TROY -- This riverside city is about to experience a "perfect storm." Anyone familiar with the 2000 motion picture of that name knows that is not a good thing.
First, the good news:
- The once down-at-the-heels Troy Plaza shopping complex, located on Hoosick Street (Route 7) just a quick hop from the Collar City Bridge. is bustling with shiny new businesses and signage under the name its new owners put on it, the Hudson River Commons.
- A Starbucks, the first such stand-alone venue in the city, is under construction at the Commons.
- A Sonic Drive-In will, if current contract negotiations come to fruition, be built on the Commons near the Starbucks project.
Now, the bad news:
- Hoosick Street itself.
Current traffic comes to a standstill from the bridge all the way out to the Brunswick town line and beyond despite a road-improvement project that took place on the eastern end of the road some years back. Getting in and out of many of the businesses that line the bustling thoroughfare -- a main route for suburban commuters, city dwellers and Vermont-bound motorists alike -- is a crapshoot, particularly during heavy commuter hours.
Starbucks undoubtedly will be a major draw once completed. It always is. Judging by the nearly orgasmic consumer and media response to the recent opening of the Sonic Drive-In in Latham, the first of many scheduled for the Capital Region, the crowds will appear when the Troy venue opens.
Preliminary plans call for improvement of vehicle access to the Commons. That's a given and a necessity. Even the developers of the McDonald's just up the street had to come up with some convoluted traffic solutions to projected congestion before their project received City approval.
What is not a given is the condition of Hoosick Street itself. The City's propensity for ignoring the horrendous conditions of the road surface there despite the cracks, potholes, fissures and gaps that dominate it, particularly at the foot of the bridge, borders on the criminal. Small children could disappear into some of the crevices there; certainly major increases in traffic will not do it any good.
There is a plan in the works to do some repairs, but until we actually see something being done, it's nothing to be excited by. Also, any bets that within less than six months of any resurfacing we won't be seeing work crews digging up spots for some overlooked utility or other work, patching them in a slapdash manner and then watching those areas begin to erode, taking the new surface materials with them? Since that is such a common occurrence throughout the area, count on it being replicated in Troy where street conditions rank 10th on a list of three things to do.
Commercial expansion outside of the bustling downtown area usually can be a good thing. But it should be predicated on the area being able to handle it. A Starbucks AND a Sonic, with their known-consumer traffic drawing power, virtually next-door to each other alongside a pockmarked road that resembles a target range? It will be interesting to see how the City administration, elected and appointed, handles this one.
