A project including a major new hotel and 344 apartments on one of the largest remaining pieces of available land in downtown Malta is moving close to town planning approval.
The town Planning Board on Tuesday will hold a public hearing on conceptual plans submitted by developer Robert Miller Jr., a principal in Windsor Development Corp. of Clifton Park.
A Windsor subsidiary, Malta Land I, owns 46 acres off Route 67, at the northeast corner of Northway Exit 12. Windsor applied for approval in 2014, and made amendments in February as the project moved through the planning process.
Windsor has owned most of the land for a number of years, and in 2004 failed to win approval for a large apartment complex there. Since then, Windsor has developed part of the residential neighborhood located on Kelch Drive along with a dental office, and cleared trees from much of the land, including the land boarding the Dunning Street Cemetery.
The proposal coming before the Planning Board for review includes a four-story, 121-room hotel and eleven multi-family buildings with 168 single-bedroom apartments., and 176 two-bedroom units. There are also planned to be four two-story mixed use buildings, and a single-story building with one or more shops.
Kelch Drive would be developed into an entrance road, and another entrance would extend from Kendall Way, which now ends behind the Price Chopper in the Shops of Malta development.
The location is in the downtown zone where Malta has a “formed-based code,” which allows high-density development as long as the developer meets detailed building design guidelines. The Planning Board reviews those projects, but the town planning staff can approve them.
The location is also just across Route 67 from the Malta Commons Business Park, where a second hotel is already under construction.
Malta has seen a huge increase in demand for both hotel rooms and apartments since the arrival of the GlobalFoundries computer chip plant in 2009.
A number of previously approved large-scale apartment projects are currently under construction in and around the downtown area, particularly along Route 9 south of the Route 67 intersection.
The Planning Board meeting will be at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Town Hall.
Reach Gazette reporter Stephen Williams at 395-3086, swilliams@dailygazette,net or @gazettesteve on Twitter.
