The little town of Danube is home to the mansion once owned by Nicholas Herkimer, a state historic site with views of the Mohawk River. Alas, most New Yorkers who stop in the town visit a far less bucolic attraction: the Indian Castle travel plaza off the state Thruway.
That's where I went on a recent afternoon, after receiving unhappy emails about the place and some of the other new Thruway rests areas.
As you're likely aware, the state Thruway Authority has commissioned a $450 million plan that is rebuilding most of the travel plazas. No tax or toll dollars are being used. Instead, an Irish convenience-store and gas-station conglomerate has agreed to "modernize" the plazas as part of a 33-year lease agreement awarded in 2020.
For one thing, modernization means replacing unhealthy food options with trendier unhealthy food options. This, we're told, is progress.
In most cases, the plan also means tearing down existing rest stop buildings, which were built in the 1990s and call to mind Adirondack lodges, and constructing nondescript replacements. This is the source of many of the complaints, which is understandable. The lodges have a certain style, and they evoke a sense of place.
The new building at the Indian Castle plaza, by contrast, looks like`a big Dollar General or a small warehouse, except for its windows and the box protruding from its roof. Pretty, it is not. Generic, it is.
But let's concede that most motorists don't pull into rest stops searching for evocative architecture. Mostly, they want to fill up the tank, grab a bite to eat or a cup of coffee, and go to the bathroom. They often want a break from the road — a rest, if you will.
So, how well do the new travel plazas satisfy those objectives?
"It was a nightmare," said Barbara Kurdyla of Halfmoon, who stopped last weekend at Indian Castle, which is in the county named after the aforementioned Herkimer, about an hour west of Albany. "The waiting line for the ladies' room intersected the fast-food line."
Kurdyla wanted to know why perfectly nice buildings, albeit in need of a face-lift, were torn down, especially for such inadequate replacements.
Christine Tuxill, who also lives in Saratoga County, wrote to tell me that visiting the building made her think of Chicago cattle chutes, so jammed were the people trying to eat or use the restroom. She noted that a building with well more than 100 parking spaces has just seven stalls in the women's bathroom.
Seven?! The men's room has two, plus four urinals, making the bathroom about half the size of what's available at the next, older travel plaza up the Thruway. And access to both bathrooms at Indian Castle is via a narrow hallway that may cause some patrons to bump shoulders.
Indeed, the entire building feels cramped. Gone are the large dining rooms of the prior rest areas, replaced with a handful of tables lined up along the passageway from the door to the bathrooms or the store at the far end of the building. When I visited on a relatively slow weekday, the passageway was partially blocked by people waiting for their Popeyes chicken.
"An older woman eating with her family in the cute semicircle booth has no place for her walker," Tuxill said, "so it's in the walkway where the two lanes of traffic are supposed to be entering and exiting."
What's truly remarkable is that the building was planned and built during a time of pandemic-induced social distancing. It seems designed to produce claustrophobia.
Thruway spokesman Jonathan Dougherty noted, though, that the newly opened Thruway locations, at about 6,000 square feet, are some of the smallest planned. The under-construction New Baltimore building, for example, will be nearly four times larger.
The builders, Dougherty sai, "planned different levels of service for each service area location based on sales history and traffic data over the last 10 years." He predicted that crowding will diminish when some of the closed-for-construction locations reopen.
Let's hope so.
Nevertheless, here's my advice for weary Thruway travelers: Bypass the exorbitant prices, greasy food and generic uniformity at Indian Castle, drive a few minutes, and take the Canajoharie exit instead.
There, in a downtown near the highway, you'll find Taco 29, the Berean Bean coffee shop and other great places to eat; a farm store and deli operated by the Schults family; and several compelling stores worth browsing. Sure, the stop might add a few minutes to your trip, but the experience won't bring on claustrophobia or feel dehumanizing. You'll be boosting local families instead of multinational corporations.
The architecture is nice, too.
cchurchill@timesunion.com ■ 518-454-5442 ■ @chris_churchill
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Churchill: No rest stop for the weary - Times Union
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