Kiernan Plaza, at 575 Broadway, used to be Albany's train station. In the 1960s, the powers that be foolishly moved the station across the river to Rensselaer. A bank moved in to the space, which public subsidies helped renovate, the Kiernan name was affixed, then the bank moved out. You couldn't get in from the Broadway entrance, only from the parking garage in back. The SUNY nano college bought it and announced grand plans before getting bogged down in scandal. Now the credit union SEFCU is the biggest tenant, but the future of the building is unclear.
Tonight, though, it hosted the Beacon Of Hope Scholarship Fund's annual bash, a worthy fund-raiser to help families in need afford Catholic school tuition. The wife (a Presbyterian retired public school teacher) graciously accompanied me, chatting to Catholic teachers and administrators at our table from Schenectady and Ballston Spa.
I'd never gotten inside the building before. It's quite a place.
A tip of the hat to Democratic Assemblyman John McDonald of Cohoes, the senior politico in attendance.
And on a tangentially related note, a further tip of the hat to the Albany Times Union, which despite the relentless social liberalism of its editorial pages, does occasionally make room for an opposing view such as this cogent March 22 piece by Cornell student Caroline Bennett.
