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Have they ever fixed the leaking sewer mains? They could use the money for that.
I want to say they did fix the ones toward the east side of the city but I can't imagine that's all of them. There's been construction on route 5 on the other end of the city which I'm assuming is for sewer lines. They pretty much dug up the entire road.
But I agree, they should be fixing essentials like that instead of that downtown.
A vision of the future in Troy: Behind the $2 million plan to create an AI center
Mint green walls. Doors with no knobs. An events hall with art deco details, columns, 150 green plush seats and an altar. Decades of dust and old county records.
This is the proposed future home of the AI Center of Excellence, a new artificial intelligence office and research space in downtown Troy that’s attracting the attention of Microsoft, Columbia University, IBM, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and others.
Plans are moving forward to transform the current senior center and former Masonic Temple at 19 Third St. into a $2 million artificial intelligence center. It is bringing together local and national business leaders to research and develop new AI technologies.
It is an ambitious project and hard to imagine what the center could look like in its current state as the county’s senior center.
Bob Bedard and Rensselaer County have the vision.
Bedard of DeFacto Global came up with the idea for the new AI center while he was integrating AI into his company’s software product.
Bob Pasinella, executive director of the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency, had thoughts of developing a similar plan and energized the project.
The AI center would include event space, an AI lab, open and shared offices for AI companies and startups, and a café and expo inspired by Silicon Valley coffee houses.
“We had the idea for the center, we walked through [the former Masonic Temple] and said, ‘I can see it,’” Bedard said during a tour of the building built in the 1920s. “When I go into a building, I like to say, ‘How can I use this space without gutting it?’ Here you can fit your business model into the space, and this space fits well. There are different floors for different functions. We’ll come in, do what we need to do to get it functional and evolve it over time.”
Artificial intelligence touches every industry, from manufacturing and banking to construction, public transportation and even hospitality. It is changing the way we work and creating new careers. From smart thermostats to self-driving cars and customer service bots, artificial intelligence is becoming a regular part of our lives.
Businesses, colleges and universities across the country are realizing the importance of investing in AI research. Just this week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a particularly ambitious step, investing $1 billion into a new college focused on artificial intelligence.
AI is projected to create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, while eliminating 1.8 million others, according to a report from Gartner. Health care, the public sector and education will see growing job demand while manufacturing will be hit the hardest.
Bedard said Troy’s AI center will target mid to large companies throughout the country, focusing on life sciences, finance and tax, microchip development and energy. He envisions the center as the go-to place for artificial intelligence research in upstate New York.
Bedard plans to build off the partnerships that he has from DeFacto Global, which has hundreds of companies using its software. Columbia University also has relationships with businesses. Bedard is confident they will attract more. He announced the project this week to a national audience at a conference in Phoenix.
“We want to drive an ecosystem and hope this becomes a focal point for starting that ecosystem around here,” Bedard said. “That’s why we’re doing an inclusive model. We didn’t just want it to be DeFacto. We’ll be here, but we want other companies to be here, too, and universities to be here and spaces for startups.”
The project would put the 34,000-square-foot building on a prominent block in downtown Troy back on the tax roll.
It would turn an underused senior center, with only six jobs and no parking, into a high-tech job creator with potential for more than 70 jobs in its first five years.
The location, at 19 Third St., is in the middle of one of the most vibrant and growing technology job centers in the area, surrounded by video game companies, software startups and incubators.
Bedard, who is in his 60s, has roots in Troy. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and has a master’s in marketing from Columbia University. He has worked with Prodigy Communications, The Bank of New York Mellon and IBM.
He started his first company, Praxinet, in the late 1990s as a technology consulting firm. DeFacto Global spun out of that work.
Bedard has split time between Troy and Connecticut for the past two years. Since relocating his business to Troy, Bedard has bought several buildings, including a church that he has turned into artist studios.
He has history with the former Masonic Temple, the future location of the AI Center. Bedard was initiated into his fraternity, Sigma Chi, in the main hall when he was attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Bedard is in the process of figuring out how the space will be utilized.
He imagines coworking-type spaces on the second floor. Transforming the third floor hall into an event space to host conferences and presentations. A cafeteria where the soup kitchen stands. The building has a few retail stores for the cafe and an area that they could display artificial intelligence technologies.
Bedard is applying for a grant of $381,000 from Empire State Development through his company, 12th Street Ventures LLC, as part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s annual state money competition. It is a priority project for the Capital Region. The grant application said the project would create 73 jobs and 10 construction jobs. The state usually announces which projects will receive grant funding at its annual game-show like presentation in early December.
The total project cost for the AI Center is around $2 million. It includes acquisition of the building, engineering and design, renovations and operating expenses. It is also requesting $300,000 from Rensselaer County, and has more than $650,000 from private investors.
Bedard said many of the improvements would be cosmetic — painting walls, installing air conditioning, cleaning up the main hall to host events.
Rensselaer County Legislature has started the process of transferring the property to the new satellite group of the Rensselaer County IDA that will make it easier to attract funding and grants. County officials say it allows more flexibility in managing the property in case there is a decision to sell it. Before that happens, they would have to find a new location for the senior center.
The county has been looking to move the senior center for a few years. As downtown Troy has seen more people living and working around the current senior center, participation has dropped because of difficulties in finding parking.
There was another proposal a year ago to sell the building at 19 Third St. to developer David Bryce for $575,000 to turn it into new office space. When that deal did not work out, the county looked for other uses, said Jay Sherman, who is the Empire Zone coordinator for the IDA.
“People said this would be a great apartment building, but there’s plenty of apartment developers. We wanted jobs,” Sherman said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for jobs in AI. That’s the important thing for us. It is a big and growing market and there’s a lot of interest and demand.”
$23 million Schenectady train station opens Wednesday
The new $23 million Schenectady Amtrak station opens Wednesday, about a month ahead of schedule.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul came to the station Wednesday morning to make the announcement.
"There is a serious change going on in Schenectady," said Hochul, a Democrat from the Buffalo area.
Hochul talked about recent projects in Schenectady, like the $480 million Rivers Casino and Mohawk Harbor development on Erie Boulevard, $25 million Mill Artisan District project and $20 million Electric City Apartments on State Street.
Those are all signs of the revitalization of Schenectady's downtown, Hochul said.
"It's also attracting the young people who are fortunate to go to Union College or get a degree from the community college," Hochul said. "There's not just new housing here for them, and new amenities and a new cool vibe, there's also jobs. So the jobs are now coming back with tech and incubators and that's what's so important to create this whole formula, this holistic approach to bringing back a community."
Mark Eagan, the Capital Region Chamber CEO; Ray Gillen, chairman of Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority; Steady Moono, president of Schenectady County Community College; and David Harris, president of Union College, attended the announcement.
Representatives including Congressman Paul Tonko, Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy and Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, a Democrat of Rotterdam, were also present.
"It's a great economic multiplier for our regional economy, for the state economy, and for the tourism industry, which is a prime industry in this state," said Tonko, a Democrat of Amsterdam. Tonko frequently travels between this region and Washington on Amtrak.
Construction on the new station started in January.
Murnane Building Contractors Inc. of Plattsburgh built the station. Bette & Cring LLC of Latham worked on the first phase of the project to demolish the former station.
The state provided $17 million toward construction costs and $2 million toward engineering services and other costs. The Federal Railroad Administration spent $3.6 million on the project. Amtrak provided $220,000. The Metroplex provided $48,000.
The state money is part of a series of investments Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made in infrastructure around New York. The state is also investing $72 million in improvements at Albany International Airport.
$23 million Schenectady train station opens Wednesday
The new $23 million Schenectady Amtrak station opens Wednesday, about a month ahead of schedule.
Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul came to the station Wednesday morning to make the announcement.
"There is a serious change going on in Schenectady," said Hochul, a Democrat from the Buffalo area.
Hochul talked about recent projects in Schenectady, like the $480 million Rivers Casino and Mohawk Harbor development on Erie Boulevard, $25 million Mill Artisan District project and $20 million Electric City Apartments on State Street.
Those are all signs of the revitalization of Schenectady's downtown, Hochul said.
"It's also attracting the young people who are fortunate to go to Union College or get a degree from the community college," Hochul said. "There's not just new housing here for them, and new amenities and a new cool vibe, there's also jobs. So the jobs are now coming back with tech and incubators and that's what's so important to create this whole formula, this holistic approach to bringing back a community."
Mark Eagan, the Capital Region Chamber CEO; Ray Gillen, chairman of Schenectady Metroplex Development Authority; Steady Moono, president of Schenectady County Community College; and David Harris, president of Union College, attended the announcement.
Representatives including Congressman Paul Tonko, Schenectady Mayor Gary McCarthy and Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara, a Democrat of Rotterdam, were also present.
"It's a great economic multiplier for our regional economy, for the state economy, and for the tourism industry, which is a prime industry in this state," said Tonko, a Democrat of Amsterdam. Tonko frequently travels between this region and Washington on Amtrak.
Construction on the new station started in January.
Murnane Building Contractors Inc. of Plattsburgh built the station. Bette & Cring LLC of Latham worked on the first phase of the project to demolish the former station.
The state provided $17 million toward construction costs and $2 million toward engineering services and other costs. The Federal Railroad Administration spent $3.6 million on the project. Amtrak provided $220,000. The Metroplex provided $48,000.
The state money is part of a series of investments Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made in infrastructure around New York. The state is also investing $72 million in improvements at Albany International Airport.
A vision of the future in Troy: Behind the $2 million plan to create an AI center
Mint green walls. Doors with no knobs. An events hall with art deco details, columns, 150 green plush seats and an altar. Decades of dust and old county records.
This is the proposed future home of the AI Center of Excellence, a new artificial intelligence office and research space in downtown Troy that’s attracting the attention of Microsoft, Columbia University, IBM, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and others.
Plans are moving forward to transform the current senior center and former Masonic Temple at 19 Third St. into a $2 million artificial intelligence center. It is bringing together local and national business leaders to research and develop new AI technologies.
It is an ambitious project and hard to imagine what the center could look like in its current state as the county’s senior center.
Bob Bedard and Rensselaer County have the vision.
Bedard of DeFacto Global came up with the idea for the new AI center while he was integrating AI into his company’s software product.
Bob Pasinella, executive director of the Rensselaer County Industrial Development Agency, had thoughts of developing a similar plan and energized the project.
The AI center would include event space, an AI lab, open and shared offices for AI companies and startups, and a café and expo inspired by Silicon Valley coffee houses.
“We had the idea for the center, we walked through [the former Masonic Temple] and said, ‘I can see it,’” Bedard said during a tour of the building built in the 1920s. “When I go into a building, I like to say, ‘How can I use this space without gutting it?’ Here you can fit your business model into the space, and this space fits well. There are different floors for different functions. We’ll come in, do what we need to do to get it functional and evolve it over time.”
Artificial intelligence touches every industry, from manufacturing and banking to construction, public transportation and even hospitality. It is changing the way we work and creating new careers. From smart thermostats to self-driving cars and customer service bots, artificial intelligence is becoming a regular part of our lives.
Businesses, colleges and universities across the country are realizing the importance of investing in AI research. Just this week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced a particularly ambitious step, investing $1 billion into a new college focused on artificial intelligence.
AI is projected to create 2.3 million jobs by 2020, while eliminating 1.8 million others, according to a report from Gartner. Health care, the public sector and education will see growing job demand while manufacturing will be hit the hardest.
Bedard said Troy’s AI center will target mid to large companies throughout the country, focusing on life sciences, finance and tax, microchip development and energy. He envisions the center as the go-to place for artificial intelligence research in upstate New York.
Bedard plans to build off the partnerships that he has from DeFacto Global, which has hundreds of companies using its software. Columbia University also has relationships with businesses. Bedard is confident they will attract more. He announced the project this week to a national audience at a conference in Phoenix.
“We want to drive an ecosystem and hope this becomes a focal point for starting that ecosystem around here,” Bedard said. “That’s why we’re doing an inclusive model. We didn’t just want it to be DeFacto. We’ll be here, but we want other companies to be here, too, and universities to be here and spaces for startups.”
The project would put the 34,000-square-foot building on a prominent block in downtown Troy back on the tax roll.
It would turn an underused senior center, with only six jobs and no parking, into a high-tech job creator with potential for more than 70 jobs in its first five years.
The location, at 19 Third St., is in the middle of one of the most vibrant and growing technology job centers in the area, surrounded by video game companies, software startups and incubators.
Bedard, who is in his 60s, has roots in Troy. He graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and has a master’s in marketing from Columbia University. He has worked with Prodigy Communications, The Bank of New York Mellon and IBM.
He started his first company, Praxinet, in the late 1990s as a technology consulting firm. DeFacto Global spun out of that work.
Bedard has split time between Troy and Connecticut for the past two years. Since relocating his business to Troy, Bedard has bought several buildings, including a church that he has turned into artist studios.
He has history with the former Masonic Temple, the future location of the AI Center. Bedard was initiated into his fraternity, Sigma Chi, in the main hall when he was attending Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Bedard is in the process of figuring out how the space will be utilized.
He imagines coworking-type spaces on the second floor. Transforming the third floor hall into an event space to host conferences and presentations. A cafeteria where the soup kitchen stands. The building has a few retail stores for the cafe and an area that they could display artificial intelligence technologies.
Bedard is applying for a grant of $381,000 from Empire State Development through his company, 12th Street Ventures LLC, as part of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s annual state money competition. It is a priority project for the Capital Region. The grant application said the project would create 73 jobs and 10 construction jobs. The state usually announces which projects will receive grant funding at its annual game-show like presentation in early December.
The total project cost for the AI Center is around $2 million. It includes acquisition of the building, engineering and design, renovations and operating expenses. It is also requesting $300,000 from Rensselaer County, and has more than $650,000 from private investors.
Bedard said many of the improvements would be cosmetic — painting walls, installing air conditioning, cleaning up the main hall to host events.
Rensselaer County Legislature has started the process of transferring the property to the new satellite group of the Rensselaer County IDA that will make it easier to attract funding and grants. County officials say it allows more flexibility in managing the property in case there is a decision to sell it. Before that happens, they would have to find a new location for the senior center.
The county has been looking to move the senior center for a few years. As downtown Troy has seen more people living and working around the current senior center, participation has dropped because of difficulties in finding parking.
There was another proposal a year ago to sell the building at 19 Third St. to developer David Bryce for $575,000 to turn it into new office space. When that deal did not work out, the county looked for other uses, said Jay Sherman, who is the Empire Zone coordinator for the IDA.
“People said this would be a great apartment building, but there’s plenty of apartment developers. We wanted jobs,” Sherman said. “There’s a lot of opportunity for jobs in AI. That’s the important thing for us. It is a big and growing market and there’s a lot of interest and demand.”
Admirable. It's unlikely to succeed in a meaningful way.
AI unlike say web development requires multiple experts, each with their own special skills. Web development needs someone with some hardware skills and lots of software skills. Easy to find someone with both skill sets.
AI needs someone who understands the non-computer input (be it linguistics, human behavior or psychology (in driving), material science behavior if you are going to use AI in a chemical factory for example), someone who converts that information into the 0 and 1's that the software can manipulate to use to draw conclusions from, someone who understands how to deliver the conclusions to the target human. Lastly, you need a team to do validation testing - lots of it.
I don't think you will find enough of those specialists in Albany.
Admirable. It's unlikely to succeed in a meaningful way.
AI unlike say web development requires multiple experts, each with their own special skills. Web development needs someone with some hardware skills and lots of software skills. Easy to find someone with both skill sets.
AI needs someone who understands the non-computer input (be it linguistics, human behavior or psychology (in driving), material science behavior if you are going to use AI in a chemical factory for example), someone who converts that information into the 0 and 1's that the software can manipulate to use to draw conclusions from, someone who understands how to deliver the conclusions to the target human. Lastly, you need a team to do validation testing - lots of it.
I don't think you will find enough of those specialists in Albany.
Well, the city has an institution that can produce that talent and it appears to be noticed by major tech companies. So, we will see what happens.
Troy's new design for One Monument Square will promise open space, parking and Hudson River views
This time, the city of Troy's proposal for One Monument Square is supposed to be what the people want: public space, views of the Hudson River and two levels of parking.
Those are some of the features in a new design the city will unveil in November at a public meeting. It follows a three-day design workshop this summer that brought together residents, business owners and designers to tackle what is arguably the city's most valuable and vexing piece of waterfront property downtown.
The event to show off the new design is open to the public and will be held at 7 p.m. Nov. 5, at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, 265 River St. in Troy. Officials will analyze project costs, available grant funding, and other factors necessary to move the project forward.
The city hired River Street Planning, along with the Place Alliance of Schenectady, to run the workshop in June that generated ideas from the public for how to use the 1.2 acres of developable space where City Hall once stood.
Over the past seven years it has laid vacant, and the city has followed a failing pattern of development attempts: issue a request for proposals, see what private developers come up with and hope the public likes what they see.
This summer's design workshop flipped the strategy, asking the public first in hopes of attracting a developer based on the design they create.
“Public engagement has been central to the redevelopment of One Monument Square, with hundreds of residents, business owners, and community stakeholders lending their voice to the discussion about the future of the site," Mayor Patrick Madden said in a statement. "We encourage everyone to attend and remain involved with the next steps of this exciting community-guided project.”
A huge potential development of the Kenwood Convent...
New $500 million vision for Albany's Kenwood Convent includes 2,224 apartments, condos
The owner of the former Kenwood Convent wants to make $500 million worth of changes to the wooded campus in Albany, turning it into an artists retreat with more than 2,000 apartments, condos, townhouses, two hotels, retail stores and other uses.
Kenwood Commons LLC submitted plans to the city showing about 35 new buildings on the secluded, 75-acre property between Southern Boulevard and South Pearl Street.
They include:
A seven-story, 209-room business-class hotel
A five-story, 366-room luxury hotel
1,867 condominiums/apartments
304 townhouses
53 units of "workforce" housing
A three-story performance center and restaurant
An art gallery, clinic, retail, community room/gym and parking garage totaling 437,760 square feet
Five structures would be demolished, but the convent and other buildings would be preserved, based on renderings by Anderson Anderson Architecture of San Francisco that can be seen here.
The project — if it happens — would transform the hillside near Thruway Exit 23 into a mixed-use artists retreat that blends the convent's historic buildings with modern housing and amenities such as a rooftop pool.
The developer, Jacob Frydman, a longtime real estate developer in Manhattan, declined comment. He referred questions to his consulting engineer, Dan Hershberg, of Albany.
"He's got a philosophy here that this will be more than just housing," Hershberg said. "It will be an arts community he thinks will attract people. There's a plan for scholars in residence, people that will come and stay for extended periods of time and do lectures and discussions that will be open to the public."
"He believes that will be the main driver to the initial developments of the site, and believes over a period of 10 years the rest of the site could be built," said Hershberg, a longtime engineer who has shepherded some of the largest commercial real estate developments in the region through the municipal approval process. "I just turned 78 and I've got to last until 88 to see this project through."
He said the architects, Anderson Anderson, are "world experts" on manufactured housing, a process that cuts costs by building housing, including the finishes, inside a factory and shipping it to the site where it's assembled.
"They believe the buildings on the master plan can all be built like that," Hershberg said.
Five buildings — a small, one-family home and two other residences; garage and boiler house — would be demolished. An archeological study determined one of the buildings may be historic. Even so, it could be torn down with permission from the city and state provided photos are taken to document the building.
Kenwood Commons LLC bought the former convent last year. It's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Frydco Capital Group LLC, which is controlled by Frydman.
Renovations have already started to convert three of the buildings — including the former abbey and Doane Stuart School — into 97 residential condominiums and three commercial condos that can house a spa, restaurant and artist's studio. The project is marketed online as The Abbey at Kenwood Commons.
It's unclear when the condos will be ready for sale. The state attorney general's office must first approve an offering plan.
Three contractors have filed liens claiming they weren’t paid for work on the property. Frydman has said he'll challenge the liens.
Hershberg will make a presentation to the Albany Planning Board on Nov. 15 seeking lead agency declaration under the state Environmental Quality Review Act.
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