Another step taken toward high-tech hub
“City officials are forging ahead with plans to take Peter D. Kiernan Plaza on Broadway, the historic former Union Station, through eminent domain to create a high-tech business hub tied to UAlbany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.
The Albany Industrial Development Agency voted unanimously last week to back the takeover of the vacant 113-year-old landmark, but both IDA and NanoCollege officials are optimistic it may never actually come to that.
No one — including the building’s owner, a large national real estate investment trust — has contested the eminent domain action, which allows government to seize private property for a public purpose after compensating its owner.
From the beginning, neither the college nor the city expected the move to be contentious. But officials said eminent domain was the only way to free the property from a real estate portfolio tied up in a loan before 2019. City records list the owner as First States Investors 5200 LLC.”
Carleo-Evangelist, Jordan. Times Union 25 June 2013.