For now I will concentrate just on "downtown". This last weekend I decided to take some time and do a little self guided walking tour of the portion of downtown I hadn't seen yet.
The downtown area consists of about a 6-10 block area that sits right on Flint river. The area near the river is real nice. It consists of an amphitheater, children's park, a spray park, a walking path & a riverquarium (pretty cool took my niece), the civic center & an area dedicated to Ray Charles. Actually I believe the whole trail is dedicated to him. They have a statue with a piano key style sidewalk. The statue plays his songs on cycle. The Hilton is as also right there across the street.
Right next to the riverquariam they have a few shops & a local BBQ place (River Front BBQ). It is pretty good. The rest of the downtown is fairly typical of a small city. No tall buildings (none more then 5 stories or so). Most of the buildings are government or public facilities like court houses, energy company, police, library school board & like agencies.
Their are several small businesses & restaurants that close in the 5p time frame when all the government buildings close. They also have limited hours on the weekend. The downtown area also has a bunch of closed up shops & empty store fronts. A run down sign of a revitalization sits on one of the buildings. This area is also home to a local favorite Jimmie's Hot Dogs. Which you go for more for the name then anything. They only sell hot dogs. I'll do a review of them in another post.
The one thing that struck me as odd was the number of loan business located in a small area. I counted six in a 2 block area. They out numbered Salons (5), restaurants (3), banks (2), retail stores (3) in that same two block area. These are like pay day, title loan places.
After thinking about it I noticed Albany seemed to have a high concentration of these types of businesses for its size city. They have them all over the Albany area like Starbucks in NYC yet the city doesn't even have a Dunkin Donuts & only one Starbucks. Just seems odd.
Anyway, that is pretty much the Downtown area of Albany. Nothing special and besides the riverfront part pretty dull. To end the day I visited the Museum across the street from my house. Not bad at all for its size. No big time names but still had some good piece. Surprising enough it was free.
Stay tuned for my take on the greater Albany area. As of right now it doesn't look like it will be a shinning review but you never know the place could change my mind between now & that post.
