McKownville Improvement Association
- Neighborhood
description
About Meetings
News
Projects
Links Neighborhood Local history
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.
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)
