Glove City Lofts advances after mild winter

Standing four stories is the 75-unit apartment building across from City Hall in Gloversville. The $21 million project broke ground in September and is expected to be finished by 2025.

With mild weather conditions allowing crews to make headway on the structure, Gloversville Mayor Vincent DeSantis has his “fingers crossed” for an earlier completion date.

“All of this work that we’re seeing now — if the ground really froze before they got the foundation in — it would be delayed,” DeSantis said.

The cold season this year was limited to a brief polar freeze and an early spring ice storm, allowing contractors across the region to make progress on capital projects.

So far, the completion date hasn’t changed for Glove City Lofts, according to Jennifer Donovan, a downtown development specialist with the Fulton County Center for Regional Growth. She corresponds with the developer, Kearney Realty Group.

“Winter was wonderful for them,” she said. “I know it was stinky for the mountains, but as soon as you start messing around with timelines, something’s going to happen, right?” Donovan said.

The current timeline accounts for the project’s first phase. There is as of yet no timeline for Kearney’s second and final phase: the construction of an identical building on the long-blighted Church Street lot.

“I know, that’s kind of up in the air, because that would be a separate application, a separate set of funding and of course, there’s only one DRI,” DeSantis said. “You can’t double dip on that.”

The state DRI — Downtown Revitalization Initiative — provides for $1.25 million in funding. Glove City Lofts is also funded by a blend of $7 million in tax credits and private investments.

Upon completion, it’s expected to have 75 units. DeSantis expects between 100 to 120 people to occupy the first building.

The space is intended to attract mixed-income tenants, including artists. It will even include an art gallery managed by the Glove Cities Art Alliance.

The city’s long-term goal is to attract an artisan class and in turn, build a so-called creative economy downtown.

“I bet you that you have to have a portrait of the Mona Lisa or a carving of Abraham Lincoln to secure a spot,” said Fulton County Board of Supervisors Chairman John Blackmon with a laugh.

The Gloversville supervisor has made economic development a centerpiece of his one-year-term in the role. This comes while the post-industrial city and the aging, rural county are looking for new sources of revenue to fill budgetary woes.

“I’m hoping that [Kearney] will do something for you in June or July where they’ll announce openings,” Blackmon said.

Under legal guidelines, Kearney can’t announce openings available until it’s in the final lap toward completion.

The developer is allowed to pay $75,000 the first year after construction under a payment-in-lieu of taxes agreement. That amount, in turn, will go up 2% annually each remaining year of the agreement.

Kearney bought the site from the Fulton County Center for Regional Growth under a $200,000 purchase agreement in 2022.

For 16 years, the former Frontier Call Center building property had been unoccupied. In order to build the lofts, crews demolished the abandoned building sitting on the derelict lot.

More than 50 years ago, that section of the city was home to Bleecker Square, a row of mixed-use historic buildings. In the 1970s, those structures were razed for the development of Midtown Plaza, a low-rise commercial space and a sizable parking lot. Critics of urban renewal say that it drained the city of beauty and turned the area into a ghost town.

The Fulton County Historical Society plans to showcase a program on the local impact of urban renewal on Apr. 17. The 6 p.m. event will be held at 237 Kingsboro Ave.