2006-04-25
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
SECOND REGULAR MEETING
APRIL 25, 2006
INDEX
Subdivision No. 9-2003 Michaels Group 1.
MODIFICATION Tax Map No. 278.20-1-5.1, 5.2, 5.3
Subdivision No. 4-1993 Guido Passarelli 2.
MODIFICATION Tax Map No. 296.5-1-17, 18
Site Plan No. 12-2006 Quaker Electric Supply 2.
Tax Map No. 296.17-1-44
Site Plan No. 16-2006 Stephanie & Travis Norton 3.
Tax Map No. 290.-1-84
Site Plan No. 15-2006 Ralph Macchio 3.
Tax Map No. 278-1-77, 13, 61, 75, 76
Subdivision No. 8-2005 Western Reserve 4.
Tax Map No. 300-1-19
Site Plan No. 56-2005 David Lanning 4.
Tax Map No. 302.8-2.66.2
Site Plan No. 14-2006 Chris Carte/The Wood Carte 9.
Tax Map No. 296.9-2-3, 4
Site Plan No. 10-2006 Swank 12.
Tax Map No. 288.12-1-22
Site Plan No. 2-2006 Schermerhorn Res. Prop. Holdings 15.
Tax Map No. 309.10-1-45
Freshwater Wetlands Jeffrey Kilburn 38.
FWW No. 5-2005 Tax Map No. 295.15-1-30
Sit Plan No. 64-2005 Jeffrey Kilburn 38.
Tax Map No. 295.15-1-30
Special Use Permit No. 8-2006 Vance Cohen 46.
Tax Map No. 288-1-58
THESE ARE NOT OFFICIALLY ADOPTED MINUTES AND ARE SUBJECT TO
BOARD AND STAFF REVISIONS. REVISIONS WILL APPEAR ON THE
FOLLOWING MONTHS MINUTES (IF ANY) AND WILL STATE SUCH APPROVAL
OF SAID MINUTES.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
SECOND REGULAR MEETING
APRIL 25, 2006
7:00 P.M.
MEMBERS PRESENT
ROBERT VOLLARO, CHAIRMAN
GRETCHEN STEFFAN, SECRETARY
THOMAS SEGULJIC
ANTHONY METIVIER
TANYA BRUNO, ALTERNATE
DONALD SIPP, ALTERNATE
MEMBERS ABSENT
THOMAS FORD
LAND USE PLANNER-SUSAN BARDEN
STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI
MR. VOLLARO-Bear with us a little bit tonight. We’ve got a lot of sort of housekeeping
items to take care of, and I’d like to also change the agenda around a little bit, if I possibly
can. I’d like to try to run David Lanning first. If Mr. Carte gets here, he would be second,
and Swank third, and then the fourth one would be Richard Schermerhorn. The first thing I
have to do is call for a vote for approval of minutes.
CORRECTION OF MINUTES
February 7, 2006: NONE
February 21, 2006: NONE
February 28, 2006: NONE
MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF FEBRUARY 7 , FEBRUARY 21, FEBRUARY
THST
28, 2006, Introduced by Thomas Seguljic who moved for its adoption, seconded by
TH
Gretchen Steffan:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
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AYES: Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SUBDIVISION NO. 9-2003 MODIFICATION SEQR TYPE UNLISTED MICHAELS GROUP
OWNER(S): SAME ZONING RR-3A LOCATION MOON HILL RD. & BAY RD.
APPLICANT PROPOSES A MODIFICATION TO THE APPROVED SUBDIVISION.
SPECIFICALLY PLANNING BOARD CONSIDERATION OF A REVISED TREE CLEARING
AND LANDSCAPING PLAN FOR LOT 1. CROSS REF. SP 40-01 WARREN COUNTY
PLANNING N/A LOT SIZE 10.38 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 278.20-1-5.1, 5.2, 5.3 SECTION
A-183
MR. VOLLARO-The next thing is on Subdivision 9-2003 for The Michaels Group, Moon Hill.
We did not do a Short Form SEQRA the last time we approved that. We missed that, and
we’re going to have to do that tonight. Does everybody here remember what we did at Moon
Hill? This was the reconstruction of Lot One, reforestation of Lot One on Moon Hill.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE
RESOLUTION NO. 9-2003, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for:
MICHAELS GROUP, and
WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning
Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED:
1. No Federal agency appears to be involved.
2. The following agencies are involved:
NONE
3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of
Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental
Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury.
4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant.
5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental
concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a
significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the
Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this
Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no
significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby
authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-
significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SUBDIVISION [MODIFICATION] SUB 4-1993 SEQR TYPE RE-AFFIRMED SEQRA
GUIDO PASSARELLI AGENT(S): HOWARD KRANTZ OWNER(S): MR. & MRS.
RUSSELL THOMAS; GUIDO PASSARELLI ZONING RC-15 LOCATION 23 HIGHPOINTE
DRIVE APPLICANT PROPOSES A LOT LINE ADJUSTMENT BETWEEN LOTS 10 AND 11
IN THE ROUND POND/BIRDSALL ROAD SUBDIVISION. MODIFICATIONS TO
APPROVED SUBDIVISIONS REQUIRE REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS
REF. BP FOR SFD, DECK WARREN COUNTY PLANNING N/ALOT SIZE 1.11 AC., 1.15
AC. TAX MAP NO. 296.5-1-17, 18 SECTION A-183
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to make the motion on Subdivision No. 4-1993, for
Passarelli/Thomas.
MOTION ON SUBDIVISION NO. 4-1993 PASSARELLI/THOMAS THAT THE
REQUIREMENTS OF THE SEQRA HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED AND THE MODIFICATION
DOES NOT RESULT IN ANY NEW OR SIGNIFICANTLY DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENTAL
IMPACTS, THEREFORE NO FURTHER SEQRA REVIEW IS NECESSARY ON THAT
SUBDIVISION, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption, seconded by
Anthony Metivier:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Vollaro
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SITE PLAN NO. 12-2006 SEQR TYPE II QUAKER ELECTRIC SUPPLY AGENT(S):
MARK DICKINSON OWNER(S): QE, LLC D/B/A U-RENT ALL ZONING HC-MOD
LOCATION 20 SWEET ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES INSTALLATION OF A 25’ X 60’
CHAIN LINK FENCE [1500 SQ. FT. FENCED AREA – 6 FT. HIGH] ON THE WEST SIDE OF
THE EXISTING BUILDING. FENCES IN COMMERCIAL DISTRICTS REQUIRE PLANNING
BOARD REVIEW. CROSS REF. SP 63-2004 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 4/12/06 LOT
SIZE 0.94 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 296.17-1-44 SECTION 179-5-060
MR. VOLLARO-The next thing is on Site Plan No. 12-2006 for Quaker Electric. There was
a 4/18/06 public hearing. It was opened. It was tabled to tonight’s meeting, 4/25/06. The
status on that is, we’ve talked to the applicant, is to deny that site plan without prejudice.
They won’t be coming back. It was either a withdrawal or a denial. So the Board
understands what we did here.
MOTION TO DENY WITHOUT PREJUDICE SITE PLAN NO. 12-2006 QUAKER ELECTRIC
SUPPLY D/B/A U-RENT ALL, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Gretchen Steffan:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
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AYES: Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SITE PLAN NO. 16-2006 SEQR TYPE II STEPHANIE & TRAVIS NORTON OWNER(S)
SAME ZONING SR-1A LOCATION 920 RIDGE ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES
CONSTRUCTION OF A 576 SQ. FT. GARAGE WITHIN 50 FEET OF THE SHORELINE OF A
WETLAND. FILLING OR HARD SURFACING WITHIN 50’ OF THE SHORELINE
REQUIRES SITE PLAN REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REF. AV 24-06
WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 4/12/06 LOT SIZE 0.69 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 290.-1-84
SECTION 179-4-030, 179-6-060
MR. VOLLARO-On Site Plan No. 16-2006 for Stephanie & Travis Norton, I’ll open the
public hearing.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
MR. VOLLARO-And table it to 5/16/06, due to a Staff rescheduling error.
MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 16-2006 STEPHANIE & TRAVIS NORTON, Introduced
by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption, seconded by Gretchen Steffan:
Until 5/16/06, due to a Staff re-scheduling error.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SITE PLAN NO. 15-2006 SEQR TYPE I RALPH MACCHIO AGENT(S): JARRETT-
MARTIN ENGINEERS OWNER(S): SAME ZONING RR-3A, LC-10 LOCATION
BETWEEN BAY RD. & RT. 9 OVER FRENCH MT. APPLICANT HAS CONSTRUCTED
FOREST ROADS FOR LOGGING & PERMANENT ACCESS TO MACCHIO LAND ON TOP OF
FRENCH MT. RD. CONSTRUCTION REQUIRES 31.3 ACRES OF CLEARING/DISTURBANCE
ON THE 5 PARCELS INVOLVED. DISTURBANCE GREATER THAN 5 ACRES ON ANY ONE
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
PARCEL IN THE LC-ZONE OR OVER 2 ACRES IN THE RR-3A ZONE REQUIRE SITE
PLAN REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REF. NONE FOUND WARREN
COUNTY PLANNING 4/12/06 ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY YES LOT SIZE 525.4
ACRES TAX MAP NO. 278-1-77, 13, 61, 75, 76 SECTION 179-6-010
MR. VOLLARO-Site Plan No. 15-2006 for Ralph Macchio, scheduled for this evening.
Incidentally, for the Board’s notification and edification, this will be a Type I SEQRA. So
we’re probably going to have to sit with Lake George on this one, with the Lake George
Planning Board, and decide on the Lead Agency for that.
MRS. BARDEN-Mr. Chairman, did you open the public hearing?
MR. VOLLARO-I did not. No. Should we?
MRS. BARDEN-Yes, please.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I’ll open the public hearing.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 15-2006 RALPH MACCHIO, Introduced by Robert
Vollaro who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
Until 5/23/06, per the applicant’s request.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
SUBDIVISION NO. 8-2005 PRELIMINARY STAGE FINAL STAGE SEQR TYPE UNLISTED
WESTERN RESERVE AGENT(S): JONATHAN LAPPER, B S P R VAN DUSEN & STEVES
OWNER(S): SAME ZONING RR-3A & SR-1A LOCATION WEST MT. ROAD
APPLICANT IS PROPOSING A 26.15-ACRE SUBDIVISION INTO 14 LOTS, INCLUDING 13
TOWNHOUSE UNITS (WITH BUILDING FOOTPRINTS/BUILDING LOTS RANGING FROM
523 SQ. FT. TO 1230 SQ. FT.) AND ONE COMMON LOT (24.97 –ACRES). SUBDIVISIONS OF
LAND REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD APPROVAL. CROSS REF. SP 46-03, SB 16-03, SB 17-
02, AV 22-02, AV 52-01, AV 36-05 LOT SIZE 26.15 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 300-1-19
SECTION A-183-31
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. In accordance with a letter of April 13, 2006, from Mr. Jonathan
Lapper, concerning Western Reserve, LLC, 13 unit town home development. This
application to my letter of April 12, we would like this matter placed on the agenda for the
th
25, which it is, and I will make a motion.
th
MOTION TO EXTEND SUBDIVISION NO. 8-2005 WESTERN RESERVE, LLC FOR A
PERIOD OF THREE MONTHS FROM TODAY’S DATE, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who
moved for its adoption, seconded by Anthony Metivier:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. LAPPER-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re welcome.
OLD BUSINESS:
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
SITE PLAN NO. 56-2005 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED DAVID LANNING OWNER(S):
DARREN & NANCY MANZARI ZONING HC-INT. LOCATION 306 QUAKER ROAD
APPLICANT PROPOSES TO UTILIZE A 100 SQ. FT. AREA WITHIN THE EXISTING
QUAKER AUTO SALES BUILDING, AND ASSOCIATED PARKING/DISPLAY AREA FOR
AUTOMOBILES ON THE SITE. AUTO SALES & SERVICES USES REQUIRE REVIEW BY
THE PLANNING BOARD. CONDITION OF 10/25/05 APPROVAL WAS TO COMPLY WITH
CONDITIONS OF SP 13-1999 IN REFERENCE TO REMOVAL OF PAVEMENT IN FRONT
AND REAR OF SITE RESULTING IN CONFORMING PERMEABILITY, IF NOT,
APPLICANT TO RE-APPEAR BEFORE THIS BOARD. CROSS REF. SP 13-99 WARREN
COUNTY PLANNING 10/12/05 LOT SIZE: 1 +/- ACRE TAX MAP NO. 302.8-2-66.2
SECTION 179-4-020
DAVID LANNING, PRESENT
MR. VOLLARO-Is anybody here to hear Mr. Lanning’s application? Does anybody want to
speak in the public hearing on this? Okay. This is a SEQRA Unlisted action.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
MR. VOLLARO-We have no site plan to refer to this evening. The floor is yours, Mr.
Lanning.
MR. LANNING-I’m here as a request from Code Enforcement from back last, way last year.
I’m a lease tenant at the 306 Quaker Road. This Board approved, I guess an addition to this
property that the landlord, the current landowner, didn’t act on. One of the conditions was
making some permeable ground. The Board put the burden on me to communicate with the
landowner, to see what he wants to do. His position is that since he did not go ahead with
any of the project, therefore the condition of the project expired with the approval. I did
write the Board and let them know that at the time I purchased that property, I’d be willing
to abide and comply by all their requirements at that time. Right now I have no news to tell
anyone. I did go into contract on that property last Friday, and June 1 is my closing date.
st
At that time I’ll get on the agenda, and there’s some improvements I’d like to ask for, and I
think we can meet together, if you’ll give me that time.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re going under contract to purchase the building?
MR. LANNING-I am under contract.
MR. VOLLARO-You are under contract to purchase the property?
MR. LANNING-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-And you’ll close on it when?
MR. LANNING-June 1.
st
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I’m not quite sure, when I read this, now that I know you’re going to
purchase the property, it’s a whole other story, because up until that point, I had looked at
you as a tenant to that property.
MR. LANNING-Correct.
MR. VOLLARO-Now Site Plan No. 13-99 was never acted on by the owner, and is still
apparently being used as auto sales.
MR. LANNING-He never acted on any of that approval, and then in ’05 I went in and began
the auto sales. Only in ’05 did I begin that, and I have only leased that property since ’05.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I’ll throw this open to the Board, then, and I want to listen to what
the Board has to say about this.
MR. SEGULJIC-If I could get a clarification. If I recall correctly, you weren’t going to build
any additions. You were just going to have an office in there. Correct?
5
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. LANNING-Which I do, a 10 by 10 office, existing.
MR. SEGULJIC-Utilizing 100 square feet for your office, and you’re going to have Internet
car sales, if I recall.
MR. LANNING-Car sales as well as retail and wholesale.
MR. SEGULJIC-Via the Internet.
MR. LANNING-A lot of the vehicles actually touch the property. They’re actually there on
site.
MR. SEGULJIC-So you’re going to be parking some of the vehicles outside.
MR. LANNING-As much as I currently have right now, which is usually about 12 to 15 in
inventory that are there, but they come in and out.
MR. SEGULJIC-Are you going to be servicing the cars there?
MR. LANNING-After I purchase I will, yes. I’ll utilize the garage. Right now all my service
work, everything is a sublet.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, but you’re not going to be changing any physical characteristics of
the building.
MR. LANNING-Not until I get approval from the Board.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. I’m all set for now.
MR. VOLLARO-Don, do you want to take a crack at that, see what you’ve got on that?
MR. SIPP-No, I don’t have anything.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Tanya?
MRS. BRUNO-I don’t think I have anything.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Gretchen, how about you?
MRS. STEFFAN-I think really the only question that needs to be asked is in the Staff notes.
The area currently used for display of cars is in the Quaker Road right of way, was a permit
from the County ever obtained to utilize this area. I wasn’t here for the October hearing, but
since the applicant is going to purchase the property, we really don’t need to take any action
until that happens.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s correct. That’s also my view on this.
MR. METIVIER-And I absolutely agree. I mean, we can’t do anything until he purchases it,
and obviously the landlord now isn’t going to do anything. It wouldn’t be in his best interest
to. So let’s welcome him back in June or July and see what we can do then and come back
with a good site plan review that we can follow and you can adhere to.
MR. LANNING-Yes, and I’ll work with the pre-existing stuff as best I can to throw my own
ideas in there, and I appreciate the patience.
MR. METIVIER-I think, I mean, you really can’t table an application. You really have to
just start over, because you’ll be the agent at that time.
MR. SEGULJIC-But what’s going to trigger your coming back?
MR. VOLLARO-He’ll have to make application to the Board.
MR. LANNING-Exactly.
MR. SEGULJIC-So you plan on doing site improvements, then?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. LANNING-I plan on doing some site improvements. I plan on working with the 30%
permeable ground that we’re requesting. I have ideas of my own for curb appeal. I’m doing
it out of selfish reasons, because it increases my business, but it also accommodates you folks.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. The best thing you can do is come back with a site plan. This
happens to be a site plan review. You’ll have to have a drawing that we can look at, make re-
application to the Planning Department for that.
MR. LANNING-Certainly.
MR. VOLLARO-Probably see Susan Barden. You agree with what we ask you to do. You’re
all set, are you?
MR. LANNING-Yes, most certainly.
MRS. STEFFAN-Susan, procedurally, do we have to do anything?
MR. VOLLARO-No, I don’t think so. We don’t have anything to table in front of us.
There’s no site plan. There’s nothing to review. There’s prior information.
MRS. BARDEN-You could modify that condition of previous approval, and give Mr.
Lanning a certain amount of time to come back.
MR. VOLLARO-I think the time to come back for him is pretty much whenever he wants to
make a brand new application to the Board. It seems to me that everything’s gone by. He’s
purchasing, now, a piece of property. When he’s the owner he can come back, I think, with a,
you know, a full blown application and site plan, start right from the beginning. To table him
at this point, I don’t have anything to table them to.
MRS. BARDEN-Do you want to modify that condition of previous approval however?
Stating that he increase the permeability on site?
MR. LANNING-I’d like to be able to see the ’99 approval and see what modifications to that,
some which I’d like to keep and some which might be different at this time, for my usage.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t know what the ’99 approval said, actually. I see Site Plan 56-2005.
MRS. BARDEN-That’s the approval that you put the first condition on, that they comply
with that site plan. That’s why Mr. Lanning is back in front of you.
MR. VOLLARO-This site plan approval included the use of Northway Car Care, in addition
to front landscaping plan which included removing of a considerable amount of pavement. Is
that what you’re talking about?
MRS. BARDEN-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-I think when he comes back, as I understand the applicant’s position, he
wants to come back with a full blown site plan, and he’ll have to comply with the 30%, that’s
fine, but that’s up to him. He knows that that’s a condition.
MR. LANNING-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-And it looks to me like he’s going to come back and re-do that, give us a
brand new site plan, which might look a lot different than 56-2005. So I would like to just, he
might even not have a 10 by 10 office there any longer. There might be something else he’s
going to put in.
MRS. BARDEN-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-Might he even withdraw the application?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I think that that’s, if you withdraw the application totally, I think
that’s a good suggestion.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. LANNING-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-And just start off.
MR. LANNING-Square One.
MR. VOLLARO-Start off from Square One. Just withdraw and start from Square One.
That’s what I would rather have you do.
MR. LANNING-That’s fine with me.
MR. VOLLARO-I mean, to start imposing anything now, he knows what he has to do. We’ll
take a look at a brand new site plan when it comes in.
MRS. BARDEN-Okay. He doesn’t have an application in front of you.
MR. VOLLARO-No.
MRS. BARDEN-He is complying with a previously approved site plan application.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but he’s withdrawing that.
MRS. STEFFAN-But it’s not called a modification.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to ask him to withdraw.
MR. METIVIER-But there’s nothing to withdraw.
MRS. BARDEN-It was already approved on October 25, 2005. It’s one of the conditions
that Mr. Lanning has not met.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s not Mr. Lanning. It’s the prior owner. Mr. Lanning is a tenant, in my
view, and the tenant can’t do anything to comply. It was the prior owner who didn’t comply
and let it run out. So that the application is dormant.
MR. SEGULJIC-I guess I’m confused. Doesn’t he need the approval, so he can conduct auto
sales?
MRS. BARDEN-He already received that approval.
MR. SEGULJIC-He already received that approval.
MRS. BARDEN-This is a condition of that approval.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. I’m all set. All right. Just leave it the way it is.
MR. VOLLARO-So I think you want to just withdraw this application and start.
MR. METIVIER-But, Bob, there’s no application to withdraw. So what I think we should
do, as a technicality, is just actually offer an extension to the modification for now, until he
can come back with something else.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, what we have in front of us here from Staff is Site Plan 56-2005.
MR. METIVIER-Which we already approved with conditions that he has not met. So what
we need to do for him to stay in business until he actually, until the closing takes place, is to
offer an extension to this modification, for the time being, to let him have the time to come
back with another application.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the extension will have to be a time certain, then.
MR. METIVIER-Well, if he has a June 1 closing, let’s do August, September, right, Sue?
MR. VOLLARO-I can give him a date certain on that, if he wants a date certain, because if
we just leave it open looped, he doesn’t have to come back.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. METIVIER-Well, give him six months. He’s got to be back in six months.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. He’s got to come back with a full application in six months.
MR. METIVIER-Absolutely.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That makes sense to me. I would go along with that.
MR. METIVIER-Unless, I mean, and I hate to throw this in, but if you could come back
with a modification to this site plan 56-2005, but he’s the new agent and owner, so what
happens then? Is that something you can do, or is that something, because Darren’s out of
the picture at that point. So will he have to re-apply as a new application, or can he do an
extension, or modification on the one that he already worked on?
MR. VOLLARO-In my view, when I hear the applicant speaking, my view is that he wants
to put some of his own ideas into it. It might be totally different than the previous
application. I think you’ve got a different idea.
MR. LANNING-I think you’ll see that, and I think you’ll, the Board will embrace what I
come back with.
MR. VOLLARO-I would rather have him come back in six months with a brand new
application, within a six month period, make it a time certain, it would be August, the six
months would be October.
MR. METIVIER-Susan, if we offer an extension on this modification for now, and then he
comes back with a brand new site plan, does that null and void the Site Plan 56-2005? Or
does he have to meet those requirements before he can move forward?
MRS. BARDEN-I think you’re giving him an extension on compliance with his approval, 56-
2005, and if he chooses to come back with additional information, he still has this approval.
MR. METIVIER-Okay. Or he can come back with a brand new site plan. All right.
MRS. BARDEN-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s what I think he wants to do, and that’s what I think we want him to
do, is a brand new site plan.
MR. LANNING-I’d rather do that. I’d rather use some of the ideas prior.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t want to have to go all the way through Site Plan 56-2005 and build
from that. I’d rather you build it from scratch, a brand new site plan.
MR. LANNING-Correct.
MR. VOLLARO-Otherwise it’s going to be very confusing when he comes back, we’ll be
mixing apples and oranges.
MRS. BARDEN-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t want to do that. Okay. So I think what the applicant, he doesn’t
have to withdraw anything. We’re just, for the record, saying that the applicant has agreed
to come back within a six month period from today, with a brand new site plan, and the
record would show that, and I don’t think we have to go any further than that.
MRS. BARDEN-Well, I guess finally I would tie it to this site plan, or there’s nothing that
we have to make sure that Mr. Lanning comes back in in six months.
MR. METIVIER-I’ll make a motion, then.
MOTION TO EXTEND THE COMPLIANCE OF SITE PLAN NO. 56-2005 DAVID LANNING
FOR A PERIOD OF SIX MONTHS, Introduced by Anthony Metivier who moved for its
adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
9
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
Whereas David Lanning will come back in with either a new site plan for this site or to be in
compliance with the Site Plan No. 56-2005 which was approved by this Board, I believe, on
October 25, 2005.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. LANNING-All good. Thank you very much.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. Sorry for the confusion.
MR. LANNING-Have a good day.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thanks.
NEW BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 14-2006 SEQR TYPE: II CHRIS CARTE/THE WOOD CARTE OWNER(S):
SAME ZONING HC-1A LOCATION 1063 STATE ROUTE 9 APPLICANT PROPOSES
CONSTRUCTION OF AN APPROXIMATELY 400 SQ. FT. ADIRONDACK STYLE ADDITION.
EXPANSION OF AN ALLOWABLE USE REQUIRES SITE PLAN REVIEW BY THE
PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REF. AV 41-98, SP 41-98, BP 05-185, 99-105, 99-013, 91-420,
AV 22-06 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 4/12/06 LOT SIZE 0.54 ACRES, 0.86 ACRES
TAX MAP NO. 296.9-2-3, 4 SECTION 179-4-020
CHRIS CARTE, PRESENT
MR. CARTE-Good evening. My name is Chris Carte, and I own the Wood Carte on Route 9
in Queensbury, and I’m here this evening to talk to you about a plan that we have to put a
new front on our building. We’ve owned the building since 1991, and are now at the point
where we think that we can make some improvements to the appearance of the front of the
building, and you have before you some elevations that we had drawn to show what the plan
might include, and if anyone has any questions about those, I’d be glad to answer them.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. For the Board’s edification, their Area Variance 22-2006 has been
approved by the ZBA. So they have the variance that was required, and I’ll throw it open for
the Board.
MR. METIVIER-I really didn’t have any questions. I was curious about the variance
because they don’t meet many of the setbacks, but if you’re saying it’s an allowed
nonconforming use, then I actually am fine with that.
MR. VOLLARO-The applicant has received approval for existing conditions on the site, see
resolution Area Variance. No, that’s not what we’re looking at. Parcel History here, I don’t
see a copy in our.
MR. CARTE-Yes. I did receive approval from the Zoning Board last week.
MR. VOLLARO-I know you did, Area Variance No. 22-2006, but to answer Mr. Metivier’s
question, I don’t think a copy of that Area Variance was included with our Staff notes.
MRS. BARDEN-That’s right.
MR. VOLLARO-So I don’t exactly know.
MRS. BARDEN-It was approved after the Staff notes went out.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
10
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. METIVIER-But they’re all set on their variances and everything?
MRS. BARDEN-Yes.
MR. METIVIER-So we’re really just looking at the façade, more than anything.
MRS. BARDEN-That’s correct.
MR. METIVIER-It looks great. Good job.
MR. CARTE-Thank you.
MRS. STEFFAN-Susan, can you just read the Area Variance dialogue?
MRS. BARDEN-Sure. Area Variance No. 22-2006 “The applicant is proposing a 400 square
foot Adirondack style entry addition to the Wood Carte. In doing so, the applicant has
requested 5.5 feet of front setback relief where 50 feet is the minimum, 21 feet of side setback
relief on the south side where 25 feet is the minimum, per 179-4-030 for the HC-Int. zone.
Additional relief from the Travel Corridor Overlay district requirements of 30.5 feet where 75
feet is minimum per 179-4-060 for Route 9. In granting this application, the applicant has
proven the acceptable positive results as far as the balancing test is concerned. It has been
determined that the benefit cannot be achieved by other means feasible to the applicant, the
means being of updating that building. We determined that no undesirable change in the
neighborhood character or nearby properties would occur. The request will encroach 1.5 feet
further into the existing front setback of 46 feet, and the side setback will encroach an
additional foot into the existing five foot setback. So as far as it being substantial, if it is, it’s
only slightly more than it currently is. We’ve determined no adverse physical or
environmental effect, and I guess the difficulty would be considered self-created when you
change the look of a building that you are creating the need for the variance. I move we
approve this Area Variance.” Approved April 19, 2006, unanimous vote.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. No more questions.
MR. SEGULJIC-I guess, could you just explain to me what’s happening in the front with the
sidewalk? Because you have an existing concrete curb, and you have a future sidewalk by
DOT.
MR. CARTE-Yes. I probably should have explained that first. The site plan that you’re
looking at is actually in an effort to control costs during the planning process. This is
partially a site plan that we used when we put an addition on the back of our building. So
there are a couple of things there that I failed to omit that pertained to that, pertained to
specifics when we put the addition on which was in 1999. So basically we’re proposing to keep
parking, curbing, and signage the way it exists right now, which is slightly different than
what the plan shows that you have there in front of you. You can kind of see in the picture
that’s up on the screen there that there’s actually a planter there on the corner of the
building, rather than that curbing, but the number of parking spaces would remain the same
as it is now, which is more than adequate for our business, and the curbing would pretty
much remain the way it is.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, is there any room on the strip along Route 9 for plantings? Because
one of the things we’re trying to do is get a tree scape along there.
MR. CARTE-I’m sorry, is there any room for what?
MR. SEGULJIC-Once again, you have existing concrete curb, and then existing future
sidewalk. What is along Route 9 now?
MR. CARTE-There is a sidewalk that the DOT put in, all along Route 9, and it pretty much.
MR. SEGULJIC-Then you have the brick island next to that.
MR. CARTE-No, there actually is not a brick island there. That was removed, at the time
that the new sidewalk was put in, the brick island was removed, and there’s grass there now.
MR. SEGULJIC-Is that area within the DOT right of way, then?
11
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. CARTE-Yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-Can we have plantings within the DOT right of way?
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t think so. I’ve looked up there, and there isn’t any room for what
you’re trying to do.
MR. SEGULJIC-All right. That’s what I was getting at. All right. I’m all set, then. Other
than that, I think it looks great.
MR. CARTE-Thanks.
MR. VOLLARO-Tanya?
MRS. BRUNO-I’m fine with it, thanks.
MR. VOLLARO-Don?
MR. SIPP-Is there any change in color?
MR. CARTE-Yes. You should have some color copies of what the façade might look like.
We’ll be using a combination of wood tones and probably green, dark green trim.
MR. SIPP-Is that colored stone on either side? Will you change the stone color from brick
to?
MR. CARTE-No, that’s natural stone that’s on the building now, and that would remain, at
least the lower half of it would remain. The log siding would cover the upper half of it.
MR. VOLLARO-Is that it, Don?
MR. SIPP-That’s it.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. With that, I personally don’t have any comments on this at all. I
think it’s a nice, it’s going to be a nice addition to that building. This is a SEQRA Type II.
There is no SEQRA action on this, and I will open the public hearing, if anybody here would
like to speak to this application.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
NO COMMENT
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. VOLLARO-I’ll call for a motion.
MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 14-2006 CHRIS CARTE/THE WOOD CARTE,
Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
MR. SEGULJIC-Do we have to grant the waivers as requested? Just the application itself.
MRS. STEFFAN-It’s part of the application.
MR. SEGULJIC-It’s part of the application.
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. VOLLARO-You’ve got it.
12
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. CARTE-Thank you. Thanks.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s going to be a nice building.
SITE PLAN NO. 10-2006 SEQR TYPE II SWANK AGENT(S): KATHY HILL OWNER(S):
DAVID KENNY ZONING HC-INT. LOCATION 1444 STATE ROUTE 9, SITE 7 APPLICANT
PROPOSES TO ERECT A 1,350 SQ. FT. TENT FOR TEMPORARY RETAIL SALES [JUNE 30
– JULY 29]. EXPANSION OF RETAIL USES REQUIRE SITE PLAN REVIEW. CROSS
REF. SP 22-05 [TENT SALE] WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 4/12/06 LOT SIZE 7 ACRES
TAX MAP NO. 288.12-1-22 SECTION 179-4-020
KATHY HILL, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT
MS. HILL-Good evening. My name is Kathy Hill. I’m the manager of the Swank Factory
Store.
Swank has been in the Adirondack Outlet Mall going on 19 years this June. We’ve had a
total of 22 tent sales at this location, 15 in July, and 7 with the Mall for Balloon Fest. The
July tent sales is very important to my store and to the Company. The tent sale is 20 to 25%
of my sales. Not having a tent sale would be a hardship. We are a true factory store. When
we have a tent sale, we sell at greatly reduced price from retail. Ninety-five percent of my
items I sell are below $10. I have been using a 30 by 45 white tent, and caution tape is used
all around per the Fire Marshal to keep cars 20 feet from the tents. Our location for the tent
is perfect, down in the corner away from traffic. We’re 67 feet back from the sidewalk and
113 feet from the Mall entrance. On the other side of the tent is an embankment, then a 29
foot driveway, then the other Mall. In this location, we can be seen as cars are coming up the
road, so there’s no sudden stopping. The tent would go up on Friday June 30, so the Fire
th
Marshal could inspect it. The sale would start July 1 and it would run until 5 p.m. on July
st
29, and then everything would be out. This sale is an established event. We have customers
th
that come every year from all over. Thank you for your time.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I have a couple of things I wanted to share with the Board that I
picked up today. First there was a letter written by Marilyn Ryba back in May 2005,
concerning temporary tent sales. It was written to the Town Board, and this letter resulted in
Chapter 161 of the Transient Merchant Law, and underneath that is 160.6E, and without
applying to this Board at all, they can have a sale of 12 days, twice in the season, and a tent
erection for seven days. That’s in 161.5, and it’s twice a season. Now the only reason the
applicant is in front of us now is that they’re asking for a 30 day period, as opposed to having
a standard administrative approval. So I would ask for some conversation from the Board
based on that information.
MR. SEGULJIC-This is the same as you did last year and the year before and the year
before.
MS. HILL-Yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-I, personally, don’t have any problems with it.
MR. VOLLARO-Tanya?
MRS. BRUNO-All set here.
MR. VOLLARO-Don?
MR. SIPP-I think it’s not the most beautiful thing that’s on the strip. It’s not the most
beautiful thing in the world, either. I object to 60 days, 30 days.
MR. VOLLARO-Tony?
MR. METIVIER-I have always said, I mean, I think these are fine, as long as they come in
front of us and get permission and that the transients don’t just come in and do the thing for
a week or two, I think it’s fine. As long as we are setting a precedent for everyone else to
follow, this is going to be the important thing. Because if I’m not mistaken, they’re the first
to be here this year, and we’re going to see a whole lot more. So, you know, I think we’re a
13
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
tourist attraction, and we need to increase sales, especially this year since we’re going to have
a lot more people around, and the bed tax is great.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that’s true. I notice that in the Section 161, they allow a 12 day
period and a seven day period for the tent itself, twice per season. This application is being
asked for 30 days. That’s why she’s here. Otherwise she didn’t have to be here.
MR. METIVIER-And, you know what, I’ve said all along, I think these tents are a good
thing. I don’t think that they, you know, they’re temporary, and the fact that she’s here and
complying is wonderful. So I’m fine with this.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Gretchen?
MRS. STEFFAN-I just wanted to offer some history, because this is very different than the
place we were last year, because there was a tremendous amount of debate. We actually
turned, we approved this application last year, and we denied two applications that followed,
on the Route 9 strip, and the logic behind that was that, you know, we were seeing these sales
crop up, that the duration of the tent sales were increasing. I know this is for a set duration
of under a month, but some of the other applications were for longer periods of time, and
there was a tremendous amount of discussion on the Board last year about this very subject,
and so it was very negative, and I remember the summation of some of those discussions
being that next year we wouldn’t allow tent sales. So this is a very different outcome and a
very different discussion than we had last year.
MR. SEGULJIC-But I think, you know, the Board has changed since then.
MRS. STEFFAN-Absolutely, but I’m just kind of surprised. It’s a very different discussion.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, in order for Staff, really, and for the Planning Department to try to
solve some of these problems, that’s where the letter of May 4, 2005 came out from Marilyn
Ryba to the Town Board, and just to reiterate what came out into that 161.5, what they
actually agreed to, the Staff recommendations were made to the Town Board and the Town
Board approved Section 161, or Chapter 161. The conditions were outline New York State
Fire Code requirements and have the Fire Marshal approve. Provide a permit, Certificate of
Occupancy, for compliance upon Fire Marshal and Code Enforcement Officer’s inspections.
Require an application fee review, plus temporary deposit to ensure the site is in conformance
with requirements. Allow administrative review for specific area. In other words, the
administrative review would have been for the 12 days and 7 days of tent, it’s to be allowed
only in the HC-1 zone, which this is in, and the time limit of 7 consecutive days again. That’s
what’s actually on the books now. The applicant is here because she wants 30 days, and this
was allowed to be twice a year, they could erect that.
MRS. STEFFAN-I think the other issue that came up is, now that I’m thinking about this, is
that that issue was turned over to the Planning Ordinance Review Committee and we were
supposed to make some kind of recommendation. Obviously that Committee is still in process
and hasn’t made any formal recommendations for new zoning. So, I certainly could support
this, with the rest of the Board, but I did think that it was important to bring up the history
and some of the discussion we had last year.
MR. VOLLARO-I think a lot of the controversy we have here among ourselves is trying to
understand that we don’t bring this in, that this doesn’t become sort of carnival sort of thing.
That’s what we’re concerned about. There’s a couple of things along Route 9 that are
beginning to approach that look right now, right across the street. So we’re trying to hold
that down, if we can, especially up in that area.
MRS. STEFFAN-And I think some of the other discussion was that some of the sales that
were longer, two and three months in duration, the discussion was that tax, obviously there
are assessments on buildings, and if we’re including ancillary structures on buildings, it
doesn’t seem right for commercial properties to be paying taxes on a footprint when other
establishments have a three month window where they’re generating a tremendous amount of
sales and not being assessed on that property. So that was some of the other discussion that
happened as a result of some of the additional tent sales over a several month period.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that was exactly the reason that they limited it to seven days, so
there wouldn’t be a big impact in that area. That was the whole idea behind the seven days, I
14
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
think. So I’ll support this. I know, now, that once we approve this, everybody that wants a
tent sale will hang their hats on 30 days, though. That I know.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, we review them each individually.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, that’s correct, but we’re going to have to keep a fairly level playing
field in that area. So with that, I would call for a motion.
MRS. BARDEN-There is a public hearing.
MR. VOLLARO-I think I opened the public hearing, and I think I closed the public hearing.
MRS. BARDEN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Did I?
MS. GAGLIARDI-No.
MR. VOLLARO-No. Okay. I will open it. I asked if anybody wanted to speak to this
application, and I didn’t get a. Okay. So I’ll open and close both.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
NO COMMENT
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 10-2006 SWANK, Introduced by Thomas Seguljic
who moved for its adoption, seconded by Anthony Metivier:
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
MR. VOLLARO-For a period of?
MR. SEGULJIC-For a period of 30 days, but that’s already in the application.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it’s in the Staff notes.
MS. HILL-No, it’s in the application, too.
MRS. STEFFAN-It’s June 30. It says right here in the Project Description, June 30 to July
th
29.
th
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, in the application it says June 30. So it is in the application.
th
MR. VOLLARO-And you’re also asking for the waiver requests, and that’s part of the
application.
AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno
NOES: Mr. Sipp, Mr. Vollaro
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. VOLLARO-I think it passed with four votes.
MS. HILL-Thank you.
OLD BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 2-2006 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED SCHERMERHORN RES. PROP.
HOLDINGS OWNER(S): ST. ALPHONSUS CHURCH ZONING MR-5 LOCATION PINE
STREET/LUZERNE RD. APPLICANT PROPOSES TO CONSTRUCT 40 TOWNHOUSE
APARTMENTS WITH ASSOCIATED UTILITIES, ROADS, PARKING, AND SITE WORK.
MULTI-FAMILY DWELLINGS REQUIRE REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD.
15
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
APPLICANT HAS SUBMITTED ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN RESPONSE TO THE
PLANNING BOARD 2/28/06 TABLING RESOLUTION. CROSS REF. AV 7-06 WARREN
COUNTY PLANNING 2/8/06 LOT SIZE 4.87 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 309.10-1-45 SECTION
179-4-040
JON LAPPER & TOM NACE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT; RICH S.,
PRESENT
MR. VOLLARO-Just for housekeeping purposes, the public hearing is open on this, and
remains open, and at the end of this there will be a Short Form SEQRA.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Hi. Rich Schermerhorn, for the record, Tom Nace, and Jon
Lapper. I just want to open by saying I took the comments that we had from the public and
from the Planning Board from last meeting, and there’s Items One through Eight, and I just
wanted to run down them. It’s the letter I got from Staff after the meeting, and Number One
was the review of installation of sidewalks along Pine Street. I know Mr. Ford would like to
see them go down Pine Street. I wasn’t sure that everyone was in support of the full
sidewalk, but I did add some sidewalks coming from the complex out to the entrance where I
added a gazebo which would serve as like a bus stop for the kids. Number Two, building
elevations and color schemes. You have the building elevations, and I did supply, last
meeting, the color schemes, and I actually kept a copy. It was the previously approved
Northbrook Apartments. I figured everyone liked those colors. So I just stuck with those.
Number Three, the buffer around the, the 50 foot buffer was a concern. One of the things
that we did, and I took the Board’s recommendation, if you recall, I did have a C.T. Male
signoff letter at the last meeting for the stormwater for the septics and the overall engineering
design, but I certainly got the strong feeling from the Board and some of the residents
commenting about septic system existing problems or problems that could occur, so I have
taken a step. We have the letter in the file. You have a letter. I am going to run the sewers,
so that the issue with the sewers has been taken care of. So entail, what that really does is
that allows, now, a considerable amount of more room now to leave much more buffering,
which seemed to be a big concern, because now instead of clearing all the land for the septic
fields, now I have the sewers. So I can very conservatively save as many trees as I possibly
can. Number Six was an item about contact the Glens Falls School, or the Glens Falls Transit
and the Queensbury School, which we’ve done, and you have letters in the file addressing
that. The other thing was, well, Number Seven, I kind of skipped ahead. The sanitary sewer.
We’re going to do the sewers now, and then Number Eight, the last item was the Fire
Marshal, which we’ve addressed that, per his recommendation, as far as the entrance way,
and last but not least we don’t have 100% signoff from C.T. Male, but there’s only three
items, which I believe one was a typo, one was adding a fire hydrant, which we showed
provisions for it, just it wasn’t shown on the plan, and putting, I think there were some
contour lines that weren’t labeled correctly, which of course we’ll agree to all those items.
That was all.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to throw this open to the Board, and then we’ll start off with Tom
Seguljic on this.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. In reading the notes from the Glens Falls School.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Queensbury District.
MR. SEGULJIC-Queensbury District and Glens Falls Transportation, they indicated they’ll
be stopping at the corner of Luzerne and Pine. Is that correct? I think that’s the way I
understand it.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Correct. Yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-In light of that, it would make sense to me to have a sidewalk along Pine
Street down to Luzerne then.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Like is said at the last meeting, I’m in favor of running the
sidewalk. I have no problem with that. I think the issue was, is it was going to a, well, it
comes down to a maintenance thing, and I don’t think we have a sidewalk ordinance in the
Town of Queensbury, but I will certainly put it in on my property, private property, and run
it down there if you’d like.
16
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, because it just makes sense to me, because in theory, then, I would
hope that people walk out and down.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, I would hope they’ll actually stop at the entrance way to the
complex, because I actually put the gazebo in.
MR. SEGULJIC-Right, you did put that there, but the impression I’m getting is they’re just
going to stop there.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right, but the other thing I said at the last meeting, too, is if the
sidewalks were to run all of Pine, and then down Luzerne, I’d condition right now that I’d put
them in within 60 days if a provision was ever passed that sidewalks were to go in. I just, you
know, I’ve offered at every project, and for whatever reason.
MR. SEGULJIC-I mean, to me it makes the most sense to run them all the way along Pine.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I agree.
MR. SEGULJIC-Definitely along, from the driveway out to the intersection.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Certainly I won’t disagree with you.
MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, should we do this one issue at a time?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, yes, we can. You’re on a roll. I’m going to comment a little later on
on my own opinion on sidewalks, but you do what you want to do with this and talk about.
MR. SEGULJIC-All right, and I think it’s great, connecting the sanitary sewer because it
allowed more space, but I think, I still think there’s room for more imagination within the
interior design, okay. I’m not a site, I’m an engineer, but I have no vision, but in my humble
opinion, what it looks like you could do is you take the townhouse that is in the southeast
corner, push that back a little bit, and you could make that nine units instead. That would
open up the space between those two townhouses, and instead of having that big patch of
asphalt in between them, you could actually have an actual landscape buffer, because as I
look at the photograph, it looks like there’s a good natural coverage in that area. So you
could almost open that up as like a picnic area there between the two units. So instead of
having someone come home, pull into their parking lot, walk in their house and that’s it, get
out the next day and leave, maybe they’d actually meet out, they’d meet some of their
neighbors out there, and then you could do also the same thing with the townhouse to the
north of the entranceway, push that down to the north somewhat and leave some of that
natural, some of the natural trees there along the entranceway. Then you could take and
make that a ten unit house, townhouses, and then make the one to the west, in the southwest
corner, make that a nine unit, and that would leave your other two townhouses at six units,
and you could open up a natural landscape buffer between those two.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I’ll let Tom address some of the comments, Tom, but just one
thing. Remember in the past, in front of some of the Board members, if I make them nine or
ten units, the buildings get really big. So we’ve kind of found that happy medium of making
them eight. So I am hearing what you’re saying, but it doesn’t make our buffer situation go
away. I think it makes it worse if we move them, but I’ll let Tom address that.
MR. NACE-I’m not sure I followed all of your suggestions, Tom. I think one of them was to
move this unit to the north?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes.
MR. NACE-In which case, what happens here is the road narrows in, the northern end of the
site. If we move that, we are going to start to, as Rich said, we’re going to start to make the
buffer situation worse. When we eliminated the septics, we tried to keep the clearing lines in
as close as we could to the units, where there’s still some back yard, but in order to maintain
the buffer around the perimeter of the site. The same down here. I think you were talking
about moving, I’m not sure which one of these, this one moving to the south?
MR. SEGULJIC-No, just to the east.
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MR. NACE-To the east.
MR. SEGULJIC-I agree we’re cutting into the buffer somewhat, but I think we’re gaining
some landscaping interior, and, you know, I think it would make quality of life within the
whole complex better.
MR. NACE-Well, I’ll let Rich, he operates a lot of units, and I’ve seen some of the operations
and some of the facilities during the day when people would be using yards, and there really
aren’t.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Tom, as you know, I’m very agreeable to all Board comments. If
the full Board feels strongly about that, fine, we’ll, you know, I’ll come back, but honestly, if
you look at the picture, and that is a very true picture, that is a fairly heavily, heavily
wooded site, except for where the people’s house and their garage, it is fairly open right there.
If I go jockeying around, I’m not saying, I mean, it’s going to take some more trees, but the
other difficulty with these, too, is we have to maintain them and plow them. As it is now
with the requirements with the curbs, it’s an absolute nightmare to plow these things, and
we’re constantly repairing the curbs because the plow trucks, as careful as they are, when
they lift the plows to push the snow, they’re chipping them, and we’re constantly, all you
have to do is go up to the Mall parking lot or Hanneford and look at the curbs from the plow
trucks. It beats the heck out of them. Right now the configuration allows simplicity for us to
maintain the project. I’m not saying I can’t do it your way, but I do know what works, but
I’ll work with you.
MR. SEGULJIC-And I can appreciate that, but the other thing to understand is, if I’m
correct you have two parking spots per unit, and the Code is one and a half.
MRS. STEFFAN-They got a variance.
MR. VOLLARO-They got a variance.
MR. SEGULJIC-You got a variance for that, okay, but still we, as a site, as a Planning
Board, we can.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, they have their variance for 80 units.
MR. LAPPER-And we did that because Rich needs them because some people are parking on
the grass, which would be worse.
MR. VOLLARO-More is better in one of these, as opposed to people winding up special
occasion parking on Pine Street.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay, but I guess my whole point is that we can make this project better.
Right now there’s not a lot of imagination. There’s one big huge parking lot in the middle of
the site.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, remember the one good thing, with going to the septics, I
believe the conversation was it allowed us to do less clearing, and if you look at that aerial
picture and scale it, it’s going to be a little self-contained village of itself. The only way
you’re going to see it is when you drive by and look in the entranceway.
MR. SEGULJIC-And I agree with you 100%, but the problem is a self-contained village of
buildings and parking lots.
MR. LAPPER-But in terms of the impacts on the people driving by, if you ask Rich to take
the trees down, it’s going to be a lot more visible.
MR. SEGULJIC-But what I’m saying is, one thing to make a successful community is you
have to have places for people to gather. There’s nothing like that here right now.
MRS. BRUNO-There’s some mention in the notes on this that you had tried a couple of
different layouts and decided that this was indeed the best one. Could you describe, perhaps,
some of the layouts that you came up with?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. NACE-Sure, actually, Jim played around with it, too. We tried a unit across the end,
the same down here. I don’t know that we tried making the units at all different angles
because it is a narrow site and long buildings. The most efficient layout with the least
amount of asphalt is what we’ve achieved, okay, but we did look at trying to turn these
buildings across the site on either end, and I think we may have looked at trying down here at
the fatter end of the site, trying to skew the buildings a little bit, and everything you do adds
asphalt, adds clearing area, and reduces the buffer.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-And I think our goal originally was to try and keep the 50 foot
buffer, even though the adjoining zone behind me is the same zone.
MR. SEGULJIC-And I can appreciate what you’ve done. I think you’ve done a good job on
that, especially going to the sewer. I guess we can do better, and I’m asking for more. I guess
the question is, how does the rest of the Board feel about that?
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t want to jump into this until everybody else is done. So I’m going to
ask Don to comment on it if he would, too.
MR. SIPP-Well, I’m happy that you’ve gone to the sewer and get that buffer where it should
be, and I think you can maintain it, but I also agree with Tom that maybe there should be
some different arrangement here. There is no room here for any play area for children, and I
know that you don’t like that because of the liability, but you have liability for somebody
slipping in your parking lot, and I think the same policy could cover the liability of a child
getting hurt on the playground equipment, and I would like to see this building up in the
east, southeast corner there, move that towards the street a little bit. You’d still have a good
sized buffer there, and that would allow, I think, for a play area or at least cut back on the
buffer and allow for a play area.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I do have, I can get a swing set and a play area in there if you
want. Under the Town’s regulations and zoning, under 50 units it’s not required, not that
that makes it right, but don’t forget, I’m paying $500 per unit for recreation funds. So, I
mean, I’m following the rules and the regs, but I certainly, if you would like a, if you can
leave my configuration the way it is, I certainly can fit a playground set. We can condition it,
do the same one we did at Northbrook. I bought a beautiful set from Garden Time and the
kids do enjoy it, and I’ll certainly put that in if you’d like it.
MR. VOLLARO-Just where would that go, Rich? Where would you plan to put it?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I think best not to impact the neighbors where the greatest
clearing is, but I’m positive we have plenty of room behind any of the three buildings facing
west, that we could fit it between any one of those buildings.
MRS. STEFFAN-I think the last time you were here, I recommended the northeast corner for
a playground.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-We certainly could do that. I’d have to be sensitive to the fact of
it’s a busy road. So I might have to throw a fence around it or something, but I’d prefer to
put it where Tom’s talking.
MRS. STEFFAN-See, I wasn’t really sure, one of the questions I had for Susan was that, in
the Staff notes, it talked about wanting to have an access point to the new transit, the
transportation center out of the back of the property, and I’m not really sure how that’s
going to unfold, and I guess we needed to talk about that, but I thought that, last time when
you were here, I talked about having a walking path around, because you were going to put
septics, and so you were going to have to take a lot of trees down. That’s not the case
anymore, and I like the existing trees being left. It’s a nice buffer and it’ll make this
development kind of secluded, I think, but I would like to see either a playground or a sitting
spot, in one of the corners, and perhaps you could loop the sidewalks so that if someone had a
carriage, or just wanted to do a couple of laps, they could walk the sidewalks and do like an
oval, instead of going behind the buildings, which, you know, everybody has their deck, in
your configuration, everyone has their decks. They wouldn’t want people walking behind,
you know, their units, but if they could walk on the sidewalks.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Could I address that? The only problem, and it’s a huge problem
with looping sidewalks, and if you notice, I have them broken between buildings, we get
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
constant complaints from the residents with kids on skateboards and rollerblades. It’s an
absolute, they love it because they skateboard around the complexes on the sidewalks. That’s
why you see that these are broken right here. I’m not saying we couldn’t lead a short one to a
playground area, but to loop them all together makes it rather difficult.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, you could make it a cinder track.
MRS. STEFFAN-Instead of concrete.
MR. SEGULJIC-Instead of asphalt or concrete, make it cinder.
MRS. STEFFAN-I understand about your parking spaces and, you know, I certainly, I don’t
have a problem with the configuration of this lot, looking at the constraints that you’re
looking at. You’re keeping a lot of trees, I like that part.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-And keep in mind, these trees, it’s important to point out, these are
eastern white pines. There’s a lot of pine trees, and pine trees, you know, the needles turn,
but they’re always there. It’s not like your maple trees, once they’re off, that’s it. You look
at a stick the rest of, the whole winter long. So there is coverage consistently on that site.
MRS. STEFFAN-So it can be a playground or a sitting spot. That’s for discussion I guess. I
know that you market to a certain segment of the population. So I’m not sure what would be
more appropriate, but I do think it would be a good idea to have a sitting space or a
playground.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Whether there’s children or not, we get visitors with children, and
they do use them.
MRS. STEFFAN-The other thing is, based on the public comment the last time, I think that
there should be a fence between this property and the O’Hanlon property, just based on the
comments from the last meeting.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Which property was O’Hanlon? I’m sorry.
MRS. STEFFAN-On the south side. Yes. One of the things that neighbor was concerned
about in the public comment was that they didn’t want folks leaving your property going
over to his property, which is actually pretty close.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-No problem. I can run a fence, and what we can do is, we’ll run it
until it hits the natural buffer of trees, so we don’t have to disturb anything. The other thing
is, I don’t know how we do this an easy way, but their driveway on the survey is on the
property, and I’m happy to give them the property, or grant them an easement, whatever it
takes. I’m not looking to re-invent.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s two sections on there that you have that, that you’re going to have
to either grant them an easement or convey.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right. I’ll certainly, whatever makes the Board, I think from a
legal standpoint it’s easier probably just to, just give an easement I guess.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re worried about closing the lot down for density purposes you’re
saying? Yes, I understand, because there’s two sections on that lot. One’s on the northwest
side and one’s on the southeast side.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-But to answer your question, Gretchen, the fence is fine.
MRS. STEFFAN-And I certainly can agree with your comments, although, you know, we
would like to have sidewalks in subdivisions at this point, a future condition.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. I’ll condition it that if an Ordinance is passed within a 60 day
time period, I’ll put them in.
MRS. STEFFAN-Because that’s what we’re looking at with the new Comprehensive Land
Use Plan and the new zoning regulations, as far as maintenance and those kinds of things.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
We haven’t worked those details out yet. So I understand the developer’s point of view, and
your point of view, Tom.
MR. SEGULJIC-But we’re going to have, potentially, children walking down the street, now,
to a bus stop that’s there, with no sidewalk.
MR. VOLLARO-The bus stop is going to be at Luzerne and Pine.
MR. SEGULJIC-That’s what Queensbury said, they stop at Luzerne and Pine now.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-That’s where they currently stop.
MR. SEGULJIC-We’re just going to be increasing the number of people that use that.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re showing one at the other end. Luzerne and Pine is up a little further.
MRS. BRUNO-Right. What he’s saying is, if they’re at the gazebo waiting, the children
have to walk down.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, what if I stuck a sidewalk at the corner, out of my parking
lot, just ran a sidewalk through the woods, and then that would address not putting it out
near the Town road. I could do that with minimal clearing.
MR. SEGULJIC-All right.
MR. VOLLARO-See, what I like about this site is what the sewer gave us, and that’s a lot of
trees and a lot of buffer, that’s the good part about this, and when we start to destroy that
through other tinker around, I’m giving you my view on it now. I tend to think that the
biggest plus to this is the amount of buffering that this whole thing gets, and protection from
the road, and once we start to go through, even put a sidewalk through there.
MRS. STEFFAN-What Mr. Schermerhorn is saying is that there’s a natural opening there
already in the trees, to just.
MR. NACE-Well, there will be when we run the sewer through there. So we’d put it right.
MR. SEGULJIC-That makes sense.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-That’s right at the location where the school bus.
MR. SIPP-The sidewalk would be plowed, maintained?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-If I put a paved, well, I could pave it because it could be the same
level as the parking lot, that would be most cost effective and it would hold up well. So,
certainly, I’ll condition that we’ll maintain that through the winter and keep it shoveled.
MRS. BRUNO-Perhaps along those lines, when you’re discussing, if you decide to go with the
playground unit, if we decide that we are going to insist on that, that seems to me to be a
better area than down near the O’Hanlon’s house, or even between some of those buildings,
just because of the vicinity of their houses. So more like up in there. I have to say I agree in
terms of changing over to the sewer line definitely gives you more of a buffer, and I think
that’s great. I think that’s a terrific way to go. I have to agree, though, that we need to push
some of this layout. There’s room for more creativity so that whether or not you have a little
bit more asphalt and less trees, you improve the quality and character, just the aesthetics of
the overall land, so that it’s not just a big, large parking lot, like Tom was saying, perhaps
bring in some of the green area so that it’s within. You think of college campuses where the
green’s within. College’s still have quite a bit of parking space, but it’s not just, you don’t
drive in, that to me says echo-y loud area right in there. No, you can’t see it from the road,
but within the complex, a community, you would want a community.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right, and again, I totally understand where you’re coming from,
and again, yes, you’ll only probably see it from the entranceway looking in. You’re not going
to see it from the road inside, but the apartments that I have done have been very successful
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
with similar layouts. It may be how maybe I feel or you feel that you’d like a different
layout, but it works. It just, it simply works, and again, I’ve tried. I think I’ve met the
Board at least 75% of the way here. I don’t want to, I never want to sound like it’s my right
or whatever, but I am following the zoning rules and regs, like last month I had a signoff
letter. I had the septics. It was a permitted use, and I said okay. So I do go to great strides
to please everyone, to add things that are not required items, but this is the only thing that I
really, I feel it’s not going to impact the outside, my little community in there, because it is
buffered in there. We may not like it, or you may not like the way it’s positioned, but it does
work, and that’s the one thing, I feel I’d rather find another way to help you in another
aspect, but I just find that it’s difficult for me to go back and try and move the buildings
around because I know it works the way it does.
MR. SEGULJIC-I guess I’m just saying you can do better. I realize it works.
MR. LAPPER-Let me just suggest something, Tom. The people are going to hang out on
their decks and patios in the back, and if you move the buildings out, what Tanya’s
suggesting, to create some green between the parking lot, that’s not really where the residents
are going to hang out, because they’re going to be in their backyards. So you’re going to be
kind of creating green that takes away some of the trees. So it reduces the buffer that helps
the neighbors, and it doesn’t help the people that live there.
MR. SEGULJIC-No, I think what you would do is there’d really be no change in the amount
of green space because you’d be cutting into the buffer a little bit but you’re putting that
internally is what you’d be doing.
MR. LAPPER-But the trees would come down.
MRS. BRUNO-These wouldn’t come down.
MR. SEGULJIC-You’d leave these trees here in the middle.
MR. LAPPER-But if you have to move the building closer to the perimeter.
MR. SEGULJIC-I mean, one of my general comments overall with the way we do
development is we go in, we just cut down everything in the middle, and then we go back and
plant trees in. Why don’t we work on trying to maintain some green space within, and not go
back in and plant trees. Make it more appealing.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, again, appealing would be, I guess, someone’s opinion. I
mean, when I get done with these, with the landscaping that you guys require, they really do
look nice, and if you drive through any of the complexes I have, they’re well kept. They’re
similar in style, and the other thing that’s very attractive to my renters is elderly people.
There were 70 million baby boomers last week that have reached maturity or whatever. I get
a lot of seniors. They like to park their car up close to their door. I’ve seen a lot of layouts in
other communities where you park your car, you have to walk with your groceries to get in to
your units. There’s existing older units in this area that are like that, and I’ll tell you, people
like the simplicity of the layouts that I have.
MR. SEGULJIC-But we’re not saying you have to move any parking. You don’t have to
move any parking.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Okay.
MR. NACE-You’re saying move the buildings back away from the parking so it makes it
further for people to?
MR. SEGULJIC-No, no, the parking can go along with it.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-He’s saying try and twist the parking lots with it.
MR. SEGULJIC-No, for example, move that southeast building back into the buffer, and
then you can open up a spot between the two parking lots.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, I thought our goal was to keep as much buffer as we could?
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. SEGULJIC-But also it was to have an imaginative interior design.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s only so much you can do with the amount of property he has,
though.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, he’s asking for 40 units. We don’t have to allow him 40 units, to start
with. That’s one way to increase the green space interior wise.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right, I guess you don’t have to allow it, but it works. I meet all
the requirements, and I’m trying to find a happy medium.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, you know where I stand on it. Right now you’re going to pull in there
and it’s going to be like going to an Army barracks, and you say people only use their back
decks. Why do they only use their back decks? Because there’s no where to go.
MR. METIVIER-But you know what, Tom, the truth be told, honest to God, if somebody
didn’t like the looks of the community they’re going to live in, they’re not going to rent there.
I mean, honestly, think about it. They are not being forced to live at the Pine Street
whatever he’s going to call it. If they don’t like it, don’t rent there. I mean, if you drive by
any one of Mr. Schermerhorn’s developments on any given day, there’s nobody there.
Weekends, there’s nobody there. So, these people are either really, really active, and they’re
getting out and doing things, or they’re non-existent, but there’s never a car in any of these
parking lots. I swear to God.
MRS. BRUNO-So how come they don’t want to hang out there, because of the?
MR. METIVIER-They’re getting out and doing things, but if they don’t like it, they don’t
have to live there.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, why don’t we make it so that they can enjoy where they live.
MR. METIVIER-I’m sure they do enjoy where they live, most of the people that I know that
have lived there love it. Absolutely love it. They’re clean, you know, but they never talk
about the fact, God, we have to go somewhere because there’s nothing to do here. I mean, if
they don’t like it, they don’t have to live there, and we’re talking about this and beating a
dead horse. We begged him, begged him for sewers. He gave us the sewers. So we could get
more buffering. This is going to be a community that you might not even see from the road,
except from the road, except for one entrance, and now we’re going to tinker with it and
screw it all up. Why don’t we move on to something else?
MR. SEGULJIC-Because this is important, and if you recall we said it was a very
unimaginative design.
MRS. BRUNO-And aren’t we charged with looking at the development of our community?
MR. METIVIER-We are charged with that if it has a visual impact. This is not going to. Is
this going to have a visual impact when you drive down Luzerne Road? No. Is it going to
have a visual impact when you drive on Pine? No.
MR. SEGULJIC-But we’re also charged with the quality of life within the community.
MR. METIVIER-If they don’t like the quality of life, get out.
MR. NACE-Can I break in a moment, Tom and Tony? From a practical standpoint, Tom, I
think if I understand what you’re suggesting is to move this unit to the east, okay.
MR. SEGULJIC-Correct.
MR. SIPP-Right.
MR. NACE-Move the parking with the unit, is that correct?
MR. SEGULJIC-Correct.
MR. SIPP-Right.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. NACE-And open up space between?
MR. SEGULJIC-Correct.
MR. NACE-Okay. One of the advantages to having the units close together like this is to
being able to double load the parking, okay. In other words, we have one aisle circulation
down the middle, and we have two sets of parking spaces off that aisle. If we end up pulling
this out, what happens is, and trying to open up the space down the middle in the parking, we
end up having to have two circulation aisles to go with the parking.
MR. SEGULJIC-You could loop it around the southern end, then.
MR. NACE-I could what?
MR. SEGULJIC-You could loop it around the southern end.
MR. NACE-Loop?
MR. SEGULJIC-The road away, so you have the open space in the middle to loop around the
southern end.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, Tom.
MR. NACE-We have to have an access aisle for this parking on this building, and we have to
have an access aisle for this parking on this building, with a space in between. The net
outcome of that is, whether you loop this or not, in fact even more so if you loop it, you end
up with half again as much asphalt.
MR. SEGULJIC-No, no, no. Don’t bring it to the road. You could open up the middle of
that parking lot, and you could just have a road that connects that two sides of the parking,
just a loop, a small loop, to open up the middle.
MR. NACE-You can’t make the turning radius.
MR. VOLLARO-One of the things that’s going to happen if you do that, by the way, is where
I get into the lighting thing, the lighting right now, the photometric on this has got to be
increased a little bit, and I’ll get into that, but as soon as you open up these parking lots, to
get two and a half foot candles on the ground by spec, you’re going to have to start to
increase your, the lighting on the site. That’s going to happen. I can tell you that right now,
because the lighting on the site now does have to be increased slightly. I laid the
photometrics on each one of your wall packs, and there’s about eight foot of the parking lot
that’s still, when you put the photometrics on, they don’t overlap. If we can get them closed
up at one foot candle at the outside of the photometrics, you’ll have your two, almost two and
a half in the center, but if you open up this parking, you’re going to have to increase the
lighting. You start to massage this thing around, it’s going to be like a bubble.
MRS. STEFFAN-Even if you did that scenario with the island in the middle, and moved the
buildings back, if you get a moving truck in delivering furniture, there’s no way that the
turning radius is going to be able to accommodate that, and, you know, from my point of
view, this is a principal negotiation. We have to meet both sides, and, you know, the parking
lot does require maintenance and it requires parking, and they’ll have 80 cars in there, and so
the parking lot, the way it is configured, has a great deal of utility with this design. If we
have parking islands in the middle of it, it’s not going to have the same utility. It’s going to
be much more difficult to deal with, and I color the drawings. There’s a lot of green space on
this particular plot.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, a lot.
MRS. STEFFAN-And I wouldn’t want to mess with that, because I think it’s going to be a
good place for these folks to live, and if they’re spending time on their back decks, they drive
their car to the front, they go in the house, and then they look out into green space and trees.
They go out on their deck, there’s green space and trees all around them, and, you know, I
can support that. I think that the plan is good for what it is, plus it’s a multi-family zone.
It’s going to offer a lot of housing in a fairly small parcel. We asked them for sewers. They
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
came back and did that for us, and, you know, I think it’s a pretty good plan, and they’re
being very accommodating.
MR. VOLLARO-I calculated in this plan that of the 4.66 acres here, there’s 30% of that is
covered by the existing trees which will remain, and in addition, they’re planting 20 new
trees, and a whole planting list that’s shown on SP-4. There’s a huge amount of green, for the
amount they’ve got there, there’s a lot of green there.
MR. SEGULJIC-We can do better.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I don’t know how.
MR. SEGULJIC-We asked them to come back with an imaginative design. They’ve done
nothing. I mean, that’s just my stand. We can move on from here.
MR. LAPPER-Tom, let me just reiterate the point that Tom Nace was trying to make. If he
has to double load the parking, it’s a 24 foot drive aisle that would have to be added. So in
terms of the buffer, we’ll move it 24 feet away because the Town Code requires a 24 foot drive
aisle. Now there’s a shared 24 foot drive aisle, but if you put trees in the middle, you’d have
to be two 24 foot drive aisles, and that’s a huge amount of asphalt that would all be trees that
would be coming down on the buffer that this Board just created.
MRS. BRUNO-Let’s look at it from this perspective, because every point that everyone’s
making is a great point, in terms of perhaps additional lighting, turning radius. They have
already met us part way in terms of, you know, giving up the septic for the sewer and all of
that. I mean, this is a negotiation so that everyone is happy, hopefully, on both sides. One
thing that alarmed me, that we saw with this packet were the elevations, and this is
something that I think across the board I’m going to start challenging more and more people
on is the aesthetics of the buildings. I understand the economics of building for moderate
income housing, that type of thing, but it strikes me the combination of the parking like this
and then five large rectangles with very little façade enhancement, no shadow lines, or very
few shadow lines, that type of thing. We get into this whole cookie cutter thing, which is the.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-What are we comparing these to? Is there anything to compare
them to? Is there architectural review that you can address towards this?
MRS. BRUNO-Sure, there are many. You could go from looking at a townhouse from
Beacon Street in Boston, which is going to be your upper end.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-This is not Boston. We’re in Queensbury.
MRS. BRUNO-I’m aware of that. I’m saying that’s the upper end.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Excuse me. Until there’s architectural review, I’ve always worked
with this Board. I’ve worked with all the Boards. There’s never been a concern about the
elevations of the look of my buildings.
MRS. BRUNO-There is now.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Maybe with your, but is there architectural review with this
project?
MRS. BRUNO-I believe there is when it’s a site review. It does cross. There are points to be
made. You’ve given us the palate. You’ve given us the elevations, which we wouldn’t be
asking for that if we weren’t charged with reviewing it. I’m merely saying that perhaps
maybe what we can get in terms of pulling out some more of the creativity in the site plan is
just looking to pull something out a little more creative, perhaps in the buildings, if we’re not
going to do it in the parking, because it’s affecting the, and I realize this is Queensbury, but
it’s changing very quickly, and it’s time now that we have to be watching what way it’s
changing. Now you were saying in terms of architectural review. I was offering up Boston
knowing that that was the upper end, very architecturally detailed, demanding. This is the
opposite end of the spectrum. We could perhaps, I’m just asking for some shadow lines, for
some changes in the façade so that you have some portions that come out, some that recede,
some interest, more so than just lick ‘em and stick ‘ems on the gables, and, you know, you
haven’t heard this from the Board, and I understand that this is something, you know, that
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you do work well with the Board in the past, and I’m just offering up another perspective,
and it is talked about, publicly, in terms of what we want to see.
MR. SEGULJIC-When you say shadow lines, what do you mean?
MRS. BRUNO-Shadow lines? You’ve got the eight townhouse units. They’re strictly going
straight across. He’s got one small gable coming out for the doors. If you have your different
townhouse units where they might shift back and forth, so that it’s not just a rectangular
box, with your windows and your doors added on, that increases the cost, I understand that,
when you’re developing, you’re trying to keep your costs down.
MR. VOLLARO-All right. What I’d like to do, folks, is I think we’ve all had our comments
here. I haven’t finished with mine yet, but I’ll wait for a little bit on that. I’d like to open
the public hearing. I see a lot of public here, and there’s some folks who’d like to speak.
Because there’s so many here tonight, I see a lot of people who are going to want to talk
about this, we’ll hold it down to five minutes, okay. Now if anybody wants to speak to this
application, they can approach the table, please.
PUBLIC HEARING OPEN
LOIS HAMMOND
MS. HAMMOND-My name is Lois Hammond and I live on Pine Street, and I notice you
mentioned an increase in the buffer, and it was previously 50 feet. I’m sitting back there.
Can you tell me how big it is now?
MR. VOLLARO-It’s well over 50, probably in certain areas it’s almost 70 foot of buffer here.
Just so that you have an idea, just to give you an idea how much green is in this project, to
get a feel for it, all of this are the existing trees. All the rest of them are plantings in here. So,
of this whole site, better than 30%.
MS. HAMMOND-So you’re certifying to us, I guess, because since we can’t all see it, that it’s
at least 50, and maybe up to 70 feet?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, yes, on the scale you can see that’s almost 70 foot of buffer right in
here.
MS. HAMMOND-Well, it’s just, you know, kind of hard to see that. That’s why I was just
wondering.
MR. VOLLARO-When they gave up the sewer, you really got a lot of buffer, you were left
with a lot of green.
MS. HAMMOND-I understand that. I just wondered if there was a number. I mean, it’s just
been said here tonight there’s more, and I was just curious if there was a number. That’s all.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s a significant amount of increase in green space.
MRS. STEFFAN-Just as an example, on the back of the property, it’s 50 feet. There’s at
least 50 feet on the south side, and there’s 50 feet also on the north side, which is near the
landfill, the old AMG building. So there’s quite a bit, and then there’s expansions from those,
but there is quite a bit of green space, and you’re more than welcome to look at this.
MS. HAMMOND-I know earlier she mentioned the word moderate income, and I believe at
the last meeting Mr. Schermerhorn had said that, you know, perhaps doctors and lawyers
would live here, and I’m just thinking those two maybe don’t go together. I wondered if it’s
possible to know, like what the rents are that would be charged here? Is that a question I can
ask?
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, they’ll come back up and answer that for you.
MS. HAMMOND-Okay. There’s been some discussion about this perhaps not being as
imaginative as you had hoped, and perhaps not a community based complex with just the
way it was drawn when they came in, and perhaps being too basic, I guess is a lot of the
comments I’ve heard, and what strikes me is perhaps for some of the changes that some
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
people appear to want, this is not the best site. It is only 4.6, 4.7 acres, and to come up with
some of the imaginative things that some people seem to want to make it a better community
complex, I think it was mentioned that you don’t have to have 40 units. If there were less
buildings, then perhaps some of the items that have been requested could be fit in on this
acreage, or it could be possibly on a larger site, but that would mean not here. Also at the last
public hearing Mr. Schermerhorn asked if we would rather have a daycare, I think it was a
rhetorical question, you know, would we rather have a daycare there or a doctor’s office, and,
speaking for myself, my answer would be yes, because that, I drove by his daycare that he
had built, down by The Glens Falls Rehabilitation on the way to the meeting tonight, and I
couldn’t help but notice it was closed. There wasn’t a person around, and it’s like that on
weekends, and, you know, speaking from the community point of view, I know that was
something that we did bring up, and so the answer to the question from my point of view is a
yes.
MRS. BRUNO-I’d like to just clarify something. I think I used the term moderate income,
when I meant more like a moderate housing cost. I realize that there is a slew of socio-
economic types that live in different types of housing. I juggled those terms, and I really
meant more of a, you know, when you’re trying to keep building down, building costs down,
as materials rise.
MS. HAMMOND-Yes. I wondered if this is something, when I started hearing these terms
and then mentioned last time, is this a moderate income development, a lower? And so you’re
saying you used it from a different perspective.
MRS. BRUNO-No. I apologize. That was my misuse of the term.
MS. HAMMOND-Okay. I just, you know, was listening and heard you say that.
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, and, Mrs. Hammond, let me just weigh in. The average home price in
the Town of Queensbury is somewhere around $220,000, and so multi-family housing like this
offers an opportunity for folks to have a place to live for less than certainly rentals are very
different than single family homes, but at the same time, for somebody who’s not looking for
that kind of investment, this may be a great alternative for them.
MS. HAMMOND-I understand that, you know, and since some of my minute was taken with
fumbling with the paper, I have one more thing. Just that when Mr. Schermerhorn stated
that the present design worked, that really, you know, I don’t know what he means by works,
and is that his opinion, and of course he’s the builder and developer. He obviously, or I think,
has a different view on it than perhaps the Planning Board does or citizens in the
neighborhood. So I just wanted to mention that. Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-He’ll answer that question for you.
MS. HAMMOND-I’m sure he will.
MR. VOLLARO-Anybody else?
BETSY LEVENDOS
MRS. LEVENDOS-I’m Betsy Levendos, and I live at 14 Pine Street. At the last meeting,
I’m not sure who it was.
MR. VOLLARO-Which end of Pine do you live on, Betsy?
MRS. LEVENDOS-I live right in the middle, right in the middle of Pine Street.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. LEVENDOS-I’m not sure who it was. I think it was Thomas Ford, but I’m not
positive, had asked for creativeness with the sidewalks. I believe it was you asked about the
lighting, and someone on the Board had mentioned making the buildings, the units into four
instead of five, so that we did have space for the play yard and the parking and the walk, like
I think Gretchen wanted, around the (lost word) side of it. It never came up today. What
happened to the question of, how about bringing it down to four, and bringing these other
items, that way the buffer would stay, your parking would still be there. He would still have
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
at least 32 units, but he would have the play yard, the walking area. You’d still have the
large buffer. You know what I mean? You’d still have the lighting, like he did, he went to
the sewer system, and he did do the buffer, you know, he’s compromising.
MR. VOLLARO-The sewer was expensive, by the way, that’s not a cheap portion of this.
MRS. LEVENDOS-Yes, but if we had cut it down to four units, it was in the notes to have
him look at that and cut it into four. I had stayed to the end of the meeting. That was one of
the options at the end of it, that hadn’t been brought back up yet today. I was wondering
about that. What if we did cut it down to four, or make them 10 units, but four buildings,
because they were saying about making the end of the unit look more like a house, so if it was
seen from the road, it did look more appealing. You would keep your buffer. He would keep
most of the units. He’s keep the parking, we would have the sewer, and it’s more of a
compromise than it is just say, no, it has to be 40. It has to have this. It has to have that,
and you’re not getting anywhere. Everyone’s fighting over everything, well, debating, sorry.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s one thing that a lot of people don’t realize that happens here. See
Mr. Schermerhorn has to, for those 40 units, he has to put in $20,000 of rec fees. I don’t think
a lot of people realize that’s $500 a unit that he has to put in for recreation fees into the
Town. For everyone of those units, he’s got to put $500 in. That’s something that a lot of
folks don’t know.
MRS. LEVENDOS-But if he broke the units down into four, that would save him some
money.
MR. VOLLARO-It would. Yes, what you’re saying is you want four buildings, 10 units,
which still gives him.
MRS. LEVENDOS-Yes, four units of eight or four units at nine. Four units, any way he cuts
it, it would change the make up of it. He would still keep the buffer. He would still have
units. We’d still have the tree, your green outline. You know what I mean, it would be more
appealing.
MR. VOLLARO-You want four buildings, basically that’s what you want.
MRS. LEVENDOS-Yes, we want him to cut it down a little bit as a community, so it wasn’t
so many.
MR. VOLLARO-We’ll ask him about that when he comes back up.
MRS. LEVENDOS-Because it was a question at the last time, at the end, where it was like,
we’re looking to be creative on the sidewalks, looking into making it four units, the end of it
look more like a house. I wasn’t sure who said it, I can’t quite remember, but to make it more
appealing.
MR. VOLLARO-The end of it will look like a house.
MRS. LEVENDOS-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-It would look like a house now.
MRS. LEVENDOS-No, someone had mentioned something, I’m not sure who it was, making
it look different, just cosmetically, not, because I don’t have the notes, so I don’t know
exactly who said it or what it was, but it was towards the end of the night, but those are the
basic questions to Mr. Schermerhorn was to see if we cut it down to four, we’d keep the buffer.
We could put in the play yard. We can still keep a lot of the same items that he wants to
keep, but still add the items that everybody else wants to add.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Thanks a lot. Anybody else? Having seen none, I’ll bring you back
up. Okay. I guess we can address the last question first, about.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-The four buildings?
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MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-All right. We did bring that up, and again, I think it came down
to the fact that Boards, previous Boards, if I make them four then they get much larger, and
there’s some un-aesthetics about that. It’s not so aesthetic when you make them real big.
Now again, we don’t change the square footage, if we go to four 10 unit buildings. It’s still
the same square footage. Still the same amount of green space. One of the things, I just want
to address the one woman quickly. The daycare/doctor office, basically my point was last
week I didn’t say would you rather have a daycare/doctor’s office. My point being, last
month about daycare/doctor’s offices, there’s much more clearing sometimes, and sometimes
more traffic, with doctor’s offices, of people coming and going. This daycare center on Bay
Road during the day is extremely busy with parents in and out. That was my only point
about that. Now you ask about, you know, are these low income, are they moderate, are they
high end? Well, unfortunately for a lot of people, not just this community and other
communities, and I study this stuff constantly. Lower income, unfortunately, won’t happen
in this day and age. Everyone wants it. They talk about it. This Town has talked about it,
but with the cost of development, changes of things, the aesthetics, the appeal that people
want, and again, I’m not going to say which communities or what, but to get low income at
the cost of land today and infrastructure, it’s very difficult. Now what I consider reasonable,
these apartments will rent like the rest of mine in Queensbury. These will be around $750,
$800. Now some people might say that’s outrageous, but believe it or not, that is considered
reasonable in this day and age, and again, I will get a mix of young doctors, lawyers. Believe
it or not, I don’t care what professional comes out of college today, everyone has heavy debt
loads today with student loans, the cost of living. I do get those type of people. I know I
heard some people chuckle, yes, doctors, lawyers probably wouldn’t want to live here. All I
can give you is a proven track record of the ones I own and operate now, and we have no
problem getting very nice people. So these will be what I consider middle to higher end
apartments.
MRS. STEFFAN-Mr. Schermerhorn, the last time you were here, didn’t you talk about some
of the qualifications? You have a very difficult screening?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. We, unfortunately for a lot of people, we deny a lot of
applications. Just to apply for one of our apartments, if you were to come into my office,
there’s a sign that says rental application fee $25. Now, if they don’t want to pay $25, you
know you don’t want them right away, but the ones that do apply, it’s surprising. We’ll get
30, like this month alone I think we’re heading on 35 applications, and we’ll probably deny a
good 50% of them, but we do background checks. We see if they’ve had previous history of
felonies. I mean, they sign disclosures. We go right through Central Credit Bureau. We’re
set up right in my office. We’ve got a Central Credit Bureau, just like if you’re going to get a
mortgage or buy a car. So we know everyone’s history. It’s all confidential, the people that
run it in my office, but we credit check everybody, and I’m not saying people that have had
some bad glitches, that we don’t accept, I mean, because there are exceptions to the rules, but
everyone is screened, and I’m not going to say it’s 100% perfect all the time, but I would say
98% of the time, we’re right on top of things, and if there are problems, we address them
immediately according to the way the law works, and we take care of them.
MR. VOLLARO-One other thing I’ve noticed in Town, of all of the apartments, I’ve never
seen a sheriff or anybody else have to be called in for a serious matter, in any of them.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-The only time we’ll get calls is, we just had an incident where a
woman left her self-cleaning oven on. All my apartments have self-cleaning ovens. She went
to the store and left the self-cleaning oven on. A neighbor came home, smelled smoke in the
foyer, thought there was a fire in her apartment because she couldn’t get her, so they called
the fire trucks, and you do get the occasional, because I do get a lot of elderly people, you do
get the occasional elderly person that may have a spell, the ambulance, the fire trucks all
show up. I mean, that does happen.
MR. METIVIER-I will go on the record to say I know three doctors, literally three doctors
that are moving to Town, and all three, well, hopefully, will be renting from, and to be honest
with you, it’s because we cannot find them any affordable housing right now, and these are
doctors, I kid you not, that are actually being re-located to Glens Falls and cannot afford real
estate and have opted to rent and I bring them around to all the different areas, all the
different rental units, and I’ll tell you, you know, when you look at some of the stuff out
there, Rich does a nice job with his apartments.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. SCHERMERHORN-And if I may make one point. I haven’t brought this up at all, but
if we all take a good look at the picture, what do we see? We see a cemetery. We have a
warehouse, the Bare Bones warehouse. We have the landfill transfer station, which, again, I
think I’m going to improve that area. I’m not going to hurt that area. I’m going to keep that
area buffered. I’m agreeing to fence and give property to the O’Hanlons. Again, on the
record, whatever they need I’ll take care of. The other neighbor where I see, looks like
sometimes these tax maps are off a little bit, but the other neighbor that abuts me, if it
requires a fence to buffer them from my property, on the record, I’ll put a fence in. So, again,
I would ask, specifically Tom and Tanya. If you can work with me on the layout, I know it’s
not your first choice, but, again, whether it’s this application or the next one, I’ll still
continue to do what I can to.
MRS. BRUNO-I know that we all appreciate that you’ve, you know, in terms of the septic
and the sewer, and I wonder if I could ask, in terms of the cost, Bob seems to know the
number, just in terms of switching over from the sewers to the septic, what are you giving up?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I’m very, well, first of all, let me explain something quickly about
septic systems. If I had my choice with apartment complexes, house, office buildings, you
name it, I would take a septic system with the appropriate soils any day of the week over
sewers. Not only, now don’t forget, once you put a septic system in, a lot of times they’ll last
20, 25 years, if you properly maintain them, if you have good soils. Sewers, I have to run it
down to the firehouse, but it doesn’t stop there. I get quarterly bills for the rest of my life, as
long as I own those apartment complexes. Being on Town sewer is not reasonable.
Everything is gauged by water consumption. There’s water meters that, for every gallon of
water, I’m paying a rate to the Queensbury Sewer Department. I have apartments on sewers,
lots of them, and it’s expensive. I can replace the system five times over the next 30 years.
Pull the soils out, bring new soils in. I’m still ahead for the cost of the sewers over the long
haul, but is it better? Yes, I agree with you it’s better, but people say cost effective, it’s not.
As long as you have appropriate soils, which this site lends itself to, it just has beautiful
perking soils.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, what it did, Rich, was give you the ability to save a lot more trees and
do a lot more buffering.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right.
MRS. BRUNO-Well, I understand that but I was just curious, if we’re talking.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s expensive. As he said, it’s not just the starting cost. I look at things as
starting costs and running costs. The running costs in here to run the sewer is pretty
expensive year after year after year.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-And again, these won’t be low income apartments. They can’t be
low income apartments, because of the expense that goes into building these. I mean, there’s
ways I could make these very affordable, but it would never pass by this Board. It would
never pass by the public. I mean, then they would literally be what you’re talking. You’d
have to just build square boxes and make them basic, basic, but my apartments have never
been basic, and I’ve never had a problem filling them with doing them the way I’ve been
doing them.
MR. VOLLARO-And the way I view this, too, is the parking in the middle. If you look at
what’s going on, for example, let’s take a look at Aviation Road, the building that’s just west
of the architectural building there, Dick Jones. The parking there is very much like the
parking here. The parking is in the middle of the two, and that’s what our Code is slowly
getting to is putting the parking behind the buildings and not on the street, and that’s what
this does, and I think you’re trying to follow the Code here with respect to how big a piece
you have to work with. Frankly I’ve got a couple of comments, one is on lighting, but I
didn’t see very many things that I wanted to correct on this. I’m going to talk about
sidewalks for just a second. You have Rec fees, $500 a unit for Rec fees. It seems to me that
if we’re so interested in sidewalks as a Town, and I think they’re a good idea, except when you
go to put them in on people’s property and you’re taking maybe six or eight feet of what they
think belongs to me, and we’d be putting a sidewalk in. That’s something they haven’t even
thought about yet. You’re going to have to move into some of that, but as opposed, what I
would suggest to the Town Board, and I am going to suggest, on sidewalks in the Town, is
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
that a fee be collected from builders for sidewalks. When the Town thinks that they could
put a sidewalk in, all the way from Luzerne Road down to Main Street, that’s the time to do
it, not put short pieces in going nowhere, and deteriorate over time. By the time you’re ready
to put the next piece in, this piece has already been subjected to snow and ice and salt and
everything else. So I’m not a big fan of running short sections of sidewalk that go no place. I
don’t think they add anything to the community at all.
MRS. STEFFAN-The recommendation that you just made, Bob, is actually in the draft of
the new Comprehensive Plan, that recommendation’s right in there.
MR. VOLLARO-It is? Look at that. So there’s a couple of things that I wanted to just talk
about quickly is on the west side of this building, we’ve got a 50 foot buffer in there. Now
they’re talking about a stub of some kind to go into this approximate location of the future
park and ride. When you scale this thing off, it’s about 450 feet, from your parking line to
here. I’m not sure why we would be doing that, but we could, if we could put just a stub back
here that says, okay, for future connection to this parking area. Because if we said to you,
Rich, you’ve got to put it in now, I wouldn’t know to tell you to put it.
MR. LAPPER-Are you talking about vehicular or pedestrian, Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Pedestrian.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Sure.
MR. VOLLARO-But you put the stub there and then just decide later on when we know
where, because right now this is all just conceptual. We don’t know where it is. So put the
stub in there, and then if we use it ,we use it.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I’m agreeable to that.
MR. METIVIER-What’s the stub for?
MR. VOLLARO-They wanted to put a connection stub in here to walk to this park and ride,
this is his buffered area in the back, and this is going to be where the park and ride is, along
where the new road goes in, and they wanted to be able to have a walking path for people to
be able to get to the park and ride. In looking at the drawing, when I get to the need for 20
foot on either side of that boulevard, it doesn’t scale off to 20 feet, if you take a look at it.
You’re on 30 to 1 here, I believe.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, 30 to 1.
MR. VOLLARO-I think the boulevard would have to shrink in width a little bit to get to 20
foot on either side of that. I don’t have my scale here, but I think it’s a little less than 20. Do
you know what I’m talking at?
MR. NACE-Can you show me?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. Right here to here.
MR. NACE-You mean the width of the pavement?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I think there’s a note in here from the Fire Department, they wanted
that to be 20 feet wide.
MR. NACE-They wanted truck access. What we did, they don’t need 20 feet to get a fire
truck through. What they need is a better radius.
MR. VOLLARO-I saw that, this is now 35.
MR. NACE-(lost word) changed that radius. They don’t need 20 feet to get a truck through.
MR. VOLLARO-I thought I saw that in there. Let me just take a look. Maybe I misread
that.
MR. NACE-Well, no, that’s what they said, but their intent was to be able to get a truck in.
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(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Driveway entrance shows lanes less than the 20 foot access lane due to the
concrete traffic divider. I think he’s talking about that, and options are to remove the divider
or make the lane 20 foot minimum and have the divider moved back into the driving aisle,
which would be back into here, I would guess, that that’s what he’s talking about, but it
sounds like he wants these to be 20, to me, from what I read here.
MR. NACE-I will call him and we’ll make sure he’s taken care of. I think it was the radius.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I saw the radius. You went from 25 to 35.
MR. NACE-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-But I would certainly just give Mr. Palmer a call, and see that we’re both on
the same track here. Now in the lighting design, what I did is I went back to your, I guess it’s
SP-4, I believe. In order to get the two and a half foot candles on the ground, what I did is I
took your photometrics and I swung an arch, compass arch, in the wall packs, and unless that
outside photometric gets to one foot candle, you’re going to miss the center of that parking
lot, to get to the two and a half foot candle requirement. Do you follow what I’m saying? I
can show you on my.
MR. NACE-I do, but the actual pedestrian areas are where the cars are going to be parked.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the spec says two and a half. All you’ve got to do is increase the
wattage.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I was going to say, I can just use higher wattage bulbs.
MR. VOLLARO-They’re going to be down cast anyway.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-And just check the photometric, so you’ve got one foot candle to the outside
of that circumference. Because I swung the arches, and that’s what’s missing right there.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes, that’s fine.
MR. VOLLARO-So just bring the wattage up so that we get at least two foot candles on the
parking lot itself, and that’s really all I had, a stub connecting to the park and ride, what I’ve
got is some comments that have been made, let’s see, that the swing set is something you
would want to put in and I think Mrs. Steffan talked about putting the swing set right up in
here, Gretchen, is that correct, putting it up to the northeast corner?
MRS. STEFFAN-Northeast corner.
MR. VOLLARO-There’ll be a fence on the south side of the property, and that fence on the
south side would go, how far down? Is that just?
MR. METIVIER-We were going to go to the existing tree line buffer.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Just stop at where the tree line is.
MR. METIVIER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. What kind of distance are we talking about?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Why don’t you give a minimum footage.
MR. VOLLARO-About 100 foot it looks like.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s about 120 foot, Tom, just by my guess.
MR. NACE-From the property line would about 160 feet.
32
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-One hundred and sixty feet, okay.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-So why don’t we say a minimum of 160 feet, minimum, and then if
it requires more, put more in.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MR. METIVIER-But you’re not going to go right to the road there, are you?
MR. NACE-I just took it to the property line. I didn’t take it all the way out.
MR. METIVIER-Right, but if you’re buffering.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I would think the O’Hanlon’s would probably want it back,
probably 10 or 20 feet, just so it doesn’t block them pulling out of their driveway.
MR. METIVIER-Yes. Actually it can’t go on the property line or it’s going to cut their
driveway off.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, I can reposition, I can give them.
MR. METIVIER-Well, what I’m saying, if you actually take it in to the middle of the, right
there, right there, that’s exactly where I’m talking, but you’re only going to go to here. You
wouldn’t run it at an angle. You would run it straight back.
MR. VOLLARO-We’re talking about a minimum of 160.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes, a minimum of 160, and I’ll do it as a scalloped fence, not just
a straight picket fence. Usually when I do them, they have a scallop in them. They look
better.
MRS. STEFFAN-Good, and then maybe near the end, you know how they kind of slant
down so that, for sight distance, visibility coming out of their driveway. That’ll be nice.
MR. VOLLARO-I guess the last question there, I’d marked down another question mark on
putting four units. I particularly wouldn’t like to see a 10 unit building. I think they’re too
big. I think they’d begin to look far larger than they need to look. I think this is the best
utilization of that. That’s one Board member’s opinion. I happen to think this is fine.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I know I don’t have Tanya and Tom convinced, but if there’s
anything else that we can add, other than changing the buildings, I am agreeable to work
with you.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, you know where I stand. The only other thing is the walkway to the
bus stop, the northeast corner.
MR. VOLLARO-At the same place where the sewer line is connecting, Tom?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Certainly that’s not a problem.
MR. SEGULJIC-So we are going to request them to look at four buildings instead of five
buildings?
MRS. BRUNO-What about five buildings of fewer units?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, you want to take it from 40 to something else, to some other number.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-If we go to four ten units, the problem with that is the building’s
get very large, very large. If I go to fewer buildings, then, I know nobody feels sorry for me,
but then the projects don’t, they honestly don’t even get feasible, if I do less units, and I’ve
said this in the past. If the zoning, under Comprehensive Land Use, if they didn’t want
zoning to allow multi-family 40 units, then at the next Comprehensive we should re-evaluate
33
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
the properties. I’m only doing what’s permitted. No more, no less, but to do less, especially
after running the sewers, I’d have to get $1200 a month rent, and I just, I don’t see that.
MRS. STEFFAN-And that is some of the experience that I have now by being on the
Comprehensive Land Use committee, the Ordinance Review Committee, is that, in lots of
different places across the country, they’re awarding bonus densities for putting in infra
structure like sewers like this, because it is very costly, and so, you know, I probably wouldn’t
have thought that way if I hadn’t been on that Committee and then, you know, seen what’s
happening across the country. So it is reasonable to me, as one Board member.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. We’re going to probably have to table this, and I would like to do
this. We’ll table it, with the C.T. Male, there’s very minor questions as far as C.T. Male is
concerned, hardly anything there at all in the last three things he added.
MR. NACE-The fire hydrant’s already on the plan.
MR. METIVIER-Can I ask Bob why we’re tabling this? Is it just for C.T. Male signoff?
MR. VOLLARO-No, I wouldn’t table it for C.T. Male. I would say C.T. Male signoff is
needed, but he’s going to bring a lot of other things. What I don’t want to do, and what I will
do is this, bring them back the first meeting in May, our next meeting, right up front, like we
did, Tom, we did that on Sutton Place, and it worked out fine. He came back with a complete
site plan, approved, and he was gone. Ten minutes on the clock. I’d rather not condition.
MR. METIVIER-I don’t believe ten minutes on the clock.
MR. VOLLARO-Ask him.
MR. NACE-It was. It was.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay, come in with a complete plan, and it was done.
MR. METIVIER-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-And we didn’t have to talk about it or anything else, and there wasn’t a
whole bunch of conditions. The last time I signed a site plan, one of the things that I don’t
like is I find out that a lot of times, on a site plan, this happened when I signed the last one,
that the conditions do not travel with the site plan. They get put in file, some place at Staff
there’s a nice vault or something where they go. I would rather see a site plan with minimum
or no conditions on it, that the drawing is, make it like the picture, and then don’t have a
problem, and that’s why I’m trying to insist that we bring site plans in that are totally
complete. That’s just me. So that’s why I’m doing it, to answer your question, Mr. Metivier.
Okay. So we want to go, and I’ll go down here and see if I’ve got at all. We want to correct
the lighting so we get 2.5 foot candles to the center of the parking lot by increasing the outer
ring of the parametrics, so the outer ring looks like one foot candle. We are going to put a
swing set in the northeast center. We’re going to put a minimum of 160 foot of fence on the
south side of the property. We’re going to put a walkway on the northeast corner that
overlays the sewer connection. I think that’s it, and a stub at about the middle of the western
side of the property, to show potential interconnect to the future park and ride facility.
MR. METIVIER-Do we have to do anything with the requirements from the Fire Marshal on
the plan itself?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. NACE-It’s on my list.
MR. VOLLARO-I think the width’s got to be 20.
MR. METIVIER-I just have meet the requirements for compliance from the Fire Marshal on
the boulevard entrance. So I just wanted to make sure.
MR. VOLLARO-Right. That’s all I have. Does anybody else on the Board have another
input they want to make?
34
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MRS. STEFFAN-Do we have to mention the sewer extension request?
MR. LAPPER-We’ve changed the plans on there.
MR. VOLLARO-What I’m going to do there, what I’m going to do on that, because the
Town Board has the right of first refusal on extensions now, sewer extensions, we’ll say that
this is approved based on the approval of a map plan and report, and subsequent approval of
the sewer district by the Wastewater Department.
MR. LAPPER-Treat it like an outside agency contingency.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. So either one of us, I mean, if they pass it back to us, the requirement
still holds. If they take it, the requirement still holds. In other words, it’s got to be approved
either way, whether the Town Board does it or we do it. If they’ve just got right of first
refusal, they’re liable to turn it right back to us, and all we’re saying here is that this is
conditioned upon approval of a map plan and report and the approval of a sewer district
extension.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-If I may, before we continue, I just want to address, I know I don’t
have the support of everyone, but, Tanya, as far as when I come back, I will take the
elevations of the buildings and when you talk about shadow lines, there are things I can do,
like I did the ones on the golf course, I can put moldings over the windows. I can do trim kits
around the front doors. There are things, aesthetically, that I can do, and I will come back.
Maybe it’s not 100% of what you’re looking for, but I’m trying to get somewhere, you know,
I wish I could do more for Tom, the sidewalk.
MR. SEGULJIC-I wish you could, too, but.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-But I will try with the elevations when I come back.
MRS. BRUNO-I wasn’t really referring to the moldings. It was more the.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Roof line characters.
MRS. BRUNO-Roof line and even the front of the building, you know, having areas that are
recessed, compared to just one. I know you have the gabled area over the doors, and then you
have one building, make it look more like separate townhouses.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Without changing the footprint, I may be able to take and do, it
almost creates window seats in the upstairs. You bump out the windows, off sets.
MR. SIPP-Off sets.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I can do that. I’ll come back with some offsets. It won’t change
the footprint, so it doesn’t change my site plan, but I will come back with some more bump
outs detailed to the elevation.
MRS. BRUNO-Because really, I appreciate that, you wouldn’t have any change in truss
sizes. You can still order a slew of the same size, it’s just a matter of shifting and that type of
thing.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-You sound like my homeowners when I used to build houses. Two
feet isn’t a big deal.
MRS. BRUNO-I know that it is, because then you have to go back and you’ve got to drywall
it and you’ve got additional tape. It does, it makes a cost difference, but I think in the long
run, I think everybody would be happier.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. No problem.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-There’s also a note in the Staff notes about the 50 foot landscape buffers on
the northwest and south sides being noted as no cut zones.
35
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. SCHERMERHORN-That’s fine.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay.
MR. METIVIER-Are you going to leave the public hearing open, or close it?
MR. VOLLARO-We still have to do a SEQRA on this.
MRS. STEFFAN-In the Staff notes it said Board should consider a coordinated SEQRA
review with Town Board.
MR. VOLLARO-No, I don’t see why. This has to do with the sewer, I would assume, only.
If the sewer is, the way they wrote their motion, their resolution was that the Town Board
would get the right of first refusal on all sewer extensions. That’s really the sum total of what
that resolution said.
MR. METIVIER-So we technically can’t do a SEQRA until we know if they’re going to
accept it or not.
MR. LAPPER-It’s not a Type I action.
MR. VOLLARO-No, it’s not. What we can say here is that this is conditioned upon, the
approval of this is conditioned upon the approval of the map plan and report, and a sewer
district extension. Now if the Town Board approves it, that’s one thing, or if it comes back to
us and we approve it, that’s another.
MR. LAPPER-That’s exactly how we did the office buildings on Bay Road.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, it’s the same thing, yes. It would work out that way. They’ve got a
formal resolution now that says we have to coordinate with them only on the sewer extension,
not on the entire package.
MR. METIVIER-All right. So my question was about the public hearing, though. So I
guess.
MR. VOLLARO-We can leave the public hearing open.
MR. METIVIER-Until we’re ready to do a SEQRA.
MR. VOLLARO-Until we’re ready to do the SEQRA, or we can do the SEQRA now. There’s
no reason why you can’t go into your SEQRA. There’s nothing preventing us from going into
a SEQRA tonight. I don’t see anything that prevents us from doing that.
MR. LAPPER-We appreciate that.
MR. VOLLARO-Because I know I’m sensitive to doing SEQRA at the very last minute when
the Board has got all their information, so that when they say no, they mean no.
MRS. STEFFAN-There’s one other thing that we talked about. Mr. Schermerhorn, you said
that you would agree to support a future Town sidewalk provision?
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. I said within a 60 day period if a resolution was passed and it
was required in that area, I have no problem adding it.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s perfectly okay. Okay. I think we can get into the SEQRA
now. It’s a Short.
MR. METIVIER-Can you actually do a SEQRA before you close the public hearing?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. METIVIER-You see, that’s where I’m going with this whole thing.
MS. HAMMOND-I have one question.
36
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-You’ll have to come up to the microphone.
MS. HAMMOND-I’m Lois Hammond. I thought, and my directions aren’t very good, but
isn’t there a home behind the property on the northwest corner that faces Luzerne Road?
And I thought he had said you’d be willing to put a fence there also, and you only talked
about having the fence between this property and the O’Hanlon’s. When you went up and
measured it to be 160 feet.
MR. METIVIER-Well, we talked about it.
MRS. STEFFAN-And Mr. Schermerhorn said he would be willing to do it if the homeowner
wanted it.
MR. METIVIER-If he wanted it.
MRS. STEFFAN-As part of the condition.
MS. HAMMOND-Okay. Well, I just know they heard that and they said, oh good, and they
left.
MR. VOLLARO-They left too early.
MS. HAMMOND-Okay. Well, I knew you had said that and then you only talked about the
one fence. So I was just curious.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-I’m a man of my word. So you let them know, I’ll do it.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-Tony, on the public hearing, we can run SEQRA and leave the public
hearing open.
MR. METIVIER-You can? I didn’t think we usually did that.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s six of one, half dozen of another. I’ve looked at that from both ways.
Actually closing the public hearing at this point, there’s nobody here who wants to talk about
it, it certainly can be closed. How does the Board feel? Do they want to finally close this
public hearing?
MRS. STEFFAN-It’s normal practice.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Then the public hearing is closed.
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. VOLLARO-And we’ll go into our SEQRA Short Form.
RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE
RESOLUTION NO. 2-2006, Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for:
SCHERMERHORN RES. PROP. HOLDINGS, and
WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning
Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED:
1. No Federal agency appears to be involved.
2. The following agencies are involved:
37
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
NONE
3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of
Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental
Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury.
4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant.
5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental
concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a
significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the
Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this
Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no
significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby
authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-
significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Now we need to make a motion, now, to table this until, and I’m
going to make the tabling early. Susan, the Board will take the penalty on this, okay, for
bringing them back at the first meeting of 5/16. If it means that we get to more than seven on
that night, including this one, we’ll take that.
MRS. BARDEN-When should they have their information in?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, they’re late, to put it in now, 4/17 has already passed, obviously.
There isn’t very much for them to get in. See, what I’m trying to work into here is to be able
to come back with a site plan that’s fully approved.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Speaking for Tom, he said one week. One week we could have it
back.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So that would be easily available for 5/16. One week would be, from
today.
MR. SEGULJIC-The 2.
nd
MR. SIPP-The 2.
nd
MR. VOLLARO-Would be the 2, and our meeting is not until the 16.
ndth
MR. NACE-The only reason I hesitate is because of the coordination with the Fire Chief. If
you can give me a week and a half, give me to the end of next week.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. That’s fine. The end of next week. You want to be something like the
5 of May.
th
MR. NACE-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Let’s do that. All information to Staff by May 5.
th
MRS. STEFFAN-Will C.T. Male have to look at that again?
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t think so, because C.T. Male’s letter, first of all, C.T. Male doesn’t
even get into the lighting at all. He doesn’t talk about anything else.
MR. LAPPER-Just a temporary sediment basin.
38
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-He talked about three things. Parking, he wanted the units to remain
townhouse units.
MR. NACE-That’s been done.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That’s been done. He wanted the size and calculations for the
sediment basins should be provided.
MR. NACE-Correct.
MR. VOLLARO-That was done?
MR. NACE-No, that will be done.
MR. VOLLARO-That will be done, and the contour showing the grading of the temporary
sediment basins, or the dimensions of the basins should be shown.
MR. NACE-The dimensions, the calculations will be put right on the drawing.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MR. NACE-He wanted a fire hydrant that’s already there.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, he didn’t make any mention of the lighting.
MR. NACE-No.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s part of what we had come up with.
MRS. STEFFAN-So there were a couple of things.
MR. VOLLARO-There were just two.
MRS. STEFFAN-For a matter of record, he has to see it, but it’s not that involved.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I was talking to Craig Brown about the same thing, and we’ll just get
into that for a minute. Craig’s position is, and mine as well, if there’s a C.T. Male signoff that
has one or two things that have to be done, we’re not going to insist that you come back with
a Final. We’ll condition it that way, but in this instance, he probably will have a final by the
time the end of May, or the 5 of May comes up, and if it isn’t, we’ll condition it on whatever
th
is remaining. Okay. Does somebody want to make a motion to table for the things we’ve
got? We’ve got lighting, swing set, fence, to the south side, and where else is that fence going
to be located? There’s two hunks of fence we’re talking about.
MR. NACE-Northern portion of the west side.
MR. VOLLARO-One is on the south, and one on the west side.
MR. NACE-Correct.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, I guess I’ve written down most of it.
MR. VOLLARO-Gretchen, go for it. Go ahead.
MRS. STEFFAN-I’ll make a motion to table Site Plan No. 2-2006 for Schermerhorn
Residential Properties. With the following items: First to see when they come back on the
second meeting in May, May 15, and the deadline for material submission is May 5, and
thth
these are the items that we’re looking for. Revised lighting plan, Fire Marshal approval, C.T.
Male signoff, a stub for pedestrian connection to the Main Street connector, the extension
request for sewer, and that includes the map plan and report.
MR. NACE-That was going to be a condition, I believe, of your approval.
39
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. LAPPER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Right. The condition would be an approval of the map plan and report by
the Wastewater Department, and also an approval of the sewer district extension.
MRS. STEFFAN-But that will be done next time.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-So we’re not looking for it for the tabling motion.
MRS. BARDEN-I don’t think you’re asking for a C.T. Male signoff either.
MRS. STEFFAN-I thought we decided final review.
MR. LAPPER-Just to address those two issues.
MRS. BARDEN-Address the April 21 letter.
st
MR. VOLLARO-Right, but he may, by that time, he may have a signoff in hand.
MRS. BARDEN-He may, but if you say signoff, we won’t have him come back without a
signoff.
MR. LAPPER-Address Items 10 and 11.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. If they’re not when they come back, we’ll condition it on the
completion of C.T. Male.
MR. NACE-It will be addressed in what you get on the 5.
th
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. LAPPER-Yes, that’s so minor.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So let me go back and talk about the tabling motion for
Schermerhorn.
MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 2-2006 SCHERMERHORN RES. PROP. HOLDINGS,
Introduced by Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Robert Vollaro:
Tabled to the 1 meeting in May, which is May 16th, with a deadline for submission of
st
materials on May 5, to include the following:
th
1. A revised lighting plan,
2. We’re looking for Fire Marshal approval,
3. We’re looking for C.T. Male’s Items 10 and 11 to be addressed,
4. We’re looking for a stub for pedestrian connection to the Main Street
connector,
5. We’re looking for the 50 foot buffers on the north, west, and south sides to be
designated as no cut zones,
6. We’re looking for a swing set play area,
7. We’re looking for a notation that there would be fencing on the northwest
section of the property if the neighbor desires that,
8. That there will be a designation of fencing on the south side to the tree line
about 160 foot,
40
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
9. That there’ll be a walkway to the bus stop on the northeast corner of the
property,
10. And an agreement to support a future Town Code sidewalk provision,
11 That some of the buildings would take on some aesthetic enhancements to the
current plan.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. LAPPER-Thank you.
MR. NACE-Thank you.
MR. SCHERMERHORN-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-All right.
FRESHWATER WETLANDS FWW 5-2005 SEQR TYPE II JEFFREY KILBURN
AGENT(S): JAMES MILLER, RLA OWNER(S): SAME ZONING SFR-1A LOCATION
NORTH SIDE FOX HOLLOW LANE, BETWEEN #22 & #24 APPLICANT PROPOSES A
3,177 SQ. FT. SINGLE FAMILY DWELLING AND IMPROVEMENTS TO AN EXISTING LOG
ROAD. PORTIONS OF THE FILLING ASSOCIATED WITH THE DRIVEWAY OCCUR
WITHIN 50’ OF THE SHORELINE OF A DEC WETLAND. APPLICANTS HAVE PROVIDED
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IN RESPONSE TO 2/21/06 TABLING. CROSS REF. SP 64-05,
SUB WESTLAND SECT. 15 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 11/9/05 LOT SIZE 12.9 ACRES
TAX MAP NO. 295.15-1-30 SECTION CHAPTER 94
SITE PLAN NO. 64-2005 SEQR TYPE II JEFFREY KILBURN AGENT(S): JAMES
MILLER, RLA OWNER(S): SAME ZONING SFR-1A LOCATION NORTH SIDE FOX
HOLLOW LANE, BETWEEN #22 & #24 APPLICANT PROPOSES A 3,177 SQ. FT. SINGLE
FAMILY DWELLING AND IMPROVEMENTS TO AN EXISTING LOG ROAD. PORTIONS OF
THE FILLING ASSOCIATED WITH THE DRIVEWAY OCCUR WITHIN 50’ OF THE
SHORELINE OF A DEC WETLAND. FILLING WITHIN 50 FEET OF A WETLAND
REQUIRES SITE PLAN REVIEW BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REF. FWW/ SUB
WESTLAND SECT. 15 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING 11/9/05 LOT SIZE 12.9 ACRES
TAX MAP NO. 295.15-1-30 SECTION 179-6-60
JON LAPPER & JIM MILLER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT
MR. VOLLARO-I think the public hearing is still open on this application. I have a couple
of comments that I’m going to make to the Board before we get started, and give you a little
background of which Staff was part of. I’ll tell you what the background is and tell the
applicant what the background is on all of this. Myself, Mrs. Steffan and Mr. Sipp walked the
property for about, I’d say the better part of an hour to an hour and a half and took a good
look at, or tried to get a good handle on the flagging that was done there, a little bit confusing
between blue flags, red flags for wetland boundaries. Neither the three of us are really very
capable, particularly myself anyway, about setting flags, don’t know anything about it,
absolutely nothing. So what we did is we had Bruce Frank who’s set flags, and knows a lot
about setting flags and Susan Barden, who went with him from Staff, and he was equally
confused about where the wetland boundary really was, based on where the flags were, and
there’s a guy who’s, you know, got a degree in Wildlife Biology and a Masters degree in other
areas. So he’s not just somebody who’s kind of walks around and puts flags on things. He
knows what he’s doing. So what we’re planning to do, as a matter of practice, the
Department of Environmental Conservation will come out and flag their own wetlands, and
we would like to ask, and we will ask them, to come out and re-confirm what’s out there now,
and that will be done through someone by the name of Robin Holovinski, who is up at, that
I’ve had some extensive discussions with up at DEC in Warrensburg. The second thing that I
want to talk to the Board about and that they’ve, I know that they have some experience in
41
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
now, we were given, by Staff, a copy of Part 617 of the Regulations of the Department of
Environmental Conservation, and I particularly took a long time, now when I answer these
questions now about 617.3 and 617.4, I know a little bit more about them, after having read
this stack of stuff. Now, I’m just going to go through this real quickly. This is in terms of
what legal counsel has said to this Board and to other Boards, that the classification of a
SEQRA is a Board responsibility. Staff can make a recommendation, Type I, Type II, or
Unlisted. It’s something that the Board has to do. We can take the recommendation from
the Staff, but it’s our responsibility to see that they’ve correctly categorized it. In doing that,
and I’ll go through this for a minute, I don’t want to take a lot of time. In 617.2 under
Definitions, I, it says Critical Environmental Areas, CEA, means specific geographic areas
designated by a State or local agency have an exceptional or unique environmental
characteristic. The word designated, it doesn’t mean that we can go out and say, isn’t this a
nice area, let’s call it a CEA. Rush Pond is a designated CEA in the area of Queensbury.
617.5 talks about Type II actions, and each of the actions in any agency of Type II, and
there’s a whole list, one of which is building a private home, and that casts it into the
category of a Type II, but then right up in the front of 617.5 it says, and in no case shall have
a significant adverse impact on the environment based on the criteria contained in
subdivision 617.7C of this part. Now let me read 617.7C. It says, the impairment of the
environmental characteristics of a CEA as designed, pursuant to subdivision 617.4 of this
part.
MR. LAPPER-Impairment is the key word there.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, it says the impairment of environmental characteristics, that’s correct.
Now to be designated a CEA, the area must have an exceptional or unique characteristic
covering one or more of the following, and this is under 617, and then that takes you into
617.14G. It says a local agency may designate a specific geographic area within its
boundaries as a Critical Environmental Area. A State agency may also designate a CEA as
specific geographic area that is owned and managed by the State or is under regulatory
authority. Designation of a CEA must be proceeded by a written public notice, which it was,
and a public hearing which it was, and the public notice must identify the boundaries and the
specific environmental characteristics of the area warranting this Critical Environmental
Area designation. I checked into Staff and that’s all been done.
MR. LAPPER-That’s been done. Yes, we don’t disagree that Rush Pond is a CEA.
MR. VOLLARO-Right. Now, it says to be designated a CEA it must have exceptional or
unique character covering one or more of the following, and there are four of them. I’ve
picked two of those, a natural setting, fish, wildlife habitat, forest vegetation, open space and
areas of important aesthetic or scenic quality, and an inherent ecological, geological or
hydrological sensitivity to change that may adversely affected by any change. All that I’ve
read is I think that this Board has to make a decision whether this is a Type II or whether
this is an Unlisted, and I guess, based on what I’ve read, personally, I think it should be
shifted from a Type II to an Unlisted, and that’s more of what it talked in the Type II, 617.5
type of actions, where it says in no case shall have a significant adverse impact on the
environment based on the criteria contained in 617.7C, and then it gets to 617.7, and then it
goes on to 617.14. Everything in this area points, to me at least, that this classification ought
to be Unlisted.
MR. LAPPER-I guess my question is, you know, just in terms of where you’re going with
that, we’re doing one house on 13 acres, and Jim carefully located the septic system so it’s 100
feet from the wetland.
MR. VOLLARO-We don’t know this yet, because we don’t know, one of the things we
couldn’t discern.
MR. LAPPER-Is the location of the wetland boundary.
MR. VOLLARO-We couldn’t discern the location of the wetland boundaries well enough.\
MR. LAPPER-We know you need to be comfortable with that. I mean, we hired a soil
scientist to go flag it. We’d obviously like the process to get done, but Jeff and Candy aren’t
planning to build next month. So there’s no argument, you get DEC out there and confirm
the flags, and then we’ll come back and talk about it, that’s fine, but just in terms of the
CEA, the only impact would be if there was a septic impact, and I guess you’re saying you
42
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
need to know where the boundary is, and that’s legitimate, but once we know where the
boundary is.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think a lot has to do with the interpretation of words in 617, how
one reviews the words in 617.
MR. LAPPER-A lot of what you read is the words of establishing a CEA, though, and that’s
not what’s going on here. Rush Pond is a CEA.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. LAPPER-We just can’t impact the CEA in an adverse way.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it talks about a CEA as a natural setting and.
MR. LAPPER-But that doesn’t mean you can’t build one house on the 13 acre site.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think that’s interpretive. I think that’s a matter of interpretation,
in terms of, and all we’re trying to do is to address the SEQRA correctly, in terms of the
classification of it, be it Type I, Type II or Unlisted, and it’s up to the Board to make that
decision.
MR. LAPPER-I don’t disagree with that, but the ultimate goal, if you follow this thing out
to the end, if you were to say that because this is next to the Rush Pond CEA, you don’t
think somebody could build a house there, I mean, that would be a regulatory taking.
MR. VOLLARO-We didn’t say that you couldn’t build a house there. We’re saying that
when we review this, we would view the SEQRA as a Type Unlisted. That’s all we’re saying.
JEFFREY KILBURN
MR. KILBURN-Mr. Chairman, what does Unlisted mean, versus Type II? I don’t mean to
waste your time, but I don’t know.
MR. VOLLARO-It means that, you know, once you read this thing, it’s very convoluted. I’ll
tell you in a short distance what I think it means. Type II has got all the stuff in that, like
building a house. Things, everything else that’s not a Type I gets shuffled into Unlisted, and
Unlisted just means that you do your SEQRA review for an Unlisted item. It’s a short course
in SEQRA, and I think your counsel could probably give you pretty good information on
that.
MRS. STEFFAN-The definitions that I took out of the Code, Type I actions are those that
have a potential for significant environmental impact, and they require a Full, which is a
Long, Environmental Assessment Form. Type II actions are those which probably will not
have a significant impact, and usually they have no further SEQRA review, and then
Unlisted actions are not Type I or not Type II. They’re in their own category, and they
require either a Full Environmental Assessment Form, or a Short one, but the Board can
determine, must determine whether the project involves either a Federal agency or one or
more other State, County, or local agencies, and so those are the definitions that we use.
MR. KILBURN-Thank you.
MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, I have a question. Within the notes, for the agenda, this is
now listed as an Unlisted action, which is different than before, I believe.
MRS. BARDEN-It was listed as a Type II.
MR. SEGULJIC-Correct.
MRS. BARDEN-There was discussion at the February meeting of what the designation
should be, and so we had a question mark on that to follow up and talk to Town Counsel
about it. At the last meeting that we sat here, I thought the Town Counsel confirmed that
this is a Type II action.
43
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, he did. However, he did say that it wasn’t his call, it was our call, and
he said it couldn’t be one or the other.
MRS. BARDEN-He said it’s not Staff’s call, it’s not the Board’s call, it’s not his call. It’s
just, if it’s listed under a Type II action and those criteria, it’s Type II. The Board confirms
what that is, but it’s.
MR. VOLLARO-Except that it says in no case shall have a significant adverse impact on the
environment. We don’t know that yet.
MRS. BARDEN-But that’s already been identified, that those things under that heading will
not have a significant impact.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. It’s very easy going into Type II where it says build a private home,
and then you go, okay, it’s Type II. I think you need to read this document a lot further and
examine it a lot more before you jump right into Type II, and I would argue that with
Counsel, if they need to.
MRS. BARDEN-I think you probably should, because he discussed it here. I’ve discussed it
with him, and I thought that we had settled on a Type II. So I think you really need to, if
there’s still a question, have something from him in writing on that.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, his position to me, and to the Town Board, just recently, he said the
ultimate decision of what you pick is up to Board. It’s not up to Counsel. He said it’s up to
the Board.
MR. SEGULJIC-The Planning Board.
MR. VOLLARO-The Planning Board or the Town Board or the ZBA. All three Boards in the
Town have a requirement to pick the correct category for SEQRA, as opposed to us relying
on anybody. One of our problems with a Board like this, it’s real easy to say, well, let
somebody else do it. We’ll just say it’s okay. That’s not the answer. The answer is the
responsibility is right here, across this Board.
MR. SEGULJIC-So I guess, where are we going with this, then? We have to make that
determination on this Board.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I think we have to make that determination.
MR. SEGULJIC-Do you want to do that tonight, or are we going to wait until we get the
wetland clarification?
MR. VOLLARO-The wetland certification has nothing to do with how we classify this for
SEQRA. Nothing. They’re mutually exclusive areas.
MR. LAPPER-Are you doing this because you’re asking for a Long Form? Is that what your
goal is?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we can pick any form. It doesn’t make any difference.
MR. LAPPER-No, but I mean, is that why you?
MR. VOLLARO-No, I think we just want to classify it correctly. That’s why we were given
this document to read, and some of it I had to go on the Internet to get because 617.14G was
not part of what we were given. So I had to get on the Internet to look at that, and try to
read this and make a determination in my mind as each Board member should have to do,
make a determination in their minds as to whether or not, not as to whether or not, but as to
how they want to classify this, in terms of SEQRA. That’s all. That’s all it is for.
MR. LAPPER-It seems like that this is kind of news to the Board. So I guess I’d ask, I don’t
mind that the issue is up for discussion. I’d like to look into it. Maybe the Board members,
too, and I don’t think anything’s going to happen tonight because you want to get DEC, the
significance in terms of timing. So I guess I would ask, let’s just table it and we’ll go look it
up and I’ll get back to Staff and you can consider it, and, you know, let’s just all look at it in
terms of the regulations.
44
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Let me just go across the Board for a minute. Has everybody looked at this
617 document? Don, have you looked at it?
MR. SIPP-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Tanya, you probably haven’t had a chance to really examine in
depth?
MRS. BRUNO-Not to really examine it. I’ve only glanced at it.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, I have.
MR. VOLLARO-You obviously have based on your last.
MR. METIVIER-I have, too.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-But, you know, one of the things, after Counsel was here last week, and we
talked a little bit about that, I went and looked at SEQRA language, but then I went to the
Comprehensive Land Use Plan and it talks about the Rush Pond and associated wetlands
being included in a designated Critical Environmental Area, and then, you know, it went on
to talk about protection that it’s important to flood water and stormwater control, wildlife
habitat, those kinds of things. On Page 39 of the Comprehensive Land Use Plan, it talked
about environmental protection in the Critical Environmental Areas, what SEQRA allows
for, and that those areas require a different, a greater degree of scrutiny, and that it refers to
our Freshwater Wetlands protection laws, refers to DEC thresholds for mapping for projects
that are 12 acres which this one’s just over 12 acres.
MR. LAPPER-That’s wetlands over 12 acres at DEC.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. Thanks for the interpretation, and then the question that pops up
out of here, which I think is an important one, is what’s being protected, and the comment
that you made a little earlier, Mr. Lapper, about the Critical Environmental impact, that’s
the septic boundary.
MR. LAPPER-Right.
MRS. STEFFAN-And so, you know, I do, just from looking at all of the information, I think
that it’s a good idea for the Planning Board, you know, if we do indeed have the ability to
change the SEQRA designation, I think it is more of an Unlisted action than a Type II, but
certainly with the plans, and if we have DEC flag the wetlands, that will give us good
information that we can act on and go forward, so there’ll be no ambiguity in the
information, and then we could go through the SEQRA form with better clarity.
MR. LAPPER-We have no argument with that at all.
MRS. STEFFAN-So I didn’t want you to think that, at least from my point of view, that this
was haphazard. I mean, there’s a great deal of information, and we are trying to protect all
the Critical Environmental Areas, and I know that Mr. Kilburn and his wife had talked about
wanting to protect this property.
MR. LAPPER-They want to be there because it’s so beautiful and they’re only building one
house, and we need to prove to you that their plan is sensitive to the wetlands and it’s
properly designed, and that’s why we’re here. So we’re not in a rush, and we’ll get DEC out
there and let us know and have it flagged and we’ll come back.
MR. KILBURN-Can I request that I be notified when they’re going to be there so I could be
there also?
MR. VOLLARO-We could. I mean, I don’t know whether they want you there or not. We
could certainly let you know.
45
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MR. LAPPER-That’s totally typical. The property owner is the one who often calls them.
MR. KILBURN-We would have liked to have been there when you toured it, because I could
have explained the flagging.
MRS. STEFFAN-Well, unfortunately when we do our Planning Board drive arounds, we’re
not allowed to talk to applicants. I mean, I actually wish we could, because it would be very
helpful and instructive, but we’re not allowed to.
MR. MILLER-Yes. I’d like to add, on the wetlands, typically any wetland that’s flagged
they will start in sequence, and it’s a blue flag, and if you, surveyors stick flags all over, and
sometimes they’re doing topography, they put flags out to mark where they’ve been, and
they don’t mean anything to anybody but them, but typically the wetlands are the blue flags,
and if you look at the flags, they’re numbered A-1 and then they’re in sequence, and if you
have more than one wetland, the second wetland would be B-1 in sequence and so on, and on
our surveys, we don’t always turn all those on, but if we turned the layers on, it would show
each one of those, A-1 through, it was like A-30 of them or something like that, so that, when
we were out there, Jeff and I, trying to figure out where we are, we would go down to the
wetland, look at the flag, then look at the map and said, okay, this is the right spot, when we
were out looking. That’s how it happens. That’s how, whether it’s Deb Roberts or any of the
biologists, that’s what they do, and typically blue is the wetland.
MR. VOLLARO-We were looking at blue flags.
MR. MILLER-They were the wetlands.
MR. KILBURN-Unfortunately when we did the tree count, we used blue flagging also, a
different shade, but I didn’t know that. I apologize.
MR. SIPP-But we did run across the numbered blue.
MR. MILLER-Those are the ones.
MR. SIPP-But they did not seem to follow in a logical sequence.
MR. KILBURN-Yes. I certainly can remove the ones we placed for counting the trees, but I
didn’t know if you’d want to go and do an inspection. So I didn’t remove them until I heard
from you.
MR. SIPP-Did you use the nylon cord as a way of marking out the blocks?
MR. KILBURN-The Board directed us to measure, to count the trees 80 feet on each side of
the D line, I think it was, on the drawing. So I used the string to locate the D line, and then
it’s the blue flags.
MR. SIPP-K line.
MR. KILBURN-K line, okay. The blue flags marked 80 foot grids. Eighty foot up, eighty
foot down, eighty foot wide and then we counted the trees in each grid.
MR. SIPP-Yes, but when you plot this on the map, your blue flags then also ran right into
the other blues.
MR. KILBURN-Yes, different numbering, that’s correct.
MR. SIPP-We have no map at that point.
MR. KILBURN-Yes, the shades were different, but you wouldn’t know that unless you were
up to it, and the numbering was different, but you wouldn’t know that if I hadn’t, because I
wasn’t there to tell you, or tell you ahead of time, how we’d done it. So my apologies for that.
I didn’t know that there was a blue flag rule.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So now that we’ve been through that, I think the Board has to make
a determination if we all feel that we’ve got enough information, based on our review of 617
46
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
regs, DEC regs, to feel that this ought to be really an Unlisted action, I’d like to go down and
ask each member, and then we can make a resolution to that effect, and Tanya’s the only one
that would have to, I think, remove herself or recuse herself from this vote, because she hasn’t
had time to review it. Would we like, we don’t have to do this tonight. We can certainly wait
until, I don’t want to do it at the next meeting, because the next meeting is predicated on
when DEC gets done with their evaluation of the wetland boundary. So I think we would try
to take this vote now, with Tanya recusing herself on this because she hasn’t had time to do
it. How does everybody feel about that? Tony?
MR. METIVIER-I guess I could do it tonight, that’s fine.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. Gretchen?
MRS. STEFFAN-I think that it should be classified as an Unlisted action, for us to do the
correct due diligence, because it is in a Critical Environmental Area, and part of the property
is a DEC wetland.
MR. SEGULJIC-I would say Unlisted also.
MR. SIPP-And I believe it should be Unlisted.
MR. METIVIER-Is that what you’re asking me, by the way, or did you want to just know if
we want to do this tonight?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, we want to know if it’s Unlisted or not. So I think we’ve got five votes.
We only need four because we’re not a full Board here anyway, but I think the Board has
voted that way. So I’ll make a motion.
MOTION THAT SITE PLAN 64-2005 AND FRESHWATER WATER WETLANDS PERMIT
NO. 5-2005 JEFFREY KILBURN THAT THE SEQRA DESIGNATION BE CHANGED FROM
THE PREVIOUS TYPE II TO AN UNLISTED SEQRA, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who
moved for its adoption, seconded by Gretchen Steffan:
Based on the Board’s review of regulations to Part NYCRR Part 617, and the Comprehensive
Land Use Plan notations on Page 1, 27, and 39.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSTAINED: Mrs. Bruno
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. VOLLARO-Okay.
MR. KILBURN-For clarification, just because I want to make sure I understand this, did I
hear Staff saying before that Counsel was saying it really should be Type II in Counsel’s
opinion. Is that what?
MR. VOLLARO-That’s Counsel’s opinion. However, but Counsel also said to the Boards, all
three Boards, Town Board, Planning Board, Zoning Board, that you could get all the
opinions you want. The decision is really the Board’s decision to classify. He made that very
clear. Occasionally we tend to lean very heavily, no disparity to Counsel, but we tend to lean
on Counsel quite heavily here on the Board, and it’s not always the best thing for the Board
to do. We have a rather tough decision to make here at times, and we have to make it, and
we can’t just say, let them do it and we’ll accept that.
MR. KILBURN-And one other point. Are you asking me to remove those tree count flags or
not?
47
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen when DEC gets in there and sees
this mass of flags, what they’re going to do in terms of them re-affirming, really, what Mr.
Maine did in July of 2005.
MR. LAPPER-Do you need their flags, the tree count flags, for anything?
MR. VOLLARO-No. He’s already given us.
MR. SEGULJIC-I would say remove those. Eliminate the confusion.
MRS. STEFFAN-I know for myself I reviewed the data that you got as a result of those, so
I’m satisfied with that.
MR. VOLLARO-Me, too. I’ve looked at all of that. I’ve got comments on it, but I think you
can take it all down.
MR. KILBURN-Okay. I will do that.
MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, are we going to continue with the review tonight, or wait
until the DEC wetlands?
MR. VOLLARO-I think we ought to wait until the DEC wetlands.
MR. SEGULJIC-I would agree. The one comment I will make is I’m pleased to see the
absorption trenches, instead of discharge points.
MR. LAPPER-That’s what you wanted.
MR. MILLER-I think our intent, you know, we went through the list of your resolution, and
I think we had addressed all of those.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s only one that’s left for discussion.
MR. LAPPER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-And that’s on subdivision.
MR. LAPPER-We wanted to talk about the possibility of possibly having the right to
subdivide for another lot, but we’ll talk about that whenever we get back here.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, we can certainly discuss that. I think the most recent letter we got
from Miller, that talked about what he just talked about, is his last, March 14.
th
MR. LAPPER-Yes, it was certainly our intention to meet all the issues that you asked us to.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So I guess the tabling motion here would be based on when DEC,
we’d have to just wait for DEC to complete their evaluation here.
MR. LAPPER-Have they scheduled a field investigation yet?
MRS. BARDEN-No.
MR. VOLLARO-No. We’ll have to talk, either that, or do you want to schedule it?
MR. MILLER-I’ll call Robin.
MR. VOLLARO-Tell her we’d like her to do that.
MR. MILLER-Well, I want to make sure she’s got the map to work off of, too. The survey
map with the flagging and things on it, that would be useful to her.
MR. VOLLARO-Just to aid things a little bit, the Army Corps of Engineers used Deb
Roberts as a designated approved person to do this kind of stuff. Does DEC have anybody
like that, or do they do that themselves?
48
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. MILLER-Well, the Army Corps doesn’t like to do their own flagging, because of the
extent, they have so much more wetland to cover. So they typically would prefer applicants
to hire their own biologist or wetland specialist. Deb Roberts is one, but there’s a lot of
consultants that do it that are certified. DEC, because they only regulate wetlands that are
12 acres and over, they have substantially fewer of them and they will verify it themselves, or
sometimes they’ll flag it themselves. They’ve been busy also. So in a case like this, where it’s
pretty well defined wetland and both agencies had jurisdiction, Jeff had Charlie Maine flag it,
and then they both accepted that flagging, to this point.
MR. VOLLARO-I had talked to Robin, and she asked me who did it, and I said Charles
Maine did it in July of 2005, and she said, well, is he the engineer of record on that, and I said
no, Charles Maine is a soil scientist, and all she said was, oh. That’s all I got from her. She
wouldn’t say one thing or another.
MR. MILLER-She’s young, so she doesn’t know how legendary Charlie is.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-I think if they’re able to do this early in May, you might want to let Staff
know, because as soon as they flag those wetlands, we do our drive around. Actually this
month we have one on the 6, because we have to do a four wheel drive one up on a
th
mountain. So we will be together on the 6, and then our normal drive around is the
th
following Saturday. So if you’re close to one of those dates, we could go over and see them
right away, after they’ve been flagged.
MR. LAPPER-We’ll let Susan know, but it may not happen that fast.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, I mean, that would be optimistic, but at the same time, if we’re that
close.
MR. LAPPER-They’re busy because winter just left, theoretically.
MRS. BARDEN-So you’re better off tabling to, you know, August or July.
MR. VOLLARO-All right. We can pick a date. Why don’t we just pick a date out there. I
think knowing what DEC is doing, I would make it July 18 or July 25.
thth
MRS. BARDEN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-One of those two dates, see how that works out. We should make a formal
tabling motion for that.
MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 64-2005 AND FRESHWATER WETLANDS PERMIT
NO. FWW 5-2005 JEFFERY KILBURN, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its
adoption, seconded by Thomas Seguljic:
Tabled to July 25, 2006. So that Department of Environmental Conservation can come in
and confirm the existing wetland definition, as far as the wetland boundary is concerned.
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
MR. LAPPER-If they do come in in two weeks, can we send a letter to Susan?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. Sure. I just put it out that far because I don’t know where they are.
MR. LAPPER-Sure. We’ll communicate with Staff.
MR. VOLLARO-You can communicate with Staff and let us know.
AYES: Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
ABSENT: Mr. Ford
49
(Queensbury Planning Board 04/25/06)
MR. VOLLARO-Okay, guys, that’s it.
MR. LAPPER-Good night.
MRS. STEFFAN-Thank you. Thank you for waiting.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to leave the public hearing open on that, Susan.
SPECIAL USE PERMIT SUP 8-2006 SEQR TYPE UNLISTED VANCE COHEN AGENT(S):
SARATOGA ASSOCIATES OWNER(S): DR. MITCHELL COHEN/VANCE COHEN ZONING
HC-INT. LOCATION 1471 STATE ROUTE 9 APPLICANT PROPOSES AN
APPROXIMATELY 2,934 SQ. FT. EXPANSION OF THE EXISTING RETAIL USE ON THE
SITE AS WELL AS THE CONSTRUCTION OF A 1,710 SQ. FT. ROOF STRUCTURE,
INSTALLATION OF A GO-KART TRACK AND ASSOCIATED SITE WORK. AMUSEMENT
CENTER USES IN THE HC-INT ZONE REQUIRE REVIEW AS A SPECIAL USE PERMIT BY
THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REF. SP 34-04; SP 43-02 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING
4/12/06 LOT SIZE 1.42 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 288-1-58 SECTION 179-4-020
RON MOGREN, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT; VANCE COHEN,
PRESENT
MR. MOGREN-I’m Ron Mogren from Saratoga Associates. I’d like to start off with the
existing conditions plan, if I could share some photos with you guys.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we don’t usually take information on the night of the meeting.
MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, it’s just photographs.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That’s okay. I thought it was written material.
MR. MOGREN-The existing conditions on the site, there’s a stream bed that bisects the site,
and they converge down here, where there’s a retaining wall, some old foundation wall here,
and at that point they come around, just come around that, and then they go on down to an
existing 18 inch culvert that goes into the Town storm sewer system. This stream here, which
is the result of some road drainage from the highway, is necessary to re-route about 250 linear
feet of that, to make room for the track. Now this stream here, which is really just a function
of some of the commercial developments here just kind of backfilling, and at this point here
we’re not really disturbing any of that, but we would need the culvert beds from there to the
point that’s shown on the plan. There’s a little bit of additional clearing required, and one
other clarification I wanted to make was this existing building here, part of that is at the
existing garage, and that would be demolished and would be removed. So that kind of
lessened the square footage on the plan (lost word) Staff had. There’s also quite a few existing
light fixtures out on the main street here that give quite a bit of light to the (lost words) in
front of the building. My lighting plan, really the manufacturer produced the foot candles for
us, and they really just kind of gave us the illumination for the new fixtures and didn’t really
pick up those fixtures. So that’s why the foot candles were low up front. It didn’t take into
account the existing lighting there.
MR. VOLLARO-While you’re on that, usually what we like to see when you do a layout like
that, as far as foot candles on the ground is concerned, give us a whole graphic picture of it, I
like to know what the average, the max, the min, the max over min, and the average over
min is so that we can calculate the Uniformity Ratio.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-I need to know that. That’s usually put up, lighting people do it all the
time. We want that piece of data in there. So I’ll save that comment for later, but that’s
what I’m going to want, what the Board should ask for.
MR. MOGREN-Okay, and then there will be a little bit of removal of the existing parking
lots, right there, to make room for the addition and the parking. So with that said, again, the
photographs here, just in response to some of the comments, but the first one is just a picture
of where the two streams enter the culvert, the 18 inch culvert, which goes out to the Town
property. Photograph Number Two, is a picture of the wall that I described there, and there
was a question from C.T. Male about whether that impounded or detained some of that flow,
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and the answer is that it does not. It just kind of goes around that, as you can see in this
photograph. So there’s no really impoundment that that’s doing. Photograph Number Three
is kind of showing you the drainage course that comes through there. It’s not but three feet
wide, and very concentrated and very, you know, kind of deep in there, and not really, you
know, the wetland, I don’t believe there’s any wetlands out here. Photograph Number Four
kind of shows the mixed trees out there. The tree in the foreground is a gray birch. Those
smaller caliper trees behind that are oak trees, and I don’t know that by looking at the bark,
but I saw all the oak leaves at the base of that, that was a clue for me, and then you see a
white pine in here, and these trees are clearly not wetland species. So what happens is that
roadside drainage course kind of winds through here, and again, there’s no indication to me
that there’s any wetlands involved with that at all, and then finally Photograph Number
Five is the discharge from the State highway. So really what we’ve got, we’ve got the State
dumping a culvert onto our property, and we’ve got the Town taking off in a culvert, and
we’re just dealing with that small area in between that we just need to take about 250 linear
feet of that and move that to make room for the track.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s putting a lot of water in, that output from I-87 it sure looks like it’s
dumping a lot of water onto the property.
MR. MOGREN-I took these pictures yesterday, which was right after the weekend rainfall.
So it was during high flow, but again, all of it comes down, and goes to that 18 inch pipe.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s what we’re looking at here?
MR. MOGREN-Yes. Picture Number One is the outlet for that. So this pipe here has been
conveying all that water for a fair amount of time.
MR. VOLLARO-Where does it convey it to?
MR. MOGREN-It conveys it right into the storm sewer system. If you go right up here,
there’s the catch basin system, and the storm sewer system, which has also an 18 inch CMP
along Route 9, is where it goes into.
MR. SEGULJIC-For my clarification. Photograph Three and Four are the existing
conditions of the stream now that would be put into this culvert?
MR. MOGREN-That is correct, yes. That’s what’s happening right now.
MR. SEGULJIC-That’s what’s happening now, so you’re going to put it in this culvert that
runs from the Northway down into the Town storm sewer?
MR. MOGREN-That’s correct.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-All the water would be conveyed to that storm sewer, that 18 CMP piece
that goes.
MR. SEGULJIC-And you took these pictures today, you said?
MR. MOGREN-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-Does it ever dry up? How long has the applicant been at the property?
MR. COHEN-We’ve only been there for about five years now. I’m not sure that that’s ever
dried up, those streams right there coming through, the runoff, but I know it’s gotten right
down to trickles.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-I guess C.T. Male has about 11 comments. You’ve read all of those?
MR. MOGREN-Yes, I have.
MR. VOLLARO-And you plan to get together with Mr. Houston on that?
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MR. MOGREN-I sure will, yes.
MR. VOLLARO-I’ve got some questions, but I’m going to save mine until the Board makes
their own.
MR. MOGREN-Well, I wanted to move on. I just was wondering about the existing
conditions. Okay. The other thing that I wanted to point out is that the architectural plans,
there was some discrepancy between the architectural plans and the site plans, and I
apologize for that, and we’ve evolved the architectural plans a little bit further since they
were submitted, and I’d just like to go over those right now with the Board, if I could.
MR. VOLLARO-Do we have copies of those?
MR. MOGREN-Well, they’re not exactly what we submitted, but I do have copies here, and
I would love to give them to you so that you could follow.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, you can give them to us to look at in the future, because this will
probably be tabled for tonight because based on what I see on it, but you can go ahead and
make your presentation.
MR. MOGREN-Well, this is the first floor plan, and again, it’s a one story, or a building
addition. It has some high roof pitches there, but there’s some different uses in here. You’ve
got some office space here, and then there’s a showroom which is kind of retail, and there’s
some other incidental utility and equipment, restroom and storage and stuff like that that
combines for a total of about 1790 square feet. I’m just kind of leading up to the parking
count is where I’m going.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I know, I’ve done the parking analysis, myself, on your, and I’ll talk to
you about that, when we get to that.
MR. MOGREN-Okay, but again, the existing building is about 3214 square feet. The one
story building addition is 1756 square feet.
MR. VOLLARO-Right, that gives you 4970.
MR. MOGREN-4970, yes. So, the difference being, I know that the Staff picked up on this,
but this portion over here is just a roof structure. One of the (lost words) drawings showed
that closed in, but what we propose to do, on these elevations here, is that that roof structure
that’s labeled on the site plan is open, really just that, it’s a roof structure. It’s just designed
to keep the sun off the starting gate, protect it from the weather a little bit. So that’s a roof
structure, and I didn’t feel that there was any parking count required with just a roof
structure.
MR. VOLLARO-The height on that is just a hair under 40?
MR. MOGREN-That’s correct. I think we’re allowed 40. That’s 38 or 39 feet or so, which is
right here. We’re entitled to two signs. There’s an existing sign out on the road that’s less
than, I think it’s six by forty-eight square feet. So we have the one sign on the road that’s
conforming, and then they’d like to add this sign to the building, which I believe is also
allowed. It’s just under the 25% requirement for that façade right there. So, you know, I
think the two signs conform, and so with that said, I’m coming up with three uses of that
building, amusement center, enclosed shopping, and then the office, too, and given the square
footage, I’ve come up with the requirement of, well, I’ve got 22.54, but about 23 parking
spaces required for that site.
MR. VOLLARO-I had 24.85, plus our 20% allowance, and I’m giving you approximately 30.
So you’ve got 27 that you’re asking for.
MR. MOGREN-Twenty-seven are shown, yes.
MR. VOLLARO-From this point, from my point of view anyway, I don’t know how the rest
of the Board feels about it, everybody’s got to speak to it, but I think the 27 seems okay, by
my calculation, using the amusement section of the parking area. I think it’s one for every
200 square feet.
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MR. MOGREN-Yes, amusement and enclosed shopping is the same. So, I don’t know what
the big difference is there. Okay. So with that parking, I just, again, quickly, again, this is
vinyl siding. There’s horizontal siding here, and then some vinyl shake siding here, and I
believe, Vance, you can talk a little bit about the colors. I don’t think we’ve nailed them
down, but we’re certainly interested in earth tones, you know, tone it down, browns and
greens, to blend in a little bit, and then the rear elevation with the roof structure, and the
right side elevation which has the garage, a garage bay there and a roof structure there. So
that’s what they’re going to do with the building. It’s existing. The last photograph is what
it is now. It’s just an existing CMU block building painted white. So this, I think, would be a
large improvement.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re going to build on that existing building, it’s just going to be a
modification.
MR. MOGREN-So, given that, we have, as I previously mentioned, we were adding a little
bit of asphalt pavement to access the garage here. We’re showing 27 parking spaces. We’ve
got the track out back here. Again, we’d like a roof structure to protect the starting, you
know, from the weather elements, whether it be sun or rain, and the entire track is encircled
in a four foot high chain link fence for safety reasons. You probably noticed on the grading a
drainage plan that we’re utilizing this area right here for a detention basin. We’re just kind of
pitching everything into that, and also conveying, picking up any additional runoff from the
parking area into here. The rest of the front of this parking lot just kind of, you know, sheet
flows out to the street, and gets caught up into the existing storm sewer system out there. So
we really haven’t done anything to alter the front of that building. So I think we’re really
collecting all of the increase, and the basin in the report, you know, handles, will keep a 100
year storm from the pre-existing conditions. So there’s no increased runoff into the streams
there. You’ve seen the lighting, and like I said, I’ve given you the lighting counts from the
manufacturer’s rep there, and there was a little bit of spillage down here, I think, but again,
there’s a couple of fixtures here that are already there, and this is just a stone parking lot
adjacent and a stone parking lot adjacent here. I believe there’s a little bit of light spillage on
either side there. I think it would be pretty incidental, given that there’s a couple of lights
that are already lighting that. There was a question by the Staff about some of the signage
along the road. Other than the sign that I’m pointing to right here, which is an identification
signage for Scooters, all this other signage just relates to DOT and roadway signage, speed
limit and stuff like that. So there’s no other signs out there that are advertising Scooters at
all. Stormwater management. Again, as I briefly described, without doing much disturbance
of this stream at all, we’re going to convey that across the track, pick that up in an 18 inch
culvert. We need to re-route the stream from about this point here, and just move that out of
the way, and then, you know, continue that flow on down to the existing outlets.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s all going to be piped, or is that just swaled to guide the water around
the track area, or is it going to be piped around?
MR. MOGREN-No, right now we’re just planning to swale it. There’s a detail on the detail
sheet where it’s just riprap sides and it’s one option to just culvert it, like you mentioned, but
we’re proposing to just move everything, again, just sandwich it between two culverts, we
should be able to culvert that if we wanted to, but we’d rather leave that open at the
moment.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m going to save my questions for last. I’m going to let the Board do their
own thing when you get finished there.
MR. MOGREN-Okay. I think I’m done. Other than the planting plan, I think we can put in
some plants, per the parking lot requirements on the planting plan. There was some concern
about, Staff had mentioned some buffers. Again, this is all retail. I thought that retail, you
know, a lot of this is retail use. So retail to retail doesn’t really require, you know, according
to Code, doesn’t require a buffer.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s not the similar uses, that’s correct, but we can request buffers whether
it’s a similar or dissimilar use.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
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MR. VOLLARO-If it enhances the site somewhat. It’s up to the Board to decide whether
they want to ask for some buffering or not.
MRS. BRUNO-I’m sorry, Mr. Mogren, did you mention when, I apologize, I was looking at
the drawings. Did you mention when the logging had been done or when the clearing had
been done? How old is that?
MR. MOGREN-Well, there was some disturbance out there due to the installation of the,
when they installed and tied into the existing sanitary sewer, or to the new sanitary sewer
system that came back there, there was a very large leach field in the back here, and that was
disturbed as a result of that. It’s my understanding that the building inspector had been out
there and had seen all that.
MRS. BRUNO-Were additional trees taken down following that?
MR. MOGREN-It was right about the same time, we logged out a couple of the bigger trees
out back.
MRS. BRUNO-And that was, I’m sorry, approximately when?
MR. MOGREN-Last year.
MRS. BRUNO-And you haven’t seen any change in stormwater runoff?
MR. COHEN-No.
MRS. BRUNO-Okay. Thank you.
MR. SIPP-What is the surface of this track?
MR. COHEN-Concrete.
MR. SIPP-Concrete, and what kind of vehicle are you operating on here?
MR. COHEN-Go karts.
MR. SIPP-Go karts. How much noise do these go karts produce?
MR. MOGREN-There are some noise studies that Vance has dug up, and based on that,
approximately 15 go karts going at once, which I believe is about what you’re going to do
there, the decibel level was just under 60, 57, 58 or so. Now I’m not sure how that falls in the
guidelines, again, we’re sandwiched between the Northway on one end and we’re sandwiched
on Route 9 on the other end. So there’s a lot of vehicular noise in between the site.
MR. SIPP-I’m concerned that the go karts further down, further south on Route 9, have
caused some problems with hotel owners operating at 11, 12 o’clock at night. Is that your
thoughts of operating these at that time?
MR. COHEN-Similar.
MR. SIPP-And you have a hotel diagonally to the east of you.
MR. COHEN-Right. Well, that’s also going to be obscured by some of the trees that are
there as well, because the property is on a slant. It’s not exactly a square lot.
MR. SIPP-South of what you’ve got there on the track is all parking lot, pavement.
MR. MOGREN-Yes, this is all parking, pavement.
MR. SIPP-That’s open right to Route 9.
MR. MOGREN-The motel you’re talking about I think is right across the street. Is that
correct?
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MR. SIPP-South of that. There’ve been numerous complaints of those go kart tracks south
of you by motel owners and residents in housing developments. It seems to me that the sound
studies done on those go karts were in the 70 and 80 decibel range.
MRS. STEFFAN-Are they gas powered or electric?
MR. COHEN-Yes, they are, gas powered.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay.
MR. SEGULJIC-Mr. Chairman, could we use the site plan review list?
MR. VOLLARO-We can on this.
MR. SEGULJIC-Because I’m concerned about noise also, but I think we should go down the
list.
MR. VOLLARO-I can start that, but what I wanted to get back to is when we did The Great
Escape, because of their noise situations that they had there, the first thing that we did was
take a look at the long term ambient noise, and see what the level of decibels above ambient
was, because that’s, people who are there now, before this track goes into position, will be
used to some level of ambient noise, and then you’re going to put a component over the top of
that, over the top of that ambient. So you’re going to have ambient at X, and you’re going to
be a Y amount of noise, and X and Y together are going to equal some decibel level. So what
we’ve got to do is determine what that is. We’ve got to try to get to that number. So we’re
going to need an ambient reading, I believe, eventually, to try to come up with what the
acceptable noise levels can be at that spot. I’ll have to go back and re-visit how we did the
noise analysis of The Great Escape. I’ve got it and I could probably share that with you, how
that was done, but I think Mr. Seguljic would like to go and review this against our site plan
review. This is a Special Use Permit, but the Special Use Permit triggers a site plan. So we
can use the site plan as a criteria. It’s not a problem to do that, and we can start that off by,
it starts off by design standards. So the Board, now before we get into that and before we
start to talk about a lot of that, there’s some people in the audience here. I want to open the
public hearing. I’d like to kind of hear if they have anything to say before we get into any
further discussion, before we even go down to review. So why don’t we, does anybody here
want to speak to this application?
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
RON SUTTER
MR. SUTTER-Good evening. My name is Ron Sutter, and I’m the Store Supervisor for our
company, Basketville, which is right next to this proposed project, and this is my Queensbury
Store Manager, Heather Rivers, and we have a concern about this project. We think it might
be more appropriate to be south of the Northway entrance where all the other amusement
activities are, instead of in what has been a retail shopping environment, customers walking
around, shopping in our store, shopping the outlets, and I think this would just change the
whole feeling and environment of that. So we feel that it may be more appropriate to be
south of the Northway entrance where The Great Escape and other amusement activities are,
and that’s my only comment that I’d like to make.
HEATHER RIVERS
MS. RIVERS-The only comment that I actually had was in reference to the parking.
Unfortunately we share parking lots, and they can go in between, and if there’s not enough
parking for his facility, unfortunately they’re going to come over into our parking lot, which
is then going to take away from my customers coming in to shop. The big thing that I am
concerned about is the noise. It’s loud enough there with the Northway, and having to bring
any extra noise is going to honestly, I think, drum people out of there. They’re not going to
want to sit and walk up and down if there’s a lot of noise. Nobody wants to listen to that
when they’re trying to shop, and that really is all I have.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Thank you very much.
MR. SUTTER-Thank you.
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MS. RIVERS-Thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-Anybody else like to talk to this application? Okay. If you’re going to
come back, we’ll leave the public hearing open, because chances are you’re going to be coming
back. So, we’ll leave it open, and we’ll get back to our Board discussion. You folks can come
back up here if you like. Now, does the Board want to go through the site plan review, or do
we have some questions you want to get on the, before we go through that, or should we just
go through it one by one?
MR. SEGULJIC-I’d say we go through it.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. We’ll go through it one by one. Design standards. Conformance
with Comprehensive Land Use Plan. I don’t think the Comprehensive Land Use Plan says
much in this area that I could see.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, there is a design standard for trees every 35 feet I believe, the Route 9
corridor.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s on 179.
MR. SEGULJIC-Right, and that’s the Route 9 corridor.
MR. VOLLARO-Right.
MR. SEGULJIC-And my question would be, you do propose two trees there, along the road.
They’re about 80 feet apart. It looks like you should have one other one there, if I’m correct.
It looks like you should have one other one in between the two existing ones.
MR. MOGREN-Okay. Well, we’d be glad to put that in there.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-So what would that be, one more tree on Route 9, Tom?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, it looks like they’re 80 feet apart right now, and they should be 35 feet
apart.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. One more tree on 9.
MRS. STEFFAN-And as far as conformance with the Comprehensive Land Use Plan, Susan,
are there any plans that you are aware of for the development of the Route 9 outlet strip, you
know, is there a master plan for that location? I don’t think that that fits into a
neighborhood, but I wondered when the strip was constructed.
MRS. BARDEN-I don’t think it does, and I don’t think that that’s even included in that area
of the Route 9 design guidelines.
MR. SEGULJIC-It’s divided into upper and lower.
MRS. BARDEN-Right, but I think that’s further, I don’t think it goes that far north.
MR. SEGULJIC-But it still makes sense to have a tree every 35 feet.
MRS. BARDEN-Absolutely, but I just.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. There you go, and they agree to it.
MRS. BARDEN-I’m not aware of one, Gretchen, but I will gladly check for you.
MRS. BRUNO-It seems like we had spoken, when we were talking about the different
gateways into Queensbury, and how each gateway would want to be treated in a different
way, because they’re different areas, that at Exit 20, and this came up with the other
townhouse proposals and everything, that we want to continue to look at little more and
more Adirondack as we went further, and, you know, what he’s describing here sounds like
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that, but something in the back of my mind is saying that there was more to it than that, too,
so that would be great if you could check it.
MRS. BARDEN-Sure.
MR. MOGREN-Are you referring to architectural guidelines?
MRS. BRUNO-Not just architectural, no, also tree scape. I know there have been a number
of traffic studies through that area, trying to remediate some of the congestion.
MRS. STEFFAN-And I believe it was designed that way, but I don’t know that for sure. I
thought it was designed to slow people down.
MR. VOLLARO-Are we saying that the conformance with design corridor standards don’t go
that far up on Route 9? Is that what we’re saying? I don’t think that’s true. I think the
Route 9 is divided into south and north, and I think it goes all the way up.
MR. SEGULJIC-Correct. It goes from Route 254 to The Great Escape, that’s correct. It
doesn’t go up that far. You’re correct.
MR. VOLLARO-How about building design and layout under design standards. We’re fairly
well pleased with the building layout? The building itself, now, not the track, but just the
building.
MR. SEGULJIC-I’m not an architectural person. It looks fine to me, but I would like to see
a color scheme. I’d like to see it be more of an Adirondack type thing.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I have a question on color scheme as well.
MRS. BRUNO-I am concerned with the quick rise in the roof lines. I think it’s going to end
up looking like, a little too much like an addition, rather than it forming into the original
building. I was looking at the floor plans to see exactly why the roof line was so high, and I
see that there is storage upstairs.
MR. MOGREN-I think the architectural plan image you’re looking at shows a second floor
floor plan and that’s not the case. There’s a one story, one floor, and you’re right, it’s high in
the back, and I think Vance, under the garage here, I think Vance is trying to just use that
for storage and try to store vertically a little bit, and then also make a place to put the sign on
there, and if you drive up and down that strip, you’ll see those kind of roof pitches, you know,
quite a bit, and we’re just trying to stay within the zoning guidelines of the 40 foot.
MRS. BRUNO-So there no longer is a second floor, we’re just looking for a taller storage area
on the first floor?
MR. MOGREN-Yes, right.
MRS. BRUNO-That’s good, because I saw something that probably wouldn’t have worked
having the second floor there open to the garage.
MRS. STEFFAN-I wondered about that, because there’s a, out of the back of the building
there were doors that went up.
MRS. BRUNO-Yes, it gets into all kinds of stuff, but it’s not relevant now.
MR. MOGREN-We’ve scrapped the whole idea of a second floor.
MRS. BRUNO-Okay.
MR. SEGULJIC-You’re going to take the existing building and work from that façade?
MR. MOGREN-That’s correct. Yes, what you’re looking at, all the white will be vinyl siding
over all the white. I’m not sure, were you doing anything with the roofing? It seems like
you’re going to call for some new roof shingles, too.
MR. COHEN-So that it all conforms with the new addition.
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MR. MOGREN-That sign, you see Scooters, of course that sign on the building mounted sign
there is coming down, and we’ll replace that with Scooters. So this is what (lost words).
MR. VOLLARO-Right. I think we’re going to need color scheme and also the color of the
roof shingle. Have you seen what we’ve done to The Outback up there on?
MR. COHEN-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. We’ve used the green, they had a light green. We made them change
that to conform with the spec, but that’s what we’d be looking for, that sort of Adirondack-y
kind of look, try to make it blend in if that’s possible.
MR. COHEN-Sure, absolutely.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. We’ve got the site development design. Is there anything you want
to talk about in site conditions, soil, geology, hydrology, slopes, nothing there?
MR. SIPP-Bob, this confuses me because the Warren County Soil Map shows that this is an
oakley soil A, which means it’s well drained.
MR. MOGREN-Actually I think in the report it refers to the, but it’s a hydrolic soil group of
B is what we’ve used in all our calculations.
MR. SIPP-B?
MR. MOGREN-Yes.
MR. SIPP-This is off a U.S.G.A. Soil Map.
MR. MOGREN-Okay. We have a soils map in here, and it’s, the predominant soils on site, I
don’t know if my map came from your same source, but we can compare them, is the Bice
Series, which is a Hydrolic soil group B.
MR. SIPP-B, C, but that’s up north of 149.
MR. MOGREN-We’ve got some down here, according to this, this is U.S. We’re using a
hydrolic soil group B for these soils.
MR. SIPP-Have you done any test pits on any of this site?
MR. MOGREN-No.
MR. SIPP-I live close by to this, and it just seems to me that that’s all glacial till, and it’s all
pretty well drained, all the way down through. Maybe there’s a section in there of poorly
drained soils, but the water is coming off of West Mountain, Luzerne Mountain, is where the
water is coming from. It comes under the Northway, because kids used to ride bikes through
the culvert up there. So, that’s where the excess water is coming from. It’s almost all
downhill on the west side of the Northway to your property.
MR. MOGREN-Excuse me. What were your concerns about the soils, because we’re really
not providing, proposing to do any infiltration. We’re just collecting in the basin, and, you
know, detaining it there to release it at the pre-existing.
MR. SIPP-You’re on the Town sewage list, so you don’t need any, no septic. I’ll go back and
look that up in the big book, but it just seems to me that that whole area, from the Warren
County north is all, it’s part of an Esker, a geologic Esker. That should be well drained.
MR. MOGREN-Well, we’ve plugged in a pretty good, we didn’t plug in an A soil group, but
we plugged in a B soil group, which is the next best, so that’s what we run through our
stormwater.
MR. SIPP-Even with that, it should drain quicker than, the amount of water, of course it did
rain quite heavily and we did accumulate probably two inches of rainfall over the weekend,
but it should drain better than that.
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MR. VOLLARO-Well, all of that, whatever it is, they’re going to have to swale it around if
they’re going to get rid of it at all. I mean, there’s going to have to be a swale in there
somehow or other. I don’t know if we can depend upon the perc in that area to do that. He’s
going to have to swale it around anyway.
MR. MOGREN-Yes, that’s what we propose to do. We’re not depending on any perc into the
soil.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I can see that by the design. Yes, right. All right. Let’s keep going
here. Pedestrian access. I think it’s right off Route 9. You can’t do much with pedestrian
access here. Parking field design we’ve talked about, roughly 27 spaces. We do have to
consider what happens when you get spillover for those folks, though. We want to try to
check with that a little bit.
MRS. STEFFAN-Related to that, what are your hours of operation, what will your hours of
operation be?
MR. COHEN-Well, during the heart of the season, we’re going to be open, well, we’ve
typically been open until 9, 10, 11 o’clock at night, depending on traffic flow. Most of the
outlets close I guess about 9, 9:30 during the summer, and six in the off season. When it’s
really busy, they’re year round, but.
MRS. STEFFAN-And dark.
MR. COHEN-And dark is right.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. So until 11:00, thank you.
MR. VOLLARO-Stormwater and sewage design, I’ll let everybody get to it before I talk
about it.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, just one question on stormwater. If I’m understanding your
stormwater report correctly, you’re saying you designed for a 10 year storm, and I believe the
Code requires for a 50 year storm, or am I misinterpreting that?
MR. MOGREN-Well, there’s different design storms that are in here.
MR. SEGULJIC-Maybe I misread that.
MR. MOGREN-The detention basin is designed for a 100 year storm.
MR. SEGULJIC-All right, now that I re-read it, I just read it, the basin will be designed to
detain a 10 year and 100 year design storms.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. He’s covering 50 with that. Yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. It’s my mistake.
MR. VOLLARO-I don’t see anything on the plan with sewage design. There’s no connection
on the plan at all for you to get into public sewer.
MR. MOGREN-We’re not messing with that at all. That is an existing connection.
MR. VOLLARO-No, my understanding was it’s not an existing condition.
MR. MOGREN-It was connected about a year ago.
MR. COHEN-It’s connected. We’re hooked up to the public sewer.
MR. VOLLARO-You’re hooked up to public sewer.
MR. COHEN-Yes.
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MR. VOLLARO-Okay. All right. That’s fine. I didn’t know that you had hooked up a year
ago. Okay.
MRS. BARDEN-You have a letter from Mike Shaw, Site Plan 61-2004, must be an old one.
The proposed addition is within the Route 9 sanitary sewer district. Current building is
connected.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Fine. The lighting design, has anybody got any questions on
lighting, other than what?
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, my only question was, I don’t have it in front of me, but the lighting
on the track seemed to be pretty low.
MR. VOLLARO-It is low.
MR. SEGULJIC-And I don’t know what you need on the track, but to me it just seemed
really low. You’re going to have more lighting than what’s listed. There’s like .5 or
something.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, what we need from them, really, is for their computer to do an
analysis and tell us what the average to max, the min, the min over max, and the average
over min. It’s very hard to integrate those numbers by the eyeball. If the computer
generated those, it’ll also give you the numbers I need.
MR. MOGREN-The manufacturer gave this here.
MR. VOLLARO-Right.
MR. MOGREN-Usually it’s on there, but I’m not seeing it right now.
MR. VOLLARO-No, it’s not on there, I checked that drawing. You need a couple. You need
the average, you need the max, you need the min, you need the max over min.
MR. MOGREN-What’s that, a ratio, max over?
MR. VOLLARO-The average over min is going to be the ratio, is going to be your Uniformity
Ratio.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-And that’s got to be close to four to one, for our Code.
MR. MOGREN-Even for the track? I did see your parking lot.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the idea is we don’t, the four to one ratio, the Uniformity Ratio has a
lot to do with how much light you’ve got on the track versus how much light is up on Route
9. It’s got to do with your eyes becoming used to different light levels, and that’s what the
Uniformity Ratio is all about. That’s why we use four to one. So, you’ll calculate that. As
soon as you get the average over the min, you’ll be able to get your ratio.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Necessarily you don’t have to hit exactly four to one, but we like it to be
pretty close, and then when we know what the average is, we go to our Code, and take a look
at whether you’ve got the average lighting that we need for an amusement like this, a track.
MR. MOGREN-Okay. Now how would the existing, you probably know this, but with the
existing lights out on Route 9.
MR. VOLLARO-They probably don’t add very much to your, they’ll add a little in the area
of Route 9. They’ll converge somewhat in that area, but you’re not going to get an awful lot
from the Route 9 lights onto that track.
MR. MOGREN-Not for the track, no. I’m just worried about the parking lot.
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MR. VOLLARO-The parking lot needs two and a half foot candles. That’s the spec on
parking lots is 2.5.
MR. MOGREN-I thought there was, with this use, I did see that. I thought there were a
couple of other uses.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s a couple of other uses, but this is, I looked at this, in the lighting
area, as being for the amusement parking lots. Let me take a look. It’s 179-6.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, it says recreation parking lots is 2.5.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, multi-family, recreation parking lot is two and a half. That’s where we
are.
MR. SEGULJIC-But we’d also like to minimize lighting, too.
MR. VOLLARO-It’s got to be down lit, the cut off stuff, but in the parking lot you’re asking
for now should be two and a half.
MR. MOGREN-That’s an existing parking lot that’s not well lit now. I guess at this point
you’d make us light that existing parking lot, I guess.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, you’re going to have to take a look at that lighting plan first.
MR. MOGREN-Well, yes, the lighting that I’m showing is to light the track, and there’s
some spillage over here, but you’ll see that there’s a lot of zeros in the parking lot, because
that track lighting’s not doing it, and I just thought that those Sternbergs that the Town
installed on Route 9, there’s four of them right in close proximity, that that would cast some
light on the parking lot.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the question is we need some photometrics to tell us that. Without
photometrics, I don’t know whether you’ve got two and a half candles on there or not. We’re
going to need that information.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Let’s see, let’s continue to go down, I guess. I don’t see anything else on
that, even on that list that we have to look at, but we’ll take another look at it.
MRS. STEFFAN-Let me just make sure, I’m trying to take notes as we’re talking here, and
I’ve got some of the items that I have on our list is, a lighting plan with average, min, max
and the Uniformity Ratios. We were looking at revised plans, even though they have revised
plans, but to handle some of the discrepancies we found in elimination of the second floor. We
were looking at a noise study analysis to determine ambient noise levels and proposed decibel
levels of the 15 gas powered go karts. We’re looking for color schemes of the roof and the
siding.
MR. VOLLARO-Right.
MRS. STEFFAN-And the building should have an Adirondack style, adding trees at 35 foot
intervals along the street scape, identify hours of operations for the uses. That was something
I added, basically, it just should be on the plan, and then notation of those sewer connection.
That should be part of the.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, the plan should show where the sewer connection is.
MRS. STEFFAN-Where the sewer connection is.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Even though you’re already connected up, right now the plan doesn’t show
that, and it should. It shows water, but it doesn’t show sewer.
MRS. STEFFAN-It becomes a Town document and then a reference. Anything else that I
missed in our discussion.
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MR. VOLLARO-Yes, there’s 11 C.T. Male comments that have to be addressed.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay.
MR. MOGREN-How do you usually go about that, just me contacting C.T. Male, discussing
it with them?
MR. VOLLARO-We have a rule here so that they, Staff doesn’t go crazy here, is that you
send your information, based on C.T. Male’s answer, C.T. Male’s position, you have to answer
those questions, and you get those to Staff, they get them to C.T. Male. They’ve got to go
through Staff so that Staff knows that you’ve sent a letter to them and then they get it to
C.T. Male and C.T. Male gets it back to them, and it’ll get back to you. That’s the route.
MR. MOGREN-Okay. So I submit a letter addressing every one of their points?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Now it doesn’t mean that you can’t speak with him on the phone or
anything. It’s just that your written determination goes through Staff. You can certainly
talk with Jim Houston on the phone. That’s not a problem. I mean, I don’t know how you’d
get by some of those questions without some discussion with him.
MR. MOGREN-Yes.
MRS. STEFFAN-It’s just we try to discourage that, just because they’re a contract vendor,
and so if we don’t know folks are talking to them, the Town gets billed for it, and we’re not
sure why. So that’s why we, the Community Development Department acts as a traffic cop
in that regard, so they know that information’s going back and forth and what folks are
talking about. So that’s one of the reasons why we use that scenario. Are there any other
things that should be on this list?
MR. VOLLARO-I’m looking. There’s a thing here that jumps out at me, and I want to just
talk about the neighborhood character here for a minute. It’s on our site plan review
requirements, and, you know, I’ve got some sympathy, really, in my own mind at least, for
the folks that talked about the neighborhood there. I’ll tell you what, I’ll give you my
opinion and then the rest of the Board can think about that. I would feel much more
comfortable if these vehicles were electric powered. Much more comfortable, in terms of the
noise. We just reviewed one up the road from you not too long ago that’s going to be an
indoor track with electric’s, and, you know, knowing the kind of noise, now you can put real
classy mufflers on these things and probably keep them pretty quiet, I don’t know, but I
know gas engines a little bit, and I know that they can make a racket when they get going.
Especially if everybody’s trying to race against one another, you’ve got the throttles open.
That’s what the idea of that track’s all about. So they’re going to be getting their RPM’s up
as fast as they can. So, it’s going to be a little bit noisy, and I want to make sure that the
neighborhood character is being preserved there. It’s one of our responsibilities as Planning
Board to make sure that happens. I would think about it. I know that most of your vehicles
out front are gas powered.
MR. COHEN-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s okay. They’re going to be sold to other people and they’re going to
use them some place, and somebody else has got to listen to the noise that that makes, but
when you concentrate these vehicles in one place on the track, I would much, much prefer to
see them be electric powered. Now I don’t know how that impacts your business plan.
MR. SEGULJIC-But on the other hand, the gasoline powered cars could be a lot quieter
today, I don’t know.
MR. VOLLARO-They can.
MR. SEGULJIC-What we’re saying is noise is going to be a concern. You have to work with
that whether you get gasoline powered cars that are a lot quieter or electric cars.
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MRS. STEFFAN-Does the applicant have any input on that?
MR. COHEN-I would like to keep it gas powered. It’s part of the enjoyment of riding a go
kart is the noise that it makes and the feel of it going around.
MR. VOLLARO-I have some sympathy for the people who are talking about the ambience,
really, of that whole area, and how that whole shopping area works, and I have a little bit of
concern about putting a real noise source in the middle of it. That’s something that’s on my
mind.
MR. COHEN-Well, we do have the Northway right behind us, which all day long you hear
the Jake breaks on the big rigs coming down.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that’s what I said. We’ll take a look at what the ambient noise is in
the area so that people who work there and play there and walk around there are used to that
ambient. Now when we put a spike on that ambient of X number of db, I want to see what
that looks like, and it probably ought to be in the area of probably 60 or 70 db, total, between
the ambient noise and the noise projected by the go karts. I’m going to go back and take a
look at some of the noise that we imposed on The Great Escape and how we got to that, and
it’s all in some of the documents I have at home. I don’t have them here. So we can look at
that. You don’t remember what that was, Don, on The Great Escape?
MR. SIPP-Well, Stu Mesinger for Chazen did a study on the go karts alone, five, six years go.
MR. VOLLARO-We could probably resurrect that, but that was five or six years ago of
technology.
MR. SIPP-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-How many cc’s are you running of these engines?
MR. SIPP-Well, to tell the story.
MR. COHEN-They could vary anywhere from 13 cc on the highest end go kart, to like a
seven and a half horsepower motor, which I should break down the cc on that, but.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. You’ve got to have some pretty good muffler capability on those
things.
MR. COHEN-All mufflers can be muffled down.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. COHEN-There’s always an attachment to silence it.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we need to know about noise. We need to know what the ambient is
in that area, and you can do that with a, get the dba reading for that.
MR. SIPP-The LA Group did the noise for The Great Escape.
MR. VOLLARO-I’ll have to look at that. I’ll have to resurrect all of that and how we
regulated the noise from that, because I know we did an ambient analysis and then we went
from there. So, okay.
MRS. STEFFAN-We also more recently looked at the Wal-Mart ambient noise and allowable
decibel levels.
MR. VOLLARO-Right.
MRS. STEFFAN-So that’s a very recent project.
MR. VOLLARO-And that was for, if I remember, the idling trucks.
MRS. STEFFAN-Idling trucks next to the apartment buildings, and that was a similar use.
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MR. SEGULJIC-Well, to the applicant, they just have to let us know what the ambient noise
in their area is and get us noise on these go karts.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, those are the two things we need.
MR. SEGULJIC-We went past landscape design.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, sorry about that. You talked about the trees along Route 9.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that was just street scaping. In the front of the building, you have
that area, it looks like it was a loop driveway before and now it looks like you have fences on
either side of it.
MR. COHEN-Right.
MR. SEGULJIC-So what is the purpose of that area?
MR. COHEN-It’s display.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. So you’re going to put a fence there to limit access to the area?
MR. COHEN-It’s to limit basically kids running in and out. I’m trying to stop kids from
getting so close to the road, because I don’t know if you’ve been by in the summer, we get
mobbed with families in there. I’m just trying to keep the kids away from the road. So that’s
my concern. So I want to fence that.
MR. SEGULJIC-So that area is going to stay as it is now?
MR. COHEN-As it is, right.
MR. SEGULJIC-What’s the fence going to look like?
MR. MOGREN-Four foot high, chain link fence, it’s black PVC vinyl coated.
MR. SEGULJIC-Anything we can do about that? That’s not too appealing.
MR. COHEN-Do you have any recommendations?
MR. MOGREN-Black (lost word) vinyl coating is good.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, can we see a rendering of it?
MR. MOGREN-Well, there’s a detail on the detail sheet.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, no, I wanted the color, what it’s going to look like. To me that doesn’t
sound very appealing. Chain link fence.
MR. MOGREN-Well, the next step up is like a steel picket fence.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, you’re saying there’s a rendering of it.
MR. MOGREN-Well, there’s a detail on the chain link fence.
MR. SEGULJIC-Right. I know what a chain link fence looks like.
MR. COHEN-So that you can still see through as you’re driving by, you’ll be able to see the
bikes and the people and there’ll still be a safety barrier.
MR. SEGULJIC-How does everyone else feel about that?
MRS. BRUNO-I agree with you. I mean, you still have the improvement in front of The
Great Escape changing from their chain link fence to a classier fence.
MR. COHEN-I can put a split rail fence in or something along those lines.
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MR. SEGULJIC-There we go, something like that. That would fit in nicely with the
Adirondack.
MRS. STEFFAN-The Adirondack theme.
MR. COHEN-I can do that. That’s no problem.
MRS. BRUNO-I know we spoke about this in terms of some of the automobile dealers and
the boat dealers and parking on the grass. I don’t think you guys are parking now your
display on the grass, but should we be putting that in, that we want, you know, down the
road, if we okay, that the grass is to stay, to remain as green space?
MR. COHEN-Well, they are four wheelers and dirt bikes, and part of the sales of them is to
show them on grass so I’d kind of like to keep the display area, you know, even on grass, put a
four wheeler on it, it’s kind of the use of it. So it kind of flows with the business.
MR. MOGREN-Were you talking about display or cars parking on the grass?
MRS. BRUNO-Display.
MRS. STEFFAN-Susan, it’s the setback, isn’t it? Isn’t there a setback requirement? I know
there are setback requirements, but the green space.
MRS. BARDEN-Setback requirement for the green space?
MRS. STEFFAN-Every lot has a setback, but then there is, like with the used car dealers in
Town, there’s a right of way, usually it’s a Department of Transportation right of way in the
front. Do we have any Code that prevents folks from displaying vehicles or merchandising in
those right of ways?
MRS. BARDEN-You generally need a permit from DOT to display or have anything in their
right of way.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. That’s what I was looking for. We had an application earlier that
we asked, that was part of the criteria for that approval.
MR. VOLLARO-The way he’s displaying right now, I don’t think you’re in the DOT right of
way. You’ve got that grass strip. I’m looking at the photo now, and then the DOT right of
way is probably a little bit off Route 9 there, but you’ve got a grass strip that buffers that.
MR. COHEN-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-So I don’t think you’re in it now, but what Mrs. Steffan is saying is she
wants to make sure that you don’t get into it. Is that what you’re talking about, Gretchen?
MR. COHEN-Well, I won’t be into the DOT right of way with my fence that I put in,
because obviously I can’t put it on their property, and then all this merchandise will be.
MR. VOLLARO-Behind that.
MR. COHEN-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So all you’re talking about, Tom, is the aesthetic fence, what it looks
like?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Sure, and what have you arrived at?
MR. SEGULJIC-Split rail.
MR. COHEN-That’s fine.
MR. MOGREN-I thought there was more of a security factor involved with that fence?
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MR. COHEN-Well, I want the kids not to be able to go right up to the road and I’d like to be
able to barricade it off so I can come up with some sort of gate on the driveway side or some
sort of gate system.
MR. SEGULJIC-Make it appealing.
MR. COHEN-Right.
MR. SEGULJIC-Now the other thing is, under the landscape design buffering, how much of a
right of way is there to the Northway? Because your property buts up against the Northway.
MR. COHEN-There’s a fence back there that defines the back side.
MR. SEGULJIC-But what I’m getting at is buffering to the Northway, for people driving by
on the Northway. Not having, to me personally, this is just my opinion, I don’t want to have
to drive north on the Northway and look over and see that. I like the fact that there’s trees
along the Northway and it’s limited.
MR. COHEN-There’s trees along there.
MR. SEGULJIC-But my question is, how far is it from your property line to the Northway?
So how much screening is there going to be?
MR. COHEN-Whatever the hillside is right there.
MR. VOLLARO-On that drawing, where is your property line?
MR. MOGREN-The property line is right here.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay, and the Northway is where?
MR. MOGREN-Well, the Northway is not shown. That’s the Northway right of way line.
You’ve certainly got about 100 feet or so from our property line to the track.
MR. VOLLARO-And that’s all treed in there?
MR. MOGREN-No, the tree line’s shown here.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I see it.
MR. MOGREN-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-So, Tom, it looks like from the Northway the track is fairly well shielded by
that tree line right now.
MR. SEGULJIC-Not from what Gretchen’s showing me.
MR. VOLLARO-There’s the Northway.
MR. COHEN-You can see the Northway. You can see some tractor trailers and stuff go by
there.
MR. SEGULJIC-Why do we need that clearing in the back of the track along the Northway?
MR. MOGREN-That’s not additional clearing, that’s the way it is right now.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, that was cleared.
MR. MOGREN-This is the existing tree line back here, and we’re not really doing anything
back.
MR. SEGULJIC-But that was cleared, recently. I’m looking at these photographs.
MR. COHEN-Last year. We’ve taken some trees out.
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MR. SEGULJIC-Why? I mean, is there a purpose to have that clearing there?
MRS. BRUNO-Is that in preparation for this project?
MR. COHEN-Well, I’ve been harvesting wood out of there over the last couple of years
myself, and I took some of the trees on the north side of the property out. There wasn’t any
big trees of any significance in the center of this.
MR. SEGULJIC-Well, just for me personally, I’d like to see some screening back along that
area.
MR. COHEN-We can always add something back there.
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes, we’d like to have something added back there, as well as the area of
where the track is. I mean, for now when you’re on Route 9, when you look over, all you’re
going to see is the track, if I’m understanding that correctly.
MR. COHEN-From which angle?
MR. SEGULJIC-If you’re on Route 9, you’re looking to the west, you’re going to see, I would
assume it’s a chain link fence back there, and the track.
MR. COHEN-Right, yes.
MR. SEGULJIC-Can we do something about that, put some screening there also?
MR. COHEN-Well, I kind of wanted people to be able to see the track, so that they can see
we have a go kart track there. I didn’t want to run the track up alongside the road to be seen,
like the one up on Route 9 further south of us, some sort of visual that there is a track there.
Pirates Cove has got their miniature golf course way up on a hill that’s hard to be seen.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, we’ve already got a track, as he says, to the south of him, which is
very, very close to Route 9 and not very well buffered. You can see it almost immediately. If
there’s room for buffering, I don’t know, what are you thinking of a fence?
MR. SEGULJIC-There is a fence there already. It’s all blacktop, then you have a chain link
fence, then you have your track. I’m thinking about, I’m not a tree expert, Don would know
better. You know the pine trees that are.
MR. COHEN-Just to kind of block it?
MR. SEGULJIC-Yes. I could understand, but let’s compromise on it. You want people to
see your track, but.
MR. MOGREN-How about if we, can we maybe try to get some buffering in this corner here?
Because it will be difficult to get anything in between the track and the parking lot there.
MR. COHEN-I do have, we have an access gate to the track there as well.
MR. SEGULJIC-Okay. Well, see what you can do.
MR. MOGREN-We can maybe, you know, put some evergreen screening down in this corner
that may help some, but right here is going to be tough to put any buffering.
MR. SEGULJIC-Something to soften that view.
MR. COHEN-There’s also going to be trees, landscaped trees right in the basin where the
water’s to be gathered in the center there of the track, which will help some in the depth of it
I guess maybe.
MR. SEGULJIC-Right. So enhance that.
MR. COHEN-Okay.
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MR. VOLLARO-Okay, folks. Do we want to try and bring this to a close? Do we have
enough information to give these people to close this out, get them a tabling motion going?
MR. SEGULJIC-I’m all set.
MRS. STEFFAN-Okay. I’ll make a motion.
MOTION TO TABLE SPECIAL USE PERMIT NO. 8-2006 VANCE COHEN, Introduced by
Gretchen Steffan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Robert Vollaro:
Tabling it so that the applicant can return with revised plans to incorporate the following:
1. A new lighting plan, with average, min, max, and uniformity ratios to include
the identification of the fixtures used,
2. Revised plans, as the current plans have some discrepancies, and the second
floor has been eliminated,
3. To come back with a noise study and analysis to determine ambient noise
levels currently, and the proposed decibel levels of 15 gas powered go karts to
be utilized on the site,
4. Color schemes of the roof and the siding. Our preference is an Adirondack
style,
5. The plan should also include additional trees at 35 foot intervals along the
streetscape,
6. Identify hours of operations for the three uses proposed in the Special Use
Permit,
7. A notation on the plans of the public sewer connection,
8. The applicant also needs to address the 11 C.T. Male comments that were
identified in their letter,
9. We also would like to have a rendering of the fencing in front of the building,
as per the discussion, preferably something that fits in with the Adirondack
style, perhaps post and rail, split rail, something like that, and then to
incorporate the additional landscaping discussed:
a) To screen the view from the Northway of the go kart track,
b) To screen the southeast section of the go kart track from
Route 9.
10. Tabling to June 27 with an application deadline of May 15.
thth
Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2006, by the following vote:
th
MR. COHEN-Is there any specific from like the Northway side, is there any specific anything
that we could put in there that would be, like you’re suggesting, that would screen it?
MRS. STEFFAN-Go to the landscape guidelines that the Town has in their Zoning Code.
The Community Development Department can.
MR. COHEN-Plant material.
MRS. STEFFAN-Yes, they’ve got plant species that they identify.
MR. COHEN-Okay.
AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mrs. Steffan, Mr. Seguljic, Mrs. Bruno, Mr. Sipp, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: NONE
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ABSENT: Mr. Ford
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. You’re all set.
MR. COHEN-Thank you.
On motion meeting was adjourned.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Robert Vollaro, Chairman
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