By Paul Post
By some estimates there are 1,500 unfilled jobs in and around Saratoga Springs including vital positions such as teachers, police, firefighters, nurses and public works employees.
Part of the problem, local officials say, stems from lack of housing that allows people to live where they work.
A Central New York firm’s proposal, called Liberty Saratoga Apartments, could help the situation by providing 212 affordable housing units at the corner of Jefferson Street and Crescent Avenue, near Saratoga Casino Hotel.
“The need is huge,” said Stephanie Ferradino, an attorney for Rome, N.Y.-based Liberty Affordable Housing Inc. “The more housing we have, the better able we are to meet that need. Look at the hospitality industry. So many restaurants now aren’t open seven days per week, in part because they can’t find the staff.”
Ferradino, of Saratoga Springs, said the 250-unit Intrada Apartments off West Avenue had a wait list of 300 applicants last summer.
“They’re full,” she said. “They went to capacity almost as soon as they were built.
Likewise, the new Promenade Apartments on West Circular Street are full with a wait list that exceeds the project’s 63 units, she said.
Ferradino is handling land-use issues for Liberty’s project, which was first proposed and rejected by the city Planning Board several years ago because the company sought a zoning change that would have affected all equine zones within the city. Planners also weren’t pleased with the original architectural design.
The firm went back to the drawing board and in late December the city Zoning Board approved a change from rural residential to urban residential (UR-4), which only affects the parcel where apartments would be built. UR-4 accommodates a mix of single-, two-family and multi-family residential uses.
Ferradino said plans call for 10 three-bedroom apartments, with the remainder split evenly between one- and two-bedroom units.
But groundbreaking might be up to two years away because the recent zoning change is just one of several approvals required for the project to move forward. The next step would be for the Zoning Board to approve a height variance (apartments would be in two four-story buildings) followed by site plan review.
“Once we get site plan approval, we can’t just start to build,” Ferradino said. “Local approval is just one component. Because it’s affordable housing, they (Liberty) need to go through the state to deal with the financing because the state is the entity that loans money for affordable housing.
“That really depends on where you are in the queue and how interested the community is,” she said. “Sometimes that makes a difference. There are a bunch of different factors.”
Affordable housing differs from low-income housing in which rents are subsidized. But with affordable housing, rent is controlled based on an individual’s income level, which typically ranges from about $45,000 to $80,000 for this type of project.