Discover Wolf
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July 27 - August 2, 2022 | COLONIE SPOTLIGHT
Road
A GREAT PLACE TO... • LIVE • WORK • PLAY • STAY
Wolf Road is
Ever changing
Professor Java’s is going to be a pizza place, three hotels have new owners and there are new restaurants, businesses and charging stations along the one of the town’s busiest thoroughfares. The near iconic Professor Java’s Coffee Sanctuary closed it shop at 217 Wolf Road in 2020 and opened its new location a little bit south in the Shopper’s Plaza in January 2021. There are extensive renovations going on at the old building and it will soon
be home to a Golden Grain Gourmet Pizza restaurant. There are Golden Grain shops in East Greenbush, Westgate Plaza and currently one in the Hannaford Plaza at the intersection of Wolf and Sand Creek roads. Several reports say the owner, Zafer Ak, will close the shop in Hannaford Plaza when the new location opens at the north end of Wolf Road. Meanwhile, three hotels along Wolf Road were sold over the past eight months, according to the Business Review.
In May, the 200-room SureStay Plus Hotel by Best Western sold for $6.4 million, according to the newspaper. In March, the 153-room room Hampton Inn on Ulenski Drive, sold for $14.1 million and in December, the vacant and dilapidating former 312-room Red Lion Hotel, the former Turf Inn, sold for an undisclosed price. The hospitality industry was hit particularly hard by the twoyear-plus COVID-19 pandemic that hit in March 2020 and is still struggling. The Red Lion
closed in 2020. At its last meeting, the Colonie Town Board agreed to settle a certiorari proceeding and reduce the assessment at the Marriot at 189 Wolf Road from $17 million to $15 million. The town will refund the hotel some $11,700 and the school district just less than $53,000. SureStay was sold by Albany Airport Hospitality Corp, which has an address in Massachusetts, to the Dhillon Hotel Group, a family-owned business with hotels in Texas and Maine,
according to the Business Review. The plan is to upgrade the hotel with new furniture and other improvements. The Red Lion Hotel was purchased by a group of unnamed buyers who plan to develop the nearly 13 acre site at 205 Wolf Road. The group, identified as 205 Wolf Land LLC, includes people from the Capital District and beyond, some of whom have experience with hotels, according to the Business Review.
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