“The Next Frontier” — is what Metroplex Chairman Ray Gillen has been calling lower State Street for years. But Gillen has found it much harder to redevelop the down-at-the heels area west of Erie Boulevard than to name it. Now that the core of downtown, around Proctors, is looking and going great, it’s time to really focus on lower State. A planning session the city will hold tonight at the community college is a good chance for the public to weigh in with its ideas for this important corridor. It is part of a “linkage” study funded by the Capital District Transportation Committee. These public sessions are required for projects eligible for CDTC funding. And they have been valuable in Schenectady, bringing fresh insights and better projects in the case of the Erie Boulevard reconstruction, the new bicycle Greenway and the new train station. The State Street streetscape project completed a few years ago, although painfully long in the doing, has been a big part of downtown’s resurgence. And the Erie Boulevard project should not only revitalize that street, it can help lower State by removing a physical and psychological barrier — the wide, high-traffic road that is so diffi cult and dangerous to cross. A similar obstacle is Washington Avenue in front of the community college, a speedway on which cars come roaring off I-890. If the city expects SCCC students to venture downtown by foot, that crossing has to be made much simpler and safer. That should definitely be part of a redesign for lower State. So should a better streetscape. These, along with facade improvements, in-fill buildings and the various programs Metroplex has used so successfully elsewhere, could bring the pioneers — not just businesses, but residents — who will finally settle “The Next Frontier.”
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