Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Ben Westcott, Chronicle Staff Writer
Cole’s Collision wants to open its eighth location on Route 9 in Queensbury at the site of the former Blue Moose Restaurant.
The Glen Lake Protective Association is resisting. Paul Derby, the group’s president, told The Chronicle the “vast majority” of members oppose it “because of the potential environmental harms to Glen Lake that the business could create.”
The town planning board meets on the project on Wednesday, Dec. 10 at 7 p.m.
Mr. Derby said the site immediately adjoins the Glen Lake fen, the wetland that is the lake’s primary water source.
“We need to protect these critical environmental areas, and we want to protect Glen Lake for now, and for future generations,” Mr. Derby said. “Our stance is that this type of business, with toxic chemicals, gas, oil, crashed cars, paints, heaven forbid a fire or a flood, has the potential to cause environmental harms to the fen, and thus to Glen Lake.
“The property itself has a severe slope downward to the fen. So we are also concerned about the potential for stormwater runoff and erosion that would negatively affect the critical environmental areas.”
Cole’s Collision President Nick Cole says the business won’t cause pollution. “We don’t have any actual waste going outside the building,” he said.
“We have Crystal Clean for all the primers, paint and everything. They come and take things out of drums. We’re not dumping materials or any chemicals or anything into the soil or anything like that — or even the air really.”
Mr. Cole said they looked at “a couple” of other sites and chose the one they did because it was zoned for commercial.
“We usually are on a main road,” he said. “All of our stores are on a main road. We have nice buildings we like to put up, so that’s kind of the other reasoning we chose that. It’s a busy road.”
“You can look at all of our buildings, they’re all beautiful buildings,” he said.
Cole’s has seven locations in the Capital Region, including Ballston Spa, Clifton Park, Colonie and North Greenbush.
Mr. Cole called Queensbury appealing because “there’s a lot of just small mom and pops. There’s not really a lot of bigger production stores up there.
“And we’re always looking to expand into new markets in whatever communities we can serve. We have a great name with customer service, doing quality repairs and all that. So we just wanted to expand that to Queensbury.”
Mr. Derby of the Glen Lake Association says, “We would like to see them pick a different location. There are other places in Queensbury that we feel would be much more appropriate for this type of business. There are some vacant lands.”
He says, “We feel that it is just not an appropriate place for this type of business, because it’s out of character with the neighborhood. It butts right up to residential on the one side. And even around it — The Great Escape is a tourist, family-friendly business — it doesn’t have that potential of the environmental harm that Cole’s would have.”
Mr. Cole responds, “That I don’t really understand. I know they were complaining about the noise…which Great Escape’s half a mile down the road, and there’s a county jail a quarter of a mile the other way. I think it’s going to be the nicest looking building between those two.”
He said,“We’re going to do an Adirondack theme to go along with everything up there.” He said the front of the building will have “two big logs on the top.”
“We’re even considering putting like a carved wooden bear out front,” he added. “We want to make it look Adirondacky. Obviously you’re towards the Adirondacks up there.”
“I’m sure a lot of these people that oppose this project, if they saw the building we put up and they came in and saw the customer service and everything else we do, they would be more than happy to want to come to us,” said Mr. Cole.
He stressed it won’t be a noise nuisance. “Everything’s enclosed. There’s not much noise coming from the buildings at all. A lot of these cars nowadays, you’re not doing a lot of big hammering or crazy loud noises. It’s a lot easier to kind of cut these cars apart than it used to be 20 years ago.”
He also emphasized that “Any area we go to, we get locally involved with the community, donating, involved with the schools, everything else.”
Mr. Cole said they hope to have the project completed by next summer. “We wanted to originally have this done around the beginning of next year, but that’s not feasible now,” he said.
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