromat was demolished to make way for an addition, but that space was instead turned into a municipal lot.

“As far back as 1931 there was a realization that the facilities weren’t adequate for the village,” Kastberg said, referring to a recommendation from the Village Board at the time.

In 2002, a referendum to bond for money to build a new firehouse and renovate Village Hall was soundly defeated by the residents, he said. But, the mayor said, the new facilities are needed now more than ever, with the onset of new federal regulations regarding handicap accessibility, and the need for separate interview spaces for juvenile suspects and others. The village has been grandfathered in for a variety of standards Village Hall doesn’t meet, he said.

The 2002 proposal was also “over the top,” Kastberg said, and he is asking department heads to review that proposal and “come back with realistic needs.”

“The feeling is now that the scars have healed from that,” the mayor said. “Our needs are still here, and they’re worse than they ever were, and so we’re going to embark on a plan that financially makes sense for the village and see if it floats with residents.”

Such a plan would require the village to bond for the money, which would need the support of village residents through a referendum vote, Kastberg said. He said he hopes a design, which would determine the project’s cost, can be completed by the end of the year.

Glenville Supervisor Chris Koetzle said he wants the village’s plans to incorporate the town’s needs for its own facility upgrades. He said he has discussed with Kastberg the idea of a single municipal center for village and town services to be built in the village.

But Kastberg has been wary of the idea. Koetzle said if the village isn’t willing to embark on a joint facility, the town will consider sharing space with a private entity.

“The town will not do a facility alone,” he said. “We will share our capital costs with someone.”

Koetzle said the town’s Municipal Center on Glenridge Road, which includes police and court services, is “at the end of its useful life.” Among the building’s problems: the heating and cooling system doesn’t work properly, the roof is leaking, the parking lot needs to be redone and the space itself, originally built for a movie theater, is inefficient for the town’s operations. Koetzle also said the town is far more developed now than it was in the 1980s when the building was first used by the town.

“We have outgrown our facilities,” he said. “They’re inefficient. They’re not effective for us.”

Koetzle said people don’t come to Village and Town Hall like they used to, as services like license renewal or paying tax bills are being made available online. He said the facilities are no longer the centers of their respective communities, so it would make sense to have one, more efficient, space to serve both municipalities.

“We’re not seeing the same amount of people coming to these facilities as we used to, so we have to think creatively about how we can design space and use space where we can share the cost,” he said.

Koetzle said the town has had inquiries from developers about the Municipal Center property, which is in a desirable spot. The town would consider selling if the town’s facilities moved elsewhere, Koetzle said.

“It would be a real possibility,” he said.

Kastberg, however, said such a project would be much bigger and more costly than rebuilding Village Hall, and would thus be less likely to receive the support of residents. He said the dual building would need more meeting rooms, more court rooms and need to accommodate two police departments.

“All a sudden you’re looking at a lot of space,” he said.

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