McKownville - Elmwood Street
  McKownville Improvement Association
   - Neighborhood description

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McKownville is a residential neighborhood in the eastern part of the Town of Guilderland, containing about 900 residences, mostly single family homes, and a few rental properties, mostly duplexes and converted houses with four or fewer units. Approximately 3000 people live in the neighborhood, and about 87% of the total area of property in McKownville is used for non-commercial purposes. Some small businesses and medical offices, and several larger commercial properties including the shopping center and office development of Stuyvesant Plaza and Executive Park, are located along Western Avenue, the main road through McKownville. Part of the main campus of the University at Albany, SUNY occupies an area of McKownville extending east from Fuller Road.
[links to detailed property, tax, zoning and planning information for McKownville]
[Brief history of McKownville and the origin of the name]
 
McKownville is a walkable neighborhood, with recently much improved sidewalks along the main roads, and pedestrian crosswalk signals at light-controlled intersections. More than 70 shops and restaurants are located in McKownville, many in Stuyvesant Plaza, all of them within walking distance of anywhere in the neighborhood. There are some 20 more, also within walking distance, located on Western Avenue just across the Albany city line. A neighborhood grocery store has been lacking since the one at Stuyvesant Plaza closed, but a summer season farm stand hosted in McKownville has been successful.
 
Many of the residential streets have a pleasing appearance with stands of mature streetside trees. There are significant areas of forested land in and bordering the north side of McKownville, sheltering it from traffic and other noise, these areas mostly belonging now to the University. A small town park developed for outdoor recreation, Abele Park, is located in the southern part of McKownville, and the former McKownville reservoir adjacent to Stuyvesant Plaza, now a wetland, is also a town park with a walking path. The University campus provides another partly green space for outdoor recreation accessible to residents.

Mckownville on
      openstreetmap base
For more than 100 years, the McKownville Volunteer Fire Department has protected our community. The number of older houses preserved in the neighborhood is a testament to their dedication.

The Capital District Transportation Authority (CDTA) provides frequent bus service along the main highways, with well-maintained, modern vehicles, some now fully electric powered. Since the refurbishment of Western Avenue and Fuller Road, cycle lanes are now properly marked and continuous along these roads in McKownville.

The New York Thruway (I-87/I-90) bounds the southern and western edges of McKownville, fortunately not including exit or entrance ramps directly to local highways, although the southern extension of the Adirondack Northway (I-87) terminates at Western Avenue (US route 20) adjacent to the bridge taking US20 over the NY Thruway. Western Avenue is one of the three major highways heading west out of the City of Albany, and has high traffic volume (average 21,000/day in McKownville). Fuller and Schoolhouse Roads, forming one of the few north-south routes nearby, also has substantial traffic (average 11,000/day). Most of the other McKownville streets, many of them with entrance only at one end, carry only local residential traffic.




 Map base from openstreetmap.org; Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA)
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