A lot has been said this week about downtown Albany. It’s not easy to take sides, with the issue being one as different as black and white. Take a trip downtown on any given weekday. What you will see is a busy city, made even busier with the daily influence of state workers. Lot’s of people, the lunchtime restaurants are busy, people conducting business. Now go downtown on any given weeknight, Monday through Thursday. Unless there is an event at the TU Center, the Palace, or Capital Rep, there is nobody. Now comes the weekend; while the city is fairly quiet during the day, it comes alive at night. After it gets dark. That would be 10:00pm to 4:00am. Nobody wants to come out and say it, but the reason for the increased night population is because Sneaky Pete’s on Central Avenue is no longer there. Sneaky’s used to occupy part of the old OTB building that was demolished to make way for the new supermarket. The owner’s were unsuccessful in relocating the business — take what you want from that — so their customers, and would be customers migrated downtown. This past week the owner of one of the nightspots, Jillian’s, said he was closing the club (it indeed closed last night) because it failed due to people being afraid to come downtown, because of increased crime. The police chief said the crime rate is down. According to statistics. The mayor and some of the downtown business owners said business is booming. Yono’s was one of them. Lodge’s was another. Those businesses are so off the point, it was ridiculous to even see them standing behind the mayor. How about all the new rental units either occupied, or being built? Where do those people go at night? I guess you could go to Yono’s — located within a hotel, with it’s own security. But the fact is, they don’t go downtown at night, even if they could walk. Especially if they could walk. They go uptown to shop, eat and be entertained. Mr. Mayor, you need to do some research. Find a couple you know, give then a couple of hundred bucks, drop them off at State and Pearl on a Friday night at 10:00pm, tell them to be entertained, and report back to you Monday morning. Let us know the results. Then have another news conference.
And that is a “Weekend Take”