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2007-11-21(Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) QUEENSBURY ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS FIRST REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 21, 2007 INDEX Sign Variance No. 56-2007 1093 Group, LLC Rite Aid Store 1. Tax Map No. 302.6-1-55 Area Variance No. 42-2007 Morgan Vittengl 2. Tax Map No. 289.17-1-48 Area Variance No. 65-2007 Mary Jane Freihofer 4. Tax Map No 226.12-1-3 Area Variance No. 66-2007 Cindy & Michael Trombley 4. Tax Map No. 265.00-1-16 Area Variance No. 67-2007 Robert McDonald 10. Tax Map No. 308.18-2-19 Notice of Appeal No. 7-2007 GF Heating and Air Conditioning 11. Tax Map No. 308.19-1-65 and 66 Area Variance No. 59-2007 Schermerhorn Residential Holdings, L.P. 17. Tax Map No. 288.00-1-63 and 64 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. 0 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) QUEENSBURY ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS FIRST REGULAR MEETING NOVEMBER 21, 2007 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CHARLES ABBATE, CHAIRMAN JAMES UNDERWOOD, SECRETARY ROY URRICO CHARLES MC NULTY RICHARD GARRAND JOYCE HUNT ALLAN BRYANT ZONING ADMINISTRATOR-CRAIG BROWN STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI MR. ABBATE- Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Town of Queensbury Zoning Board of Appeals hearing dated 21 November 2007. Prior to setting this hearing in motion, I would like to acquaint you with information that will familiarize you with the responsibilities of this quasi-judicial Board, the mandated legal requirements we are guided by, and the procedures for a hearing before this Board are dictated by New York State Town Law 267. As a quasi-judicial Board, we are dictated not only by the laws of the State of New York in terms of procedures and evidence, and at times I can understand this might be uninspiring to most of the people, including members of this Board, but we must follow the those dictates of the law. However, I respectfully remind all of us that it is the law that binds us together, and it’s the framework of all our lives and crucial to due process guaranteed under our Constitution. Noteworthy is the fact that our procedures and decisions are also subject to a judicial review by the Supreme Court. The function of the Zoning Board of Appeals is to listen to and consider all evidence that appears on the record, and may bear upon the issue we are deciding. This Zoning Board of Appeals can grant (or deny) two types of relief; interpretive and variance. In either case, this Board will affirm, reverse or modify the zoning officer’s decision. In doing so, this Board will either permit or deny the appeal. If the appeal is for a variance, this Board’s decision will be based on the standards of proof contained in NYS Town Law 267-b. Additionally, the Zoning Board of Appeals may only authorize the minimum variance necessary to relieve the applicant. Other than administrative items, public comments will be invited on each appeal, however, in the interest of time please be crisp, organized and limit your comments to only the facts and information given this evening. On opening the public hearing the public will be allowed a maximum of 5 minutes to comment on a specific appeal. The purpose of this time limitation is to provide each member of the public an opportunity to be heard, and also to limit the length of the hearing to a reasonable time frame. All questions from the appellant or the public will be addressed to this Board. All dialogues during the hearing will be between the appellant and this Board. I’m going to request the secretary to please monitor the time, and Mr. Secretary, at this time, do we have any correspondence that should be read into the record at this time? MR. UNDERWOOD-Do you want to go through them in order, the tabling motions? MR. ABBATE-No. I’ll do that, and that way there we’ll keep it in sequence. Okay. Mr. th Secretary, on the 9 of November 2007 I received a copy of a registered letter from Mr. and Mrs. Glandon. It’s addressed to the Chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals. It contains 16 pages of single spaced sentences. The subject is appeal for zoning review of construction at 67 Knox Road, Lake George, New York. Certainly we will enter this document into the record as having been received. However, in view of the length of the document and the fact that I have no evidence that Mr. and Mrs. Glandon have formally appealed to the ZBA, I would offer, Mr. Secretary, that the 16 pages not be read into the record. Rather merely to acknowledge receipt. Okay. ADMINISTRATIVE ITEMS: SIGN VARIANCE NO. 56-2007 SEQRA TYPE: UNLISTED 1093 GROUP, LLC/RITE AID STORE AGENT(S): BLAIR COMPANIES OWNER(S): 1093 GROUP, LLC ZONING HC-INT. LOCATION 724 GLEN STREET APPLICANT PROPOSES PLACEMENT OF ADDITIONAL WALL SIGNS ON THE FAÇADE OF THE RITE AID STORE. ALSO THE APPLICANT PROPOSES PLACEMENT OF AN ADDITIONAL 1 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) FREESTANDING SIGN ON THE PARCEL. RELIEF REQUESTED FROM NUMBER OF ALLOWABLE SIGNS. CROSS REF.: N/A WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: SEPTEMBER 12, 2007 LOT SIZE: 2.88 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 302.6-1-55 SECTION 140 MR. ABBATE-Do we have a representative? Is the appellant here for Rite Aid this evening? Would you raise your hand, please? I see none. Well, Staff, I have a question for you. Have you received any additional information that would warrant a hearing on this appeal? MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. ABBATE-You have? MR. BROWN-Yes. MR. ABBATE-I don’t have it in the record. th MR. BROWN-No. They submitted information by the November 15 deadline, and they’re anticipating placement on a December meeting. So they have submitted the additional information, and I think the last time they were before the Board they may have been tabled to this evening’s meeting, so you probably should table them to a specific date. MR. ABBATE-Yes, you’re absolutely right, and that’s what I intend to do. This is the second time that the appellant has failed to appear before this Board with any declaration, and you know this Board has been very patient with that. Did they suggest th to you that the 16 would be fine, or did they come up with a specific date? MR. BROWN-They did not come up with a specific date, but I’m sure they’re anticipating December. MR. ABBATE-Okay. MR. BROWN-Wherever that might be. MR. ABBATE-Here’s what I’ll do, then. So that there’s no ex-parte communication, Mr. Brown, could you do me a favor, please. I’m going to move a motion right now to move th this to the 19 of December, but could you please advise the appellant that we will hear the case with or without the presence of counsel or the appellant. MR. BROWN-Sure. MOTION TO TABLE SIGN VARIANCE NO. 56-2007 1093 GROUP, LLC, Introduced by Charles Abbate who moved for its adoption, seconded by Roy Urrico: Tabled to 19 December 2007. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Urrico, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. McNulty, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Abbate NOES: NONE MR. ABBATE-The vote is seven yes, zero no. The vote to table Sign Variance No. 56- 2007 is seven yes, zero no. Sign Variance No. 56-2007 is tabled to the 19December 2007 hearing date. AREA VARIANCE NO. 42-2007 SEQRA TYPE II MORGAN VITTENGL OWNER(S): MORGAN VITTENGL ZONING: WR-1A LOCATION: 155 BIRDSALL ROAD APPLICANT HAS CONSTRUCTED A 168 SQ. FT. CONNECTION (ADDITION) BETWEEN THE HOUSE AND GARAGE. RELIEF REQUESTED FROM SIDE YARD SETBACK REQUIREMENTS AND FLOOR AREA RATIO REQUIREMENTS. ADDITIONALLY, RELIEF REQUESTED FOR EXPANSION OF A NONCONFORMING STRUCTURE. CROSS REF.: BP 97-247 GARAGE WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: N/A LOT SIZE: 0.29 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 289.17-1-48 SECTION: 179-4-030 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT 2 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-Is Counselor Bitter here? Counsel is for, Mr. Lapper. I have received, Mr. Lapper, correspondence from Ms. Bitter dated November 8, 2007, and I wonder if you would be kind enough to convey a message to her from the Chairman of the Board, in a most respectful manner, please. MR. LAPPER-Which project, Mr. Chairman? MR. ABBATE-Yes, this deals with Area Variance No. 42-2007, Vittengl. MR. LAPPER-Yes, Dr. Vittengl is with me. MR. ABBATE-Well, she’s asked for a tabling motion. MR. LAPPER-If I could have just a minute. MR. LAPPER-Of course. MR. LAPPER-We were here over the summer, and then the Zoning Administrator went to look at the property and this is a question of space over the garage, which it wasn’t the applicant’s intention to count it as finished space. That would require a Floor Area Ratio variance, and what the Zoning Administrator said after he looked at it is it’s space that looks like it could be finished. So I think, it’s not our intention to submit an application asking for the relief that it’s floor area. I think we need to get together with the Zoning Administrator and try and figure out what it is that would satisfy him so that he wouldn’t have to make that determination. So I guess what I’d ask is to allow us to meet with the Zoning Administrator, with the understanding that we’ll submit by the next monthly deadline to get back on the agenda to get this finished. MR. ABBATE-So, Counselor, you’re asking this Board, then, to table Area Variance No. 42-2007? MR. LAPPER-Yes, and it appears that we’re going to have to, well, depending upon what Craig determines, we’ll have to either modify the building or modify the application. MR. ABBATE-I have no trouble tabling it, but it would seem to me that if you and the th Zoning Administrator can’t come to some sort of agreement, tabling it to the 19 of th December would only require a fourth tabling to the 16 of January. Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until you meet and coordinate your efforts with the Zoning Administrator, and at that time schedule you for a meeting? In that case, I could th guarantee you that I will, we will be having a meeting on the 12, but that’s exclusively for another case. MR. LAPPER-No, January is fine. This way we’ll get together with Craig. MR. ABBATE-All right, then this is what I’ll do, then, Counselor. If you are requesting that we table Area Variance No. 42-2007, I will move a motion. MOTION TO TABLE AREA VARIANCE NO. 42-2007 MORGAN VITTENGL, Introduced by Charles Abbate who moved for its adoption, seconded by Allan Bryant: Tabled to a hearing on 16 January 2008. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: MR. BRYANT-Mr. Chairman, shouldn’t you request that all the documentation be in by th December the 15? MR. ABBATE-Well, that’s a good point, and I’ll make that a good point, Mr. Bryant. It goes without saying, and I’m certain that Counsel knows, that if we’re going to schedule thth this for the 16 of January, the deadline date is the 15 of December. MR. LAPPER-We understand. th MR. ABBATE-And there’s an assumption that all the documents will be in by the 15 of th December or there will be no hearing on the 16. MR. LAPPER-We’ll try and get together with Craig next week. 3 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-Okay. AYES: Mr. Bryant, Mr. Urrico, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. McNulty, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Abbate NOES: NONE MR. ABBATE-The vote is seven yes, zero no to table Area Variance No. 42-2007, which th will be scheduled to be heard on the 16 of January, 2008. Okay. AREA VARIANCE NO. 65-2007 SEQRA TYPE: II MARY JANE FREIHOFER AGENT(S): STEFANIE BITTER, ESQ. BPSR OWNER(S): MARY JANE FREIHOFER ZONING: WR-1A LOCATION: CLEVERDALE ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 1,003 SQ FT. SINGLE-FAMILY DWELLING. RELIEF REQUESTED FROM MINIMUM FRONT AND SIDE SETBACK REQUIREMENTS AS WELL AS FLOOR AREA RATIO REQUIREMENTS. WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: NOVEMBER 14, 2007 ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY: YES LOT SIZE: 0.17 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 226.12-1-3 SECTION: 179-4-030 MR. ABBATE-And, Mr. Secretary, I also have received correspondence addressed to the th Chairman of the Zoning Board of Appeals, a fax that was passed on, dated the 20 of November 2007, and it says “Dear Chairman Abbate: As you are aware, our firm represents Mary Jane Freihofer with regard to the above mentioned Area Variance that is on the Zoning Board of Appeals November 21, 2007 agenda. At this time, pursuant to the applicant’s request, we are withdrawing the application so that my client can make certain modifications to the proposal. Once the applicant feels that the design represents its final version, we will then reapply for the variances which will be required.” In view of the fact that the applicant has withdrawn the application, there is no further action on our part. AREA VARIANCE NO. 66-2007 SEQRA TYPE: II CINDY & MICHAEL TROMBLEY OWNER(S): CINDY & MICHAEL TROMBLEY ZONING: RR-3A LOCATION: 80 ELLSWORTH LANE APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 1,200 SQ. FT. BUILDING TO BE USED AS A KENNEL (DOGGIE DAY CARE AND GROOMING FACILITY). RELIEF REQUESTED FROM MINIMUM LOT SIZE REQUIREMENT OF 10 ACRES; FOR SUCH A FACILITY. CROSS REF: SUP 54-2007 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: NOVEMBER 14, 2007 ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY: YES LOT SIZE: 6.97 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 265.00-1-16 SECTION: 179-10-060 CINDY & MICHAEL TROMBLEY, PRESENT STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Area Variance No. 66-2007, Cindy & Michael Trombley, Meeting Date: November 21, 2007 “Project Location: 80 Ellsworth Lane Description of Proposed Project: Applicant proposes construction of a 1200 sf Kennel on a parcel less than 10 acres. Relief Required: Applicant requests 3.03 acres of relief from the 10 acre minimum size requirement for such uses per §179-10-060, C. Note: the proposed building location does not appear to meet the minimum 200 setback requirement from the front property line however, there appears to be ample room for compliance. If this setback relief is requested this application will need to be re-noticed. Criteria for considering an Area Variance according to Chapter 267 of Town Law: 1. Benefit to the applicant: Applicant would be permitted to establish the desired use on the property. 2. Feasible alternatives: Feasible alternatives appear to limited to the acquisition of additional land. 3. Is this relief substantial relative to the ordinance?: 4 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) The requests for setback lot size relief may be interpreted as moderate. 4. Effects on the neighborhood or community: A petition of support with signatures from 10 neighboring residents was submitted with this application. 5. Is this difficulty self-created? The difficulty may be interpreted as self created. Parcel History (construction/site plan/variance, etc.): Special Use Permit - Kennel pending Staff comments: As referenced, the applicant has submitted a petition of support with this application. It appears as though the proposed structure could be located at the compliant setback which would increase the setback distance from the road an additional 60 feet. SEQR Status: Type II” MR. UNDERWOOD-“Warren County Planning Board Project Review and Referral Form November 14, 2007 Project Name: Trombley, Cindy & Michael Owner(s): Cindy & Michael Trombley ID Number: QBY-07-AV-66 County Project#: Nov07-29 Current Zoning: RR-3A Community: Queensbury Project Description: Applicant proposes construction of a 1,200 sq. ft. building to be used as a Kennel (Doggie Day Care and Grooming Facility). Relief requested from minimum lot size requirement of 10 acres; for such a facility. Site Location: 80 Ellsworth Lane Tax Map Number(s): 265.00-1-16 Staff Notes: Area Variance: The applicant proposes the construction of a 30 by 40 foot doggie day care building. The applicant’s property size is 6.97 acres where 10 acres of property is required for the existing residential use and the proposed building the information submitted shows the location of the existing home and the proposed building that it meets all the required setbacks of the zone. The applicant has also included a signed letter from immediate area residents indicating there would be minimal effect on the property owners. Staff does not identify an impact on county resources based on the information submitted. Staff recommends no county impact. County Planning Board Recommendation: No County Impact” Signed by Warren County Planning Board Richard C. Merrill 11/16/07. MR. ABBATE-Good evening. Would you be kind enough to speak into the microphone and identify yourself. MRS. TROMBLEY-I’m Cindy Trombley and this is Michael Trombley. MR. ABBATE-Okay. You are obviously not represented by counsel. MRS. TROMBLEY-No. MR. ABBATE-Okay. You understand our procedures? Well, let me explain them to you. It’s very simple. It’s not complicated at all. All we’re asking you to do is, when you’re ready, speak into the microphone, and just explain to the Board why you feel your appeal should be approved. In other words, provide us some type of justification, if you will, in the form of either testimony or documentary evidence or testimonial evidence or photographic evidence, whatever the case might be, and any time during this hearing that you don’t understand something, all you have to do is raise your hand, stop us and ask. We’ll be more than happy to explain it to you, and any time during this hearing if you perhaps suddenly realize that there may be some information that will help support your case, stop us and ask to present that information and we’ll certainly allow you to do that. Mr. and Mrs. Trombley, my original comment to you, after you introduced yourselves, was to bring to your attention that you do not have standing before this Board. None of the members on this Board have what’s referred to as a letter of denial from the Zoning Administrator. However, I just talked to the Zoning Administrator and he indicates to me that there is, in fact, a letter in the file, although no one on the Zoning Board of Appeals has a copy, and while he’s searching for that, without a denial letter, you have no standing before this Board. 5 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. BROWN-Yes. It should be in the form of an e-mail. We corresponded several times by e-mail. MR. ABBATE-We don’t have it in our records. MR. BROWN-Well, I’m sure that I asked Sue to put it in the file. MR. UNDERWOOD-Yes, I’ve got them in here. This is the whole page on here. MR. BROWN-It could be a bunch of responses back and forth, yes. MR. ABBATE-Why don’t we have it in our package? MR. BROWN-I don’t know. MR. ABBATE-Okay. MR. UNDERWOOD-Okay. There’s several e-mails that were sent here. One of them says the rule is a minimum lot requirement for such a use. You may file an Area Variance application with our Zoning Board of Appeals, if you cannot meet the minimum size requirement. If successful, then you would proceed with your Special Use Permit with the Planning Board. If not, your application cannot move forward. So he did. MR. ABBATE-Yes, and I accept that, and I certainly don’t want to point fingers, but I’m disappointed that members of this Board did not have the entire case. MR. BRYANT-Mr. Chairman, a point, please. I don’t know that that’s a legitimate document. I mean, it’s not signed by the Zoning Administrator. MR. UNDERWOOD-Well, it is, and it’s a file copy and it’s date stamped. MR. ABBATE-We can go into a long dissertation of an interpretation of demonstrative evidence, if you want me to, Mr. Bryant, in the CPL, but quite frankly, I’m disappointed that we don’t have it, but, nonetheless, we do have, in evidence, correspondence from the Zoning Administrator that appears to me to be a denial letter. However, if any members of the Board wanted to challenge that, I’m willing to listen to you. MR. BRYANT-I’d like to see it, please. MR. ABBATE-Certainly you may see it. MR. BROWN-If anybody wants to ask about the authenticity, feel free to ask me. I’m right here. I’ll tell you that it’s authentic. I wrote it. MR. ABBATE-And for the record, it is my interpretation that the correspondence read by the secretary does meet the definition of demonstrative evidence in accordance with the CPL. So, we will continue. Now, what I’d like you to do is to take your time and explain to us why you feel we should approve your appeal, and be sure, do me a favor, and speak into the microphone, please. MRS. TROMBLEY-I feel that you should approve the appeal because that area is zoned for kenneling. My project is actually for a daycare, playground, grooming facility, not where there’s going to be animals, inside/outside kennel runs, things like that. So it’s not a full fledged kennel. I mean, I guess it has to fall under the kennel classification because there’s no other classification for it. We do, the setback, I guess, from the road, we can move that back. There’s plenty of room for that. We have, I think from the back line there’s 325 feet from the other property line behind us. So we’ve got plenty of room to move to meet that. So we meet all of the setbacks that are required, or we can meet all the setbacks that are required. We’re just lacking the lot size. I mean, I went to the neighbors. There was one neighbor below that I went to, but nobody came to the door, before I submitted my paperwork, so that one neighbor’s not on there, but all other neighbors didn’t have a problem with it. I’m a very loving animal lover. This is something that’s in my heart to do. I really look forward to something like this. I hope that you will see that this is something that will offer the community a nice service. MR. ABBATE-Okay, and we’re going to continue on, and remember what I said. If there’s anything else during the course of this hearing that you feel would help support your case, just stop us an introduce it. It’s not a problem. All right. We’ve heard what 6 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) the appellant had to say. Board members, do you have any questions for the appellant? Mr. Bryant, please. MR. BRYANT-Comments on the Staff Notes relative to the placement of the building and the setback. I mean, are you able to place the building in a compliant location? MRS. TROMBLEY-Yes, we can move that back the feet that we need to. MR. BRYANT-Okay. That’s what your intention is? MRS. TROMBLEY-Yes. MR. BRYANT-Okay. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-You’re welcome. MRS. TROMBLEY-It must be I overlooked that with the frontage, the road frontage setback. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Do we have any other, Mr. McNulty, please? MR. MC NULTY-Yes. I’m wondering a little bit about traffic on the road. How many clients do you expect that would be in and out? Obviously it’s going to be two trips, one in and one out every day. MRS. TROMBLEY-I would say during the week I’m looking to do 12 to 15 dogs for daycare. So that would be 12 to 15 cars in and out, morning and evening. The grooming facility will be, there’ll be a full service and a self-service facility. So I’m thinking the week day it wouldn’t be obviously as active as the weekend would be for the self-service facility. MR. MC NULTY-Okay. MR. ABBATE-Other members of the Board? Mrs. Hunt, please? MRS. HUNT-I thought I heard something about a Use Variance in the e-mail. MR. UNDERWOOD-That’s for the Planning, the Planning Board. MRS. HUNT-I thought the kenneling covered the, this grooming facility, no? MR. ABBATE-Unfortunately, Joyce, it’s no. MRS. HUNT-I just wondered. MR. ABBATE-All right. Do we have any other members of the Board that have any questions? Okay. Well, then, we’ll move on, then. I’m going to open up the public hearing on Area Variance No. 66-2007, and what we will do now, folks, is this. I’m going to ask the public if they would like to comment, and if they do, I will recognize them. All right. Now, do we have any members of the public this evening who would like to address Area Variance No. 66-2007? Would you be kind enough to raise your hands, please. Yes, sir. All right. Would you be kind enough to come to the table, speak into the microphone, and identify yourself, please. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED ANDY DOBROWKSI MR. DOBROWSKI-Andy Dobrowski. I live on Bay Road, just down on the other side of Ellsworth Lane. I was just wondering about the hours of operation and the noise from the dogs during the day. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Anything else? MR. DOBROWSKI-No, that’s mainly it. MR. ABBATE-Okay. I will see that that question is addressed. MR. DOBROWSKI-Okay. 7 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-Do we have anybody else in the audience this evening who would like to address Area Variance No. 66-2007? None? Okay. Mr. and Mrs. Trombley, would you be kind enough to answer the gentleman’s question concerning the hours of operation and the possible noise? MRS. TROMBLEY-Sure. The hours of operation that I’m looking at is seven to six, Monday through Friday, and the daycare obviously wouldn’t be on the weekends. It would just be the grooming. As far as the noise, I mean, the play area, it’s an inside facility. There is an outdoor fenced in area, too. So the dogs will be outside at times, but, I mean, I don’t foresee any real problem with the noise. I mean, there’s dogs up there already that make some noise, and down the road a little ways, but I don’t foresee a problem, and I would be willing to listen, you know, after, if this is approved and goes through and whatnot, if there’s any issues, I’m always, I would always be available to hear the concerns of any area neighbors. MR. ABBATE-Okay. That sounds good, and for the second time, I’m going to ask are there any other members in the public who would like to address Area Variance No. 66- 2007? Okay. MR. UNDERWOOD-We do have a letter. I’ll read that in. MR. ABBATE-Yes. Would you please, Mr. Secretary, read that into the record. MR. UNDERWOOD-This is dated August 24, 2007. “We, the immediate area residents, understand the Trombley’s are looking to erect a small building on the property located at 80 Ellsworth Lane which will offer grooming, doggie daycare service and a fenced in doggie playground which is zoned for such use. We understand the building will be located more than 300 feet away from the closest house on any and all boundaries in a wooded area directly located on Ellsworth Lane. We understand and are okay with the proposal and feel it would have minimal affect on us as property owners in the immediate area:”, and that’s signed by 24, I guess, total. MR. ABBATE-So, in effect, you have 24 supporters. MR. UNDERWOOD-Twenty, I’m sorry. MR. ABBATE-Twenty. A total of twenty. Okay. Well, that would have helped out initially if you had mentioned that, but since you didn’t, the secretary was kind enough to read it into the read it into the record. So, anything else you’d like to say at this time? MRS. TROMBLEY-I don’t believe so. MR. ABBATE-Okay. I’m going to ask members now to offer their comments, and I’d like to inform the public that the comments offered by members are directed to the Chairman, and comments expressed by the Board members to the Chairman will not be open to debate, and may I respectfully remind the members that precedence mandates we concern ourselves with evidence which appears on the record to support our conclusions, and the evidence relied upon should be specifically stated. Additionally, any position you may take must be based on the regulatory review criteria of our laws and not simply on subjective preferences or not liking a project, and Board members are obligated to make decisions on reliable evidence contained in the record of Board deliberations. I will now ask members to please offer their comments. Do we have any volunteers? Mr. Bryant, please, sir. MR. BRYANT-Thank you, Mr. Chairman. MR. ABBATE-You’re welcome. MR. BRYANT-First off, I disagree with your position on the e-mail, simply because signature can be contrived, and in my view it’s not a forma determination, but, that being said, this is a reasonable project. The neighbors are in favor of it. It sounds like a good project. I’ll be in favor of it as long as Mrs. Trombley would take every precaution necessary to make sure that the building meets all setback requirements. MR. ABBATE-Thank you. Well, I’ve been Chairman for two and a half years, and I never thought I would be supporting the Zoning Administrator this evening, but I am convinced that the correspondence submitted to you from the Zoning Administrator meets what’s called demonstrative evidence which is found in the Criminal Procedure Law. So I do 8 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) support. So I do support the Zoning Administrator’s correspondence and that it is, in fact, a denial letter. MR. BROWN-I’d be happy to sign it for you right now if you’d like. MR. ABBATE-Do we have any other members of the Board who would like to address? MR. URRICO-I’ll go. MR. ABBATE-Mr. Urrico. MR. URRICO-I’m in agreement with Mr. Bryant. I believe the applicant has proved the benefit to them. I don’t believe there are any feasible alternatives considering this is being located in a part of the property that will be the least problem for any of the neighbors. The relief is substantial relative to the Ordinance. It’s about 30%, and the effects to the neighborhood or community seem to be limited to the morning and evening hours, and I believe that’s manageable, and I think the difficulty has been self-created, but I would still be in favor of it. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you very much. Another volunteer, or do you just want to go down the line? Mrs. Hunt, please. MRS. HUNT-I have to agree with the previous Board members. Though it’s shy 3.3 acres, according to the plans here, the building is surrounded by wooded areas, and I don’t think it would be a problem. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you very much, Mrs. Hunt. Rick, would you like to go next, please. MR. GARRAND-Certainly. This is a large parcel of property in a very rural area. It’s not a high density area. I don’t see that this doggie day care changing the character of the neighborhood in any way, shape or form. So I’d also be in favor of this proposal. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Fine. Mr. McNulty, please. MR. MC NULTY-Yes. The question that’s actually before us is whether we should allow a facility like this on seven acres, roughly, rather than ten, and I can’t see that the difference of three acres in this particular case is going to make a great deal of difference. I am a little concerned about character of the neighborhood, in terms of additional traffic on that road, but that road doesn’t have much traffic now. So hopefully the additional in and out won’t be so much that it gives people a problem, but, having said that, I think the balance falls in favor of the applicant. So I’d be in favor. MR. ABBATE-All right. Thank you, sir. Jim Underwood, please. MR. UNDERWOOD-Yes. I don’t have any problem with it, either. I think the only thing we need to be careful is that I think the neighbors have requested that it not, you know, change into a full fledged kennel, and I think that would trigger, probably a response from the neighborhood if you had dogs there 24/7. MR. ABBATE-What we could do, Mr. Underwood, is use that, if, in fact, there is an approval, use that as a stipulation if you wish, if it makes the Board more comfortable. MR. URRICO-Well, you know, I think that they’ve implied, but, you know, like people could, they could decide to move south and somebody might want to buy the business and then change the nature of the business at some point in the future, but I think as long as we’re clear that this is for a doggie daycare, and it’s not going to be a weekend, you know, noisy thing, which might upset some of the neighbors who are nearby, but, other than that, I don’t have a problem with it. I think the 10 acre thing is such that a true, full-fledged kennel is going to need more area and need to be separate away from residential areas, but this doesn’t seem to trigger that in my mind, that it’s going to be a negative. MR. ABBATE-All right. Thank you very much. I would concur with the majority of, with all of the members of the Board, as a matter of fact. I think it’s a well-thought out plan, and I don’t find it to be unreasonable, and I, too, will support your appeal. Having said that, now, I will close the public hearing for Area Variance No. 66-2007. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED 9 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-And I’m going to respectfully remind the members that we have the task of balancing the benefit of the variance against the impact on the area. While State law sets forth five factors to take into consideration, again, unlike a Use Variance test, this Board need not find in favor of the applicant on every one of the five factors. Rather we must merely take each one into account in deciding whether to grant an Area Variance. I would request, now, a motion for Area Variance No. 66-2007, and also request that you please introduce you motion with clarity. Do we have a volunteer? MR. MC NULTY-Okay. MOTION TO APPROVE AREA VARIANCE NO. 66-2007 CINDY & MICHAEL TROMBLEY, Introduced by Charles McNulty who moved for its adoption, seconded by Joyce Hunt: 80 Ellsworth Lane. The applicant’s proposing construction of a 1200 square foot kennel on a parcel less than 10 acres, and the applicant’s requesting 3.03 acres of relief from the 10 acre minimum size requirement per such uses per Section 179-10-60 C, and I would note that the applicant has specified or stipulated that they will site the facility in such a manner that it will meet the 200 foot setback from the front property line. Benefit to the applicant in this case would be that the applicant would be able to establish the desired use on the property, which is somewhat smaller than what zoning allows. Feasible alternatives, they’re basically limited, probably, to finding another location, since the piece of property is less than 10 acres. Is the relief substantial relative to the Ordinance? Given that the applicant is proposing a day use rather than a 24 hour kennel, I would say that the relief is relatively minor in this particular case. Effects on the neighborhood or community? The neighbors have indicated approval of this application, and I think the only possible effect might be additional traffic on the road, but that should not be sufficient to create a problem. A question of whether it’s self-created. The difficulty, I guess, can be interpreted as self-created since it’s something that the applicant wishes to do, but is not compelled to. I think it would like to add the stipulation in the motion that this will be a day use operation and not be a round the clock kennel, thinking in terms of you sell it sometime and somebody else changes their mind. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. McNulty, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Urrico, Mr. Abbate NOES: NONE MR. ABBATE-The vote for Area Variance No. 66-2007 is seven yes, zero no. Area Variance No. 66-2007 is approved. Good luck to the both of you, and have a Happy Thanksgiving. MRS. TROMBLEY-Thank you. You, too. AREA VARIANCE NO. 67-2007 SEQRA TYPE: II ROBERT MC DONALD AGENT(S): VAN DUSEN & STEVES OWNER(S): ROBERT MC DONALD ZONING: SR-1A LOCATION: 593 CORINTH ROAD APPLICANT HAS A 4-LOT RESIDENTIAL SUBDIVISION AND SEEKS INDIVIDUAL DRIVEWAYS FOR EACH LOT. RELIEF REQUESTED FROM MINIMUM LOT WIDTH REQUIREMENTS. CROSS REF.: SUBDIVISION NO. 16-2006 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: NOVEMBER 14, 2007 LOT SIZE: 1.03 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 308.18-2-19 SECTION: 179-19-020C MR. ABBATE-Mr. Secretary, I have received a copy of correspondence in regards to Area Variance No. 67-2007, Robert McDonald. Mr. McDonald has requested a tabling for a more appropriate date. I do believe that we can make a motion this evening to th table it for the 19 of December 2007. MOTION TO TABLE AREA VARIANCE NO. 67-2007 ROBERT MC DONALD, Introduced by Charles Abbate who moved for its adoption, seconded by Joyce Hunt: 593 Corinth Road. Tabled to 19 December 2007 ZBA hearing date. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: AYES: Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. McNulty, Mr. Urrico, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Abbate 10 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) NOES: NONE MR. ABBATE-In a vote of seven yes, zero no, Area Variance No. 67-2007 is tabled to 19 December 2007. NOTICE OF APPEAL NO. 7-2007 SEQRA TYPE: N/A GF HEATING AND AIR CONDITIONING AGENT(S): JONATHAN C. LAPPER, ESQ. BPSR OWNER(S): BRIAN NELSON ZONING: SR-20 LOCATION: 475 CORINTH ROAD APPELLANT IS APPEALING A SEPTEMBER 7, 2007 DETERMINATION FROM THE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR RELATIVE TO THE PERMITABILITY OF AN OFFICE USE IN A SR- 20 ZONE. CROSS REF.: BP 2007-521 BLUE FLAME GAS CO. C/O ONLY WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: N/A LOT SIZE: N/A TAX MAP NO. 308.19-1-65 AND 66 SECTION: 179-5-050; 179-13-010 JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT STAFF INPUT Notes from Notice of Appeal No. 7-2007, Notice of Appeal No. 7-2007, GF Heating and Air Conditioning, Meeting Date: November 21, 2007 “Project Location: 475 Corinth Road Description of Proposed Project: Appellant is appealing to the Zoning Board of Appeals relative to a September 7, 2007 decision made by the Zoning Administrator regarding the necessity of a Use Variance for the proposed additional use at the facility. Staff comments: The issue at debate here is whether or not the proposed additional use requires a Use Variance. While both the appellant and the Zoning Administrator agree that the existing Glens Falls Heating and Air Conditioning was established while the applicable zoning allowed for such a use, apparently, the appellants’ argument offers that the proposed additional use; Blue Flame Gas Company, Inc. doesn’t constitute an additional use on the property and that it should be considered as a “change in ownership” and not be subject to a use variance. Is a change in ownership planned? Is a transfer of the property title from GF Heating to Blue Flame Gas Co. part of the proposal? Does the proposal include the continued operation and ownership of GF Heating, in addition to the operation of Blue Flame? It is the position of the Zoning Administrator that the proposed use, Blue Flame Gas, constitutes a new, additional use to the property and as such, a Use Variance is required as such a use is not listed as an allowable use within the Suburban Residential, (SR-20) zoning district. Changes in use are allowable per the applicable zoning district use listings. However, this proposal does not offer a change of one allowable use for another allowable use. Rather, the specifics here include a use not listed as allowable seeking to establish in conjunction with a pre-existing non-conforming use under the current zoning ordinance.” MR. ABBATE-Good evening, Counselor. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. MR. ABBATE-Would you be kind enough to speak into the microphone, please, and identify yourself. MR. LAPPER-For the record, Jon Lapper, project attorney, with Brian Nelson, the applicant. To start with, if I may, read in the minutes and the tabling resolution that there was some controversy when we tabled this last month, and I’d like to just briefly explain before we get started. For a number of months, there’s been more of an adversarial relationship with the Planning Staff and some of the applicants than I’m used to in the 22 years that I’ve been appearing before Boards in this Town, and I knew that particularly, not as it relates to this application, of course, because this is the case of first impression, but as it related to the other application that we had pending that night for Irish Bay, that the night that we had the variance approved in September, I believe, there was a determination from the Zoning Administrator that night and a new letter first thing the next morning, that a new variance or two were required, and I knew that the Chairman was particularly taken aback by that that night, and I felt that it was important that it be 11 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) kept in context. So, knowing that the Chairman was going to be out that night, I thought it was important to the applicant primarily in that case that the Chairman was here because he understood all the background of the Irish Bay matter. So I tabled both of these matters, and I certainly didn’t, it wasn’t because I felt that the alternates certainly weren’t qualified, and that’s really just things had gotten more adversarial than I’m used to in Queensbury, and it’s my hope, now that things have settled down a little bit and I think it’s going to get better, but Irish Bay was something that really set us off. MR. BRYANT-Excuse me, Mr. Chairman, if we’re going to hear this, I find it necessary to recuse myself. MR. ABBATE-Yes, please. Mr. Clements, would you be kind enough to come to the table? Do you feel that you’ve done enough research to make an intelligent decision? Please join us. Counselor, am I assuming that we will be hearing this case this evening? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. UNDERWOOD-I’ll read that letter in that was sent in. MR. ABBATE-Please. MR. UNDERWOOD-“Dear Chairman Abbate: On behalf of Brian Nelson, the owner of the above referenced property, we are hereby submitting an appeal of the determination of the Zoning Administrator which was contained in a letter dated September 7, 2007 to Mike Eugair of Blue Flame Gas Company, Inc. A copy of that letter is hereby attached. As evident from the determination of the Zoning Administrator, the proposed office use has been determined to require a use variance. However, the area within the building that will be leased to the new office tenant is currently being used as office space for an almost identical use by GF Heating and Air Conditioning. There is no expansion of the current use being proposed. The applicable section of the Town Code is Section 179- 13-010 entitled “Continuation” subject to the provisions of this Article, “a non-conforming structure or use or a structure containing a non-conforming use may be continued and maintained in reasonable repair, but may not be enlarged or extended as of the date of this Chapter becomes law….” In fact, Mr. Brown correctly cites this section when he states in his letter “As the existing GF Heating Business was approved prior to the adoption of the current zoning code, that use may be maintained but not expanded without a use variance” However, all that is being requested in this instance is a change in tenancy to the area of the building where GF Heating and Air Conditioning maintained an office. It has been held that a change in ownership of a nonconforming business or structure does not affect the right to continue the use, as zoning deals with land use and th not land ownership. New York Zoning Law and Practice, Salkin, Patricia, 4 Edition, Section 10:25 page 10-52, See Also Application of Furman Ave. Realty Corp. 275 AD 779 (2d Dep’t 1949) Order aff’d 299 NY 768 (1949). Due to the fact that the Appellant is not requesting an expansion of the use, the continuation of the use should be held valid. By a copy of this letter to the Zoning Administrator I hereby request that he reconsider his determination so that this appeal will not be necessary. We take no pleasure in having to continuously appeal the Zoning Administrator’s determinations. If the determination is not reversed by the Zoning Administrator, please place this matter on the agenda for one of your October ZBA meetings. Very truly yours, Jonathan C. Lapper, Esq. MR. ABBATE-And for the benefit of the public, you will find that an appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision is quite different than, the procedures are quite different than an Area Variance and a Use Variance. For Board members, the jurisdiction of the Zoning Board of Appeals to construe the Ordinance includes the power to determine the application of the Ordinance to a specific property, and the Zoning Board of Appeals has jurisdiction to interpret the Zoning Regulations upon an appeal from the issuance of a permit by the Zoning Administrator and as such interpretation by the Zoning Board of Appeals will not be disturbed, absent of showing that it is irrational or unreasonable. The Zoning Board of Appeals jurisdiction to review the zoning decisions of the Zoning Administrator is exclusive. It cannot be exercised by any other administrative officers or by the legislative authority of the municipality. The ZBA may, after appropriate notice and hearing, reverse, affirm, wholly or partly, or may modify the order, requirement, decision of determination appeal from, as in the ZBA’s opinion ought to have been made. Counselor, would you like to make an opening statement? MR. LAPPER-Yes, thank you. I’m looking at what Jim just read, it is the position of the Zoning Administrator that the proposed use constitutes a new additional use to the property and as such a Use Variance is required as such a use is not listed in the 12 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) allowable use within the Suburban Residential Zoning District. At the time that Brian bought the property, in 2001, it was zoned Light Industrial, and he came to the Planning Board and got approval for his business to move there, and so what’s happened up until, since then, until now, is that he has used the office space for Glens Falls Heating and Air Conditioning, and the only thing that we’re proposing is that he is going to use less of the office space for his business and rent out the office that he doesn’t need for his business to another office user. So, in terms of the Section that I quoted in the appeal, the Continuation, Non-conforming Structure or Non-Conforming Use, in this case, may be continued and maintained but may not be enlarged or extended. There’s nothing that’s happening to the building. It’s office use to office use, but in this case, and this is because of the nature of this tenant, it’s an office use that also has to do with the same heating oil business that is part of Brian’s business as well, but there’s nothing, in terms of the building is there. The office space is there. He’s going to use less of it, and the two people from this new tenant are going to use some of the space that he was previously using. So, to my mind, that fits clearly within the Continuation of a Non- conforming use section of the Code, and it just confused me why the Zoning Administrator made such a big deal. It just seems very evident to me, but I have a case rd that I’m going to submit, which is really right on point, Appellate Division 3 Dept. So for this Department, and a matter that dealt with medical offices and that came out the same thing, that it’s prior non-conforming use, and you can use it for an office, just in this case as precedent for you to rely on. So let me just submit that to you. MR. ABBATE-What’s the citation on that? Do you have copies of that for all of us? nd MR. LAPPER-I do. It is 94 Appellate Division 2, 874. MR. ABBATE-Okay, and you have those available to us this evening. While the Board members are looking at that, Counsel, let me ask you a question. Did I hear you correctly when you said that it is a non-conforming use. However, there will be no further expansion of that non-conforming use? MR. LAPPER-That’s correct. MR. ABBATE-Okay. MR. LAPPER-The building is exactly the same. It’s just Brian will use less for his business and lease out this other space. When we talked about, in the application, that zoning doesn’t affect ownership in this case, and I think that may have confused the Zoning Administrator. We’re not suggesting that it’s going to be sold. It’s not ownership in terms of who’s going to own title, but ownership in terms of one of the rights of ownership is use, is a lease. So it’s not that Brian is selling the building. He’s keeping his business there. He’s just not using all the space, and he’s going to lease out a portion of this to Blue Flame Gas. MR. UNDERWOOD-What’s the anticipation for the number of people that would be employed in the Blue Flame? MR. LAPPER-Two people in the office. MR. UNDERWOOD-So they’re working there and heading out to do field stuff? MR. LAPPER-They have, Brian can talk about this, but there are other people that do field stuff from another office, from where they have a base now. Do you want to just explain that? BRIAN NELSON MR. NELSON-As of right now, the arrangement is that they already deliver to the area from two locations, one in Hoosick, one in Gloversville. They just needed an office location, and we, in turn, were going to pick up the service work for them, and do troubleshooting calls and things like that for them. So they basically will have a salesman and an office girl. MR. URRICO-Will that be full-time use, or are they going to be there periodically? MR. NELSON-I would anticipate that the office girl would be there eight to four, and the salesman is kind of like my salesman. He’s on the road most days. 13 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-Counselor, what I would like you to do, just for my own edification here, is you handed us a number of cases. Give me a capsule. I know this is an affirmative defense on your part, but, nonetheless, please do it. MR. LAPPER-No, actually I have a short memo that summarizes the case, which I’ll also hand to you. A continuation of a use is deemed to exist where the use is quote substantially the same, close quote, as that which previously existed, and where the, quote essential character, close quote, of the use has not been changed, and that quotes the case that I handed you, Abude vs. Wallace, and the cases that are cited in that case, for example, a continuation is found where the use of a clubhouse by a veterans organization was changed to use by a youth organization, where a convalescent home and school for cardiac children was changed to a school for mentally retarded children, where the form of entertainment offered at a bar was changed from a rock band to dancing girls. So I will hand you this memo as well, which just summarizes that case. MR. UNDERWOOD-Can I just ask Craig a question? MR. ABBATE-By all means. MR. UNDERWOOD-I know in the case of other operations in Town, like I know Northern Mechanical they’ve spun off and they’ve got like two or three different things out of their building. They’ve got Ben Franklin, and they’ve got, I can’t remember the name of the other one, but those are legal uses for that zone. It’s a Light Industrial zone there, but in other words, when a business expands, you know, by sort of like morphing into something different, is that really considered an expansion of your thing, or is it just simply, I mean, as long as it’s related to what you’re doing. Plumbing and heating essentially is what it is. MR. BROWN-To answer your question, yes, I think it is. What we’re talking about here is a separate business, separate ownership, separate Federal ID numbers. They get their own separate Certificate of Occupancy. They’re listed as a separate business. They’re going to be entitled to their own sign if they want it. So my position is, when you add a use to a property, that use has to conform with the current zoning, the existing zoning. I haven’t seen the case law that you were handed tonight, or the summary, but based on the briefing that Mr. Lapper just provided you, you know, I find myself in agreement with what he said because what he said was something that previously existed, or something that changed from something to another. What we’re talking about here isn’t a previous existing. It’s a not a change to. It’s an addition to. It’s a second use on the property, rather than a swap out of Glens Falls Heating for Blue Flame. I have no problem. I think that would be something that would work. What we’re talking about here is a second use on the property. That, in my mind, constitutes an expansion, and the use that they want to add, Blue Flame, is not listed as an allowable use. MR. UNDERWOOD-Is there any rationale, though? In other words, in this instance here, because it’s a previous pre-existing, it’s now a nonconforming use, that once was conforming there in this instance, is there any sense that the amount of additional business generated here is going to be a negative on that neighborhood down there? MR. BROWN-Well, unfortunately there’s no threshold, there’s no measuring stick to use for that. Either the use fits in the zone or the use doesn’t fit in the zone. If it doesn’t fit, the mechanism to get relief is to appear before this Board with a Use Variance application. So, is there a way to do it? Absolutely. It’s a Use Variance, though. MR. LAPPER-Can I respond to that? MR. ABBATE-Well, before you respond to that, I asked you, initially, if you would like to make an opening statement, and I would like to offer the Zoning Administrator an opportunity to do that as well, if he wishes. MR. BROWN-Whatever I just said, that’s my opening statement. MR. ABBATE-Is your opening statement. All right, then, Counselor, proceed. MR. LAPPER-Where Craig and I disagree is this, that what is grandfathered, if you will, what is the prior nonconforming, is the use of that office space, that if Brian doesn’t use it, he has the right to continue to use that as an office space, and if it’s not going to be him using it, somebody else can use it. So we’re not, we’re talking about use. We’re not talking about whether there’s a separate Tax ID. We’re talking about a physical space that is currently used as an office, that’s grandfathered because he bought it, it was in a 14 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) Light Industrial. He got Site Plan approval to do what he was doing there, or he got a building permit to do what he was doing there, and he wants to continue doing what he was doing. That’s the Continuation Section, that that physical space is allowed to be used for the same use, and it is going to be for the same use. So if he’s not using it, somebody else can use it. MR. ABBATE-That office space currently is now being used for, was included in a nonconforming operation? MR. LAPPER-In a conforming operation at the time that it was started, and it became nonconforming when the Zoning Code was changed. MR. ABBATE-All right. So it’s somewhat grandfathered in, if you will. MR. LAPPER-So it’s grandfathered in, and if he’s not going to use it, I mean, he purchased it under the allowable uses at the time, and as long as he continues it, he’s allowed to use it. MR. ABBATE-Well, that’s not so much different than when we grant a Use Variance. A Use Variance is granted to the land, not to the ownership of the land. MR. LAPPER-A grandfather is very, very similar to a Use Variance, when you have a prior nonconforming use. It’s very similar to a Use Variance. It runs with the land. If he was planning on, you know, if he wanted to add another room or something or bang out a wall and expand it, then I would agree with Craig, that would be an expansion, and that would require coming to this Board for a variance, but here it’s the same physical space, it’s just that if he’s not going to use it, he has a right, as long as that use is close enough, and in this case it’s extremely close. It’s the same business. MR. ABBATE-All right. Let me continue on, folks. You’ll have ample opportunities to challenge either Counsel or the Zoning Administrator. I want to open up the public hearing, and to meet the obligations of Public Officers Law Sec: 3 for a fair and open process the public hearing is open for Appeal No. 7-2007. In the interest of time, I ask the public to please be crisp, organized, and limit your comments to only the facts and information given this evening. Would those wishing to be heard, please approach the table, speak into the microphone, and identify yourself. You will be limited to five minutes. Do we have anyone in the audience who would like to address the Appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision No. 7-2007? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MR. ABBATE-I see no hands. So we will continue. The public hearing is now closed. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. ABBATE-We’ve now reached a point in our hearing of the Zoning Administrator’s decision in which I solicit the comments of Board members. I’d like to inform the public, again, that comments that are going to be offered by members of this Board are going to be directed to the Chairman and such comments will not be open to debate, and before I ask members to comment, may I respectfully ask that you bear in mind that the Supreme Court has stated, quote, a ZBA member must make findings that are more than conclusary in character, and that the findings of a Board must be supported by substantial evidence contained in the record, or the courts will find that position to be arbitrary and capricious, end quote. In effect, precedence mandates that we concern ourselves with only the evidence which appears on the record to support our conclusions. Additionally, any position you may take must be based on the regulatory review criteria of our laws and not simply on a subjective preference of not liking a project. I will now ask members to offer their comments on Appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision No. 7-2007. MRS. HUNT-Mr. Chairman, I have a question. MR. ABBATE-By all means. MRS. HUNT-Mr. Nelson, now how many people did you have working there at one time? MR. NELSON-I employ generally between 12 and 18 people depending on the season. In the office space, I have two office girls, in the office now. Everybody else works out on jobs. 15 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MRS. HUNT-So you’re saying that the increase would be, there’d be an increase now with this other use, with the Blue Flame? MR. NELSON-Well, depending on the season, we would have, from our office, you know, we would have somewhere between 12 and 18 people, if I’m understanding your question correctly. They would have an office person and a salesman who may or may not be there, you know, generally speaking he would be out on the road, kind of like my installers and service people. MRS. HUNT-I’m just commenting, because this memorandum that you gave us, Mr. Lapper, said that in one case where there was no increase in occupancy or clientele. MR. LAPPER-And in this case, I think they’re talking about substantiality there, and here, Brian has had between three, four, five people in the office at various times in the two offices, and now he’s cutting back and the people next door are going to have one permanent person. So I don’t think that’s substantially different at all than what he’s doing. MR. URRICO-Can I ask you to define what their office use is going to be? Is it going to be, are they going to be limited to a desk, are they going to have a partition, a separate office? Are there people that come to Blue Flame’s office to drop things off? What’s going to happen? And then also in terms of a sign, are you going to designate a special sign for them? Is it going to be an addition to the sign you already have or another sign? MR. NELSON-To answer your question, the way it was set up is it’s already a separate office. With our business it would be kind of like their businesses. Very few people come to our office during the day. Most of what we do is people pay fuel bills with credit cards over the phone. We may have three to five people a day that show up to pay a bill or something like that. I couldn’t imagine that they would have anymore than that doing the same thing. That’s basically all they’re doing. As far as a sign, I would assume they would want a sign and would apply for a sign. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Do we have any other questions from Board members? Okay. We have no other questions from Board members. It’s time, then, that we’ve reached a point where I’m going to ask for a motion, but I wish to advise, again, respectfully remind the Board members, that we are restricted to only two options. Option One, either to support the appellant’s challenge to the Zoning Administrator, or, Option Two, to uphold the Zoning Administrator’s decision. Having said that, is there a motion to address Appeal No. 7-2007? MR. UNDERWOOD-Do you want to poll people first? Is that what we’re doing, or are we just going to vote? MR. ABBATE-Well, is it your desire that I poll, or would you like to go on? I’d be more than happy to poll, if you wish. MR. UNDERWOOD-Just to know where we’re going. MR. ABBATE-Let me poll the Board, then. Let me start right down at the end. Well, we’ll start with Mr. Urrico. MR. URRICO-At this point, I would be in favor of the applicant’s appeal. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Mrs. Hunt, please. MRS. HUNT-I agree with Mr. Urrico. MR. ABBATE-Okay, and Mr. Underwood, please. MR. UNDERWOOD-I think that the Zoning Administrator has made a strict determination here, and in this instance here, I think that in this instance here, the change, the slight change in the use in the office would be inconsequential, and I think, you know, we could go out and make these guys jump through hoops and come in and get a Use Variance for a different use, but it doesn’t seem to me, realistically, that that use is that great a change or is going to change the neighborhood negatively. So, in general, I think I would just go with the applicants’ appeal. MR. ABBATE-And Mr. Clements, please. 16 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. CLEMENTS-I would have to agree with Mr. Underwood, and I would be in favor of the appellant also. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you, and, Rick, please. MR. GARRAND-Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My interpretation of this is it’s a continuation of a nonconforming use with no quality of change in terms of size or density for this structure. So I’d be in favor of the applicant. MR. ABBATE-Okay, and, Mr. McNulty, please. MR. MC NULTY-Okay. I don’t want to disappoint Mr. Lapper. It strikes me that the real question here is the definition of expansion. Because as Mr. Lapper says, what’s proposed is not an expansion of square footage, per se. On the other hand, if you look at it, I think, as the Zoning Administrator is looking at it, it is an expansion of the number of businesses, because you’re going from one business to two. On the same basis, you could give up a few more square feet and go to three businesses. So it’s kind of, it leaves me kind of on the fence, but I’m inclined to support the Zoning Administrator and say, yes, it is an additional business. It’s an expansion in that sense. So, I would support the Zoning Administrator. MR. ABBATE-Okay. I guess it’s up to me, then. I’m going to go with the majority of the Board. I’ve listened very closely to what Counsel has said, to what the appellant has said, to what the Zoning Administrator has said, and what each of the Board members has said. I believe the move it, as Mr. Underwood indicated, is inconsequential, quite frankly, and at this time the term inconsequential then moves me over to 51% and to supporting the appellant. Having said that, then, I’m going to ask for a motion, and please remember that we are restricted to only two options, to support the appellant’s challenge to the Zoning Administrator or to uphold the Zoning Administrator’s decision. Do I have a motion? MR. GARRAND-Mr. Chairman, I’ll make a motion. MR. ABBATE-Yes, sir. MOTION TO SUPPORT THE APPELLANT’S CHALLENGE TO THE ZONING ADMINISTRATOR’S DECISION, Introduced by Richard Garrand who moved for its adoption, seconded by Brian Clements: 475 Corinth Road. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Clements, Mr. Urrico, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Abbate NOES: Mr. McNulty MR. ABBATE-The vote is six yes, one no to support the appellant’s challenge to the Zoning Administrator’s decision. MR. LAPPER-Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you, gentlemen. OLD BUSINESS: AREA VARIANCE NO. 59-2007 SEQRA TYPE: UNLISTED SCHERMERHORN RESIDENTIAL HOLDINGS, L.P. AGENT(S): J. LAPPER, ESQ. BPSR/MILLER & ASSOCIATES/NACE ENGINEERING OWNER(S): SCHERMERHORN RESIDENTIAL HOLDINGS, L.P. ZONING: PO LOCATION: SOUTHEAST CORNER OF GURNEY LANE & WEST. MT. ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 2- STORY OFFICE (85,340 SQ. FT.) OFFICE BUILDING. RELIEF REQUESTED FROM PARKING REQUIREMENTS. CROSS REF.: SITE PLAN NO. 48-2007 WARREN COUNTY PLANNING: SEPTEMBER 12, 2007 LOT SIZE: 0.90 AC.; 16.12 ACRES TAX MAP NO. 288.00-1-63 AND 64 SECTION: 179-4-040 JON LAPPER & TOM NACE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT 17 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Area Variance No. 59-2007, Schermerhorn Residential Holdings, L.P., Meeting Date: November 21, 2007 “Project Location: southeast corner of Gurney Lane & West Mt. Road Description of Proposed Project: Applicant proposes construction of an 85,340 sf two-story office building and associated site improvements. Relief Required: Applicant requests relief from the Parking and Loading Regulations; §179-4-040 for the construction of 537 parking spaces where 285 are allowed. Upon approval by the Planning Board, the allowable number of spaces (285) may be increased by up to 20% for a total of 341 without the need for a variance. This request in for spaces in excess of the allowable “bonus.” Criteria for considering an Area Variance according to Chapter 267 of Town Law: 2. Benefit to the applicant: Applicant would be permitted to construct the desired parking spaces. 3. Feasible alternatives: Feasible alternatives appear to be limited. The parking space requirements are driven by the building square footage. 4. Is this relief substantial relative to the ordinance?: The request for 88% relief above the requirement may be interpreted as substantial relative to the code. 5. Effects on the neighborhood or community: An Archeological Study along with a Traffic Impact Study both prepared for the benefit of the applicant has been submitted with the application. 6. Is this difficulty self-created? The difficulty may be interpreted as self created. Parcel History (construction/site plan/variance, etc.): Site Plan Review 85,340 sf office building -- pending AV 2-2006 92 Townhouse units Withdrawn by applicant Site Plan 72-2005 92 Townhouse units Withdrawn by applicant Pet. for Zone Change 6-2003 approved per TB res 271-2004 SFR-1A to PO 5/17/04 Staff comments: The proposal calls for the use of two parcels for this project. Parcel consolidation will be necessary and should be a condition of approval. Limited information has been submitted with the application regarding the rationale for the excessive parking request. Are all employees on one shift? If not, how many shifts are there? The current submittal references a new, two-story building which replaces the original 1 story plan. This revision results in 57,000 sf less of impermeable surfaces when compared to the original layout. Consideration may be given to a Coordinated SEQR review given the proposed NYS DOT involvement, PB Site Plan Review and the sewer line construction through the Northway ROW. SEQR Status: Type Unlisted” MR. ABBATE-And I see that Counselor and Mr. Schermerhorn and consultant are at the table. Would you folks be kind enough to speak into the microphone and identify yourselves, please. 18 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. LAPPER-For the record, Jon Lapper, project attorney, with Rich Schermerhorn, on behalf of the applicant, Tom Nace, the project engineer, and we also have Ken Wersted, from Creighton Manning Traffic Engineering, who will address traffic issues. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you. Before we begin, Counselor, I have received correspondence from Mr. Richard Linke, dated October 20, 2007, addressing 21 items regarding his concern with the appeal before us, and the law is clear that the appellant must be given an ample opportunity to assimilate, address, and/or refute the comments of opposition or concerns contained in Mr. Linke’s correspondence. Counsel, have you been furnished a copy of Mr. Linke’s correspondence? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. ABBATE-You have been. Okay. That’s fine. In view of the length of the correspondence, it would be prudent, in my opinion, to acknowledge receipt, and during the public hearing ask Mr. Linke if he would be kind enough to address his concerns on the record, rather than having the secretary read it into the record. MR. UNDERWOOD-I think we’re probably going to have to read it in, you know, and address those individual comments. MR. ABBATE-Would you like to read it in? MR. UNDERWOOD-Yes, eventually. Not yet. MR. ABBATE-All right. Eventually we will read it into the record. Additionally, I wish to th take note on record that on Monday the 19 of November 2007, an original appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision, dated 1 November 2007 was placed in the Chairman’s mailbox at Town Hall containing the signatures of 24 appellants. In view of this, I contacted Counsel. Counsel and the Chairman reached an agreement that Area Variance No. 59-2007 would be heard this evening with the stipulation that no decision will be rendered, as I have called for a special hearing on 12 December 2007 which will be devoted exclusively to hearing the appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision, and a final conclusion to Area Variance No. 59-2007. Both the Chairman and Counsel judge that this will provide due process to all parties concerned, and for the record, Mr. Zoning th Administrator, would you please ensure that the public notice is given for the 12 of December 2007 hearing. Please. Thank you very much. At this point, I’ll ask members if they wish to address Counsel, or if Counsel has anything he wishes to say at this point. MR. LAPPER-I would like to address the appeal before we get started. I guess I submitted a letter to Craig Brown yesterday addressed to the Chairman. It’s our position that, for two reasons, that the appeal shouldn’t be heard, and I understand that you have th it scheduled for the 12, and if that’s how it’s going to be, that’s fine, but if you just take a look at the letter that is being appealed, which is the letter of the Zoning Administrator to Mr. Salvador, in and of itself, this letter does not constitute a determination. All it does it quote two definitions, Professional Occupation and Office, which are certainly definitions that we’ll be talking about or we’ll be hearing about tonight, but there’s no determination. All he is saying is these are the definitions under the Code of Professional Occupation and Office. More important than that is the Statute of Limitations, of course, is 60 days from a determination, and the determination that Craig made that the only approvals required for this project are the parking variance and Site Plan Review from the Planning th Board was made on August 17, which was three months before this appeal was filed. So we had already had two public hearings at the Planning Board and the neighbors had already been here at the Zoning Board. So this has proceeded for months, and at this late hour, they’re questioning whether you can have an office building in the Office zone. MR. BRYANT-Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, this is a point of order. MR. ABBATE-Go ahead. th MR. BRYANT-I think this is fodder for the discussion on the 12. You’re not hearing the appeal, and this is information that the Counsel is going to make his points during the hearing of the appeal. So, to list those points now, I think they’re inappropriate. MR. LAPPER-Let me just respond to that. I’m saying that there’s no jurisdiction to hear this, which is different. We’re not making the arguments that this is an Office building and that it’s permitted. I’m just making the observation that the letter that is being th appealed is not a determination, and I understand that if we go to the hearing on the 12, we’ll be talking about these things, but I think that there is room here for the Board to just 19 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) review the appeal tonight and say that you can render a decision on the parking variance tonight. MR. ABBATE-And if Mr. Bryant will allow the Chairman to proceed, I think I may be able to address this to the satisfaction of everyone on the Board. Counsel, it is factual that the Statute of Limitations are unambiguous, if you will, and that the maximum amount of time that can lapse after something happens for it to be taken to a court or to a quasi- judicial Board such as the Zoning Board of Appeals. However, you mention a late hour exercise. In spite of your eleventh hour exercise, the appeal of neither the Zoning Administrator’s decision nor the Statute of Limitations have not been advertised, and consequently not on the agenda this evening, and I’m sure you will have ample opportunity to present your case to be argued at the special hearing I have called for at 7 p.m. on 12 December 2007. As a matter of fact, I have been assured by a reliable source that this room is now reserved for not only that evening, but going into the wee hours of the morning if necessary. So I think it would be inappropriate to present your argument in terms of Statute of Limitations at this time. MR. LAPPER-Okay. We will certainly abide by the Board and the Chairman’s decision on this. The reason for moving this along is that this is just approximately 500 jobs in our community, or a lot of jobs at stake here. This is an important project, but at the same time, we appreciate that there will be a Special Meeting so that it won’t be two months from now. So with that said, we’re ready to proceed with the parking variance application. MR. ABBATE-All right. At this point, I’m going to ask members if they wish to address Counsel, or have any questions or concerns. MR. BRYANT-I have a couple. MR. ABBATE-Yes, by all means. MR. BRYANT-I just want to review, apparently there are 500 jobs. That’s why you’re asking for 500 parking spaces, but don’t they run three shifts? MR. LAPPER-They run shifts where everyone will be here at the same time, but they don’t all come at the same time, and that affects the traffic count, because everyone doesn’t start at nine in the morning, but everyone will be here during the day. The traffic engineer who’s here tonight has all of the numbers from all of the employees and will be discussing that in detail to address your question. MR. BRYANT-Okay. I’d like you to expand a little bit on that, because my understanding is, I mean, they work late into the night, too. Is that correct? MR. LAPPER-There are overlapping shifts, yes, but they do, the majority of them do not work late into the night. There are some people that work into the night, but we have all those figures, and we’ll go through that when we get to that point. MR. BRYANT-Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Rick, please. MR. GARRAND-Counselor, I’ve got a couple of questions for you about the data that you submitted. Now you’re asking for over 90% of relief for 537 parking spaces? MR. LAPPER-We are asking for 537 parking spaces. Yes. MR. GARRAND-All right. I just want to refer to something, your Trip Generation Summary. Basically your AM Peak Hours. They’re only stating there’s going to be 248 in and outs for the facility in the morning, and 259 in the evening. How does that justify 537 parking spaces? MR. LAPPER-Because the AM Peak is the busiest hour, and the PM Peak are the busiest hour, but there are other people coming, subsequent to that, actually prior to and subsequent to that hour. MR. GARRAND-But they won’t all be there at the same time. MR. LAPPER-They will all be there at the same time at some point in the day, and they need to have spaces for everybody. We’re certainly not trying to overburden the site, 20 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) and I’ll get into that when we talk about the intensity of the development, but they, the tenant, the building at full occupancy requires the parking ratio that we’ve requested, and in fact, this is the same parking ratio that they have at their current location in Northway Plaza. It’s just a very, the number of square feet per person for this type of use is smaller than what the Code provides for in terms of 300 square feet per parking space. Anything else before we get started? MR. BROWN-Mr. Chairman, I just have, if I may, just a procedural question, maybe a suggestion. Knowing that an appeal has been filed, and that, in effect stays any decision that you can make on this case tonight, would it make sense to go through this one time th on the 12, so you’ve got some comprehensive public comment, Board questions, applicant presentation, rather than do it tonight and then do it again in three weeks, so we don’t have to do it all over again? MR. ABBATE-That’s my intention. To a point. MR. BROWN-We could just table right now and say see you in December. MR. ABBATE-Well, no, I have a procedure that we will follow this evening. So let’s continue to March. MR. LAPPER-You’d like us to proceed, put our case on? MR. ABBATE-Yes, you continue. I’m going to continue with the Board members and see if they have any questions and then from there we’ll go on to another section, and from there to another section, until we come to a section that I’m going to determine that we will, at that particular time, move the appeal to, hearing to another date. Okay? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. ABBATE-Adjourn, if you will. MR. UNDERWOOD-I think it’s important, this evening, that they present their proposal to us. I mean, we’ve already been tabled once previously, and I think that for our Board to th table this with no information here until the 12 would be illogical at this point in time. MR. ABBATE-I agree with you. I agree, and you certainly will be given that opportunity, but I’ll say it again. You will be given, let me re-phrase it. Perhaps I didn’t state it correctly in the beginning. You and the public will be given every opportunity to make your position clear, but we will stop at that point, at which time I will adjourn the hearing th for a final decision to be made on the 12 of December. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MR. ABBATE-So do any other members of the Board have any questions? MR. URRICO-So are we going to proceed and allow them to present their case and then ask questions, or are we going to ask questions before we’ve heard what they had to say? MR. ABBATE-Well, having been interrupted about 50 times here, I was in the process of asking Board members if they wish to address Counsel. That’s where we’re at now. MR. URRICO-About what? MR. ABBATE-About anything they wish. MR. URRICO-Okay. I want to hear what he has to say so we can ask questions about what he has to say. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Anybody else on the Board have any questions they want to ask prior to Counsel? All right. Then let’s continue on, then. Counsel, would you like me to open the public hearing first? MR. LAPPER-No. We have a lengthy presentation to familiarize the Board with the proposal and why we need this. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Then present your project. 21 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. LAPPER-Okay. I guess to start with, just to give a little background on the parking code requirements in the Town of Queensbury, and I know that I’ve made this presentation to this Board a number of times and that you’re familiar with it, but just so that the record is complete. In most municipalities, and including previously in Queensbury, the parking requirement is a minimum number of spaces to make sure that people aren’t parking on lawns, to make sure that the Site Plan is sufficient to accommodate the parking needs. A number of years ago when K-mart was built on Dix Avenue, it was a determination that they went to something like nine spaces per thousand, and you drive by and there’s empty fields of parking and there was a determination made that that was excessive, and at that point the Queensbury Zoning Code was changed so that the minimum also became the maximum requirement, with this 20% bonus that you’re allowed to request from the Planning Board, and that’s the status of the parking requirements in the Town of Queensbury, and because of that, we are frequently before this Board for various types of projects for parking variances, when an applicant has the need for more spaces. In this particular case, the type of office that is proposed here is a call center, so that there are a lot of employees, obviously, and they are in cubicles for the most part, like many modern offices. The way the Code reads in the Professional Office zone, it’s one space per 300 square feet. Now granted that includes lobby area and kitchen area and conference room, etc., but in general, you don’t have many offices where you have 300 square feet plus employee 300 square feet is a large office, a very large office, and in this particular case, this particular type of use, they have smaller space per employee because they have cubicles. Now, we’ll get down to the numbers, in terms of what we’re proposing on the site, but essentially what we’re asking for is to build less building, rather than to build more parking, because the site can accommodate far more development than what’s proposed for this project, and we could add a third story, and get a lot closer to the parking requirement, but the effect of that would be to build space and spend money that doesn’t need to be spent because this tenant doesn’t need it. 85,000 square feet is the size of the building that we’ve proposed. This lot, this particular parcel, was picked by Travelers. They did an extensive search of what was available in the area when they determined that they wanted to relocate their business, and they picked this lot because it is zoned Professional Office, which is the zone where you’re allowed to have an office building. This particular lot is right next to the Northway. So it’s very good, very convenient for traffic, both for the Interstate and also very close to Route 9. We’ll talk about it in a little while, but it minimizes traffic on neighborhood roads as a result of this location. In terms of the need for the spaces, starting with the test, the need for the variance is because this employer needs to have one space for all of their employees, and that’s very simple. So we’re not trying to build anymore than what we’ve been asked in the least to provide for this tenant. Getting to the first prong of the test, whether granting of the variance will cause an undesirable change in the character of the neighborhood. Now, I’ll ask Tom Nace in a few minutes to show you the Site Plan, but just to give you the highlights, this proposal, and let me back up for a second. When we first appeared at the Planning Board, this was a larger footprint, it was a one story building, and the Planning Board, this is why we tabled it at this Board. The Planning Board asked us to reconsider and to see if we could talk the tenant into a two story building, because it would reduce the impact by reducing the footprint and allow for more buffering, and we did that, and that was why we had tabled this when we were scheduled for a hearing before the Zoning Board. As a result of making this a two story, approximately 85,000 square foot building, of this 17.8 acre site, 64.9% of the site is green space. That is a huge statistic, because in this zone only 30% of green space is required. So this site would permit substantially more development to get closer to the 30% green space and still not require any variance, still be developed as of right, and in that, the additional essentially 35% of the site that we could develop, we could have a whole lot more building and a whole lot more parking, and it’s for that reason that, when you have 17.8 acres, that the 537 spaces that we’re requesting are not a significant impact because we could do a lot more on this site. We’re, Rich is actually saying this is the farthest the site will be developed, and this is a lot less than what maximum, far less than what maximum would be for this site. So one important statistic is 64.9% green space. In addition to that, we’ve now changed it so that the buffer area, which is the area which will not be touched around the site, on the front it’ll be re-landscaped, but all around the Northway and the north side and the south side it will not be touched. This is now eight acres. So fully eight acres of this site is going to be a buffer. There’s certainly no requirement in the Town of Queensbury that an office building be invisible, and in fact the Professional Office zone in the Code is intended as an interim use between commercial and residential. It’s considered a buffer because it buffers residential from more intensive commercial use, with a lot more in and out traffic. This is a quiet use. The Travelers operation is not open to the public. You don’t go in. It’s a call center. So you don’t have trips for the public going there, and that’s a big difference. Some of the neighbors have called this a big box, and a big box refers to a Wal-Mart or a Home Depot or a Lowe’s, and the difference is that that is 22 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) misleading because a big box has customers coming and going all day long, and at this site you’ll have people entering some time in the morning. Some of them will obviously leave for lunch, and they’ll be leaving over some period of time in the evening. So this is not anywhere a big box retail. It’s not a retail use. It’s an office use. In that eight acre buffer area, besides keeping most of it exactly the way it is now, there’s also going to be substantial landscaping, and this is a Fortune 100 company. This is going to be quality landscaping, and of course the Planning Board wouldn’t let us do anything other than quality landscaping in Queensbury. In terms of the impact on the neighborhood, we’ve got the 64.9% green space, the eight acres of buffer, and then Tom Nace performed a visual study to show that the buffer area was going to make it so that the building would be hardly seen from anywhere on West Mountain Road and not visible from Gurney Lane or from the Northway. So, for this prong of the test, I’d just like Tom to get started showing you the photographs and how he performed the visual study. MR. NACE-Okay. When you look at the site, just to orient you generally to the plan here, north is sort of up the side of the page. The Northway southbound on ramp is right here. West Mountain Road here, and Gurney Lane here. When we started looking at the visual analysis for this, we went on site, located the corners of the buildings, or the building, and put up balloons at each corner, and we flew the balloons at a height of 45 feet above the proposed floor level of the building. Now the building’s only going to be 38, 39 feet tall. So with the balloons we flew approximately five, six feet above the actual peak of the building, and Photographs Number One and Two that you look at there are just pictures of the balloons at that height that indicate that the, or show pretty graphically the canopy of the existing trees are well above the height of the peak of the building. Once the balloons were in the air, we said, okay, let’s look at all of the travel ways around and see where those balloons are visible from, if anywhere. Okay. We went south on West Mountain Road, over the hill that’s south of the site, and you’ll look at picture, actually, let me start the other direction. I’ll follow with the number of the pictures. We said on the Northway south of the site, as you come up from Exit 19, you go over the crest of the hill down toward Great Escape, and there’s a view port at that point where you crest the hill, that we thought the balloons might be visible. That point is approximately here, right on the crest of the hill, and looking up at the site, and those pictures number three and four show that the tree cover in there is substantial and the balloons are not visible from any point there on the Northway. That’s also verified if you, we drew a cross section from that spot up on the Northway through the site and put the building on it and put the trees on it at the height that they actually are, and put our car back here on the Northway and looked to see whether or not the tree canopy sheltered the building, and it does, in fact. Okay. Then we went to the Northway coming southbound north of the site, and looked at the site from on the Northway lane itself, and on the off ramp itself, and you’ll see those as pictures five and six. Also, in those cases, we drew, the second section, although our buffer is narrower, as is indicated here, we are leaving a relatively substantial buffer of trees between Gurney Lane and the site, which are tall enough. MR. LAPPER-How wide is that buffer? MR. NACE-That buffer is a little over 100 feet wide. Okay. Then we looked from Gurney Lane to see, coming down Gurney Lane, to see if the site was visible anywhere, and that’s picture, photograph seven, and we also looked from up on the site of the County office building, on the north side of Gurney Lane, and about the only thing you really will be able to see from Gurney Lane is the County Highway buildings, the old brick building and the blue shed that are visible. From West Mountain Road, that section, from West Mountain Road, over here is West Mountain Road. Then there’s a hill, if you look at the Site Plan, there’s a substantial hill here to the west/southwest part of the site that’s not going to be touched at all, and that hill provides a substantial buffer from West Mountain Road. Now you will be able to see the site as you get in directly opposite the entrance here, and where the existing sandpit is in here. When you look directly across West Mountain Road, across that sandpit, you will be able to see the site, but that’s where we’ve concentrated our landscaping, and you can see that the islands that have been left in the front here are more substantial than normal to help buffer the view of the building even from directly across West Mountain Road, and that shows in photograph number 10. So, you know, in summary of yes the site will be visible from West Mountain Road, but we could not find any other vantage point around where you could actually, are going to be able to see the building without having a substantial tree buffer in between. MR. LAPPER-When you look at the Site Plan that Tom just presented, you can see that it’s somewhat of a cocoon with the building in the center, with the existing mature trees around three sides of it. The second prong, can the benefit be achieved by some other method feasible to the applicant, and again, if we were saying that because of the 23 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) parking we need a green space variance, we need side setback variance or something, then that would be substantial, but because we’re under developing the site, the only thing we could do here would be to build more buildings. There are this many employees, and the question is do they need more room, and that’s not feasible because this is a multi-million dollar building, and the idea of building more space just to comply with the Queensbury Code of how many square feet you need per parking space, I mean, nobody can afford to build unnecessary building just to justify the parking needs. The Zoning Code didn’t contemplate this kind of an office, obviously, with 6.5 spaces, but that’s the type of office that we have here and an important local business. So the only way that we could do this to support the employees so that they would each have a parking space would be to build more building, and that is just silly because there’s no reason why anyone would ask for more building, and there’s no reason why anybody could afford more building. RICH SCHERMERHORN MR. SCHERMERHORN-Just to make a statement, to go on record, and I said this in front of the Planning Board. I want to say it in front of the ZBA. You’re probably well aware, I’ve been doing this for a while, about 21 years now, and one way I could have avoided this, and I said I would never do this, is certainly get the approvals with what the required Code calls for for the parking, build the building, and then simply come back a year later and say, gee, by the way, we need more parking spots, and that’s certainly not my intention, but you can see that is a situation that’s arisen over time through the years in Queensbury, where people put the buildings up. They expand and they add the parking, and they come back to you, and then naturally usually everyone’s sympathetic and they don’t say no, but I just want to say in this case that I’m laying all my cards on the table. This is what the tenant has requested of me. So these are the exact spaces. MR. ABBATE-You said that because we are sympathetic we would say yes? MR. SCHERMERHORN-No, no, no, no. I said in the past, through my years of experience, a way to avoid a situation of coming here and asking for a variance is put the required parking spaces on the map now, and let’s say a year later, or even a year and a half later, whatever, I could always, an applicant has done this. You can come back and say, gee, by the way, we need 40 more spaces, or we need 100 more spaces. I’m just saying, I’m not circumventing this system in any way is what I’m saying. I’m just laying my cards on the table, being honest. I’d rather not build more, I mean, the more parking spaces I have to provide, it’s rather expensive to maintain and put in. So I just wanted to state that for the record. MR. ABBATE-Okay. All right. MR. LAPPER-Thanks, Rich. Now the next prong, whether the variance is substantial, and Rick said, you know, 90%. I think the Staff Notes said 88%, but the case law says that you don’t just look at your percentage in terms of whether it’s a substantial variance. What you have to ask for and what you have to ask is, is the parking that’s being required substantial for the site, and it’s not substantial for the site because we have 17.8 acres here, much of which we’re not using. So, again, and I’ve made this argument previously tonight, but because the site can afford much more substantial building and parking it’s not a substantial variance because we’re not maxing out the site or even coming close with 64.9% green space. It may sound substantial because of the numbers, but it’s just what they need, and we’re making up for it by under developing the site, even with the extra spaces being, essentially, 65% green. Another point that Rich found, in looking at the permitted uses in the Zoning Code, is that in the PO zone, a parking facility is a separate permitted use. That on this site, you could have a parking facility, and we certainly have room for it if you wanted to keep it subdivided as a second lot, Rich could build a parking garage or a parking lot and lease it to the County, for their office building or anybody else. The definition of Parking Facility under the Queensbury Code is a public parking garage or parking area, and that is a separate permitted use. So in terms of, this isn’t excessive because he could have, he could build the amount of spaces that are allowed for this building, 300 and some odd spaces, and then on another lot he could have a public parking facility as a totally separate use, build a parking garage and lease it out to the Travelers’ tenants or to the County tenants or anybody else. I think that’s an important argument in terms of the site and this zone. MR. BRYANT-Why aren’t you doing that? MR. LAPPER-Because we have a lease agreement with a tenant that calls for them, for us building them enough spaces so that each of their employees has a space. 24 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. SCHERMERHORN-You mean why aren’t we doing a separate application for a parking facility? MR. BRYANT-If you have that ability, because you made a statement relative to trying to stay within, you know, the regulation. So if you have that ability, you could build a facility with 300 parking spaces, according to the Zoning Administrator, and that would be acceptable, and then you could build a parking facility, which is an allowable use in that zone, on the other parcel to accommodate the 200 spaces you need. MR. LAPPER-Well, let me answer that. I mean, the simple answer is that it wouldn’t be as good a Site Plan because it wouldn’t be buffered as well as we have here, because now we’ve got it all in this cocoon. If we had to separate it, it would be on a separate lot. There would have to be side setbacks to that lot. We could do that, but it would just, you’d have two things. You’d have the office building and a parking lot around it, and then you’d have some buffer, and then you’d have another parking lot. MR. BRYANT-So what you’re basically saying is that this plan that requires a variance, in that plan you’re mitigating the outcome from what you’re allowed? MR. LAPPER-Yes, because of the Site Plan that mitigates it with this substantial buffer. The next prong, whether the variance will have a substantial adverse effect on the neighborhood. One thing I want to start with is we got some numbers from the GIS provided from the Town when we requested it from the Planning Department. The number of residences within a quarter mile of this site are nine, and by comparison, the number of residential properties within a quarter mile of the Tribune site, which was approved in the Spring and is under construction now, and which also required a parking variance, is 63. So those numbers are nine within a quarter mile of here, and 63 within a quarter mile of the tribune building. Also we asked within a half a mile, and the numbers within a half a mile are 49 residences for this site and 316, over six times as much, for the Tribune site. So in terms of this site, you know, I understand the neighbors are offended that this green lot is proposed to be developed, but in terms of the impact, there’s nobody directly across from this, and again, not that office buildings have to be invisible, but there is much less impact because there are much fewer neighbors in proximity to this. People will drive by it, but they don’t live there. Next, in terms of the impact on the neighborhood, I’d like to ask Ken Wersted to come up and address traffic. We have met with the County DPW, the local Adirondack Glens Falls Transportation Council, and the State DOT, because we’ve got, the State controls the intersection of the Northway and Route 9, and the County West Mountain Road and Gurney Lane. So we’ve had substantial meetings over the last month. We’ve submitted our traffic report. They asked for more data. We came back with more data. We had originally proposed putting in a traffic signal at the southbound ramps, which is an existing problem that should be addressed anyway, but Rich is going to address it with his checkbook because of this project, and most recently, as Ken will explain, they’ve come back and said, the DOT said before they’ll sign off on this that they also want Rich to put in some right turn lanes on the southbound ramps as well, which is another expense, but it substantially improves the traffic from the levels of service from what it is now. Ken, if you could just explain, briefly, and again, this isn’t the Planning Board, but just to get into the fact that the traffic, we’re mitigating not only the project traffic but existing traffic in the area. KEN WERSTED MR. WERSTED-Hi. My name is Ken Wersted. I’m with Creighton Manning Engineering, and we’re the traffic consultant on the project. As part of the proposal, we went through and identified the size of the building, the employees that’ll be there, and we had to go out and obviously document the existing traffic volumes out there, project the traffic from this project, and then determine the impact of that. The intersections that we looked at were the intersections of Route 9 and Gurney Lane, Gurney Lane and the Exit 20 on/off ramps, Gurney Lane and West Mountain Road, West Mountain Road and the intersection of Bonner Drive and Mountain View Lane, and then in addition, additional intersections were requested from Warren County and the Planning Board. Those included West Mountain Road and Aviation Road, and Mountain View Lane and Aviation Road. We had looked at the number of trips that the project was going to generate based on the scheduling of people coming to and from the office. The tenant proposes to operate similar to most offices in the sense that some of the employees will be able to arrive earlier than usual. They’ll be able to leave the office earlier than usual. Most of the employees, the bulk of them will arrive between eight and nine o’clock, and then a few employees will be allowed to arrive after the nine o’clock hour, all the way up to noon. Those employees that are arriving later in the morning would then stay later in the 25 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) evening. The bulk of the traffic is going to occur during those peak commuter times, when, you know, I imagine most of us are commuting back and forth to work. Those times would be somewhere between seven and nine am, and then in the reverse going home between four and six pm. So while traffic may begin to start coming in to the site earlier, at six or seven o’clock in the morning, that’s when the parking will start to fill up. Most of the employees, the bulk of them will arrive, you know, between eight and nine, and then you will have a few additional employees who are arriving later in the morning. So that’s the rationale between there being, you know, 500 some odd parking spaces, but only 250 or so are coming in in that peak hour. The analysis procedures that we need to use to look at traffic identifies the peak volumes during a specific hour, and it doesn’t look at how much traffic is occurring over multiple hours because the analysis procedures aren’t set up to look at multiple hours. It’s one specific hour. So what we do to analyze that is we look at those peak hours when the background traffic is going to be worse and when the site generation is going to be worse as well. There are going to be shifts, so to speak. It’s not going to be a shift in the sense that someone’s going to work from, you know, six to three and then go home, and someone’s going to come in at three and work until eight o’clock, and then someone is going to come in at eight o’clock and work overnight. People will be arriving from six o’clock in the morning all the way up to noon, and then they’ll be leaving in the afternoon, anywhere from noon and a few people staying as late as eight o’clock. Because people staying as late at eight o’clock, there’s approximately 10 employees, they’re there to, I think, monitor the phones for any customers that might be on the West Coast. The traffic that we analyzed, we sent those through the intersections. We had distributed the traffic based on zip code and address information provided by the tenant. Based on that information, we had estimated that about 30% of the site generated traffic would use West Mountain Road, because they live on the west side of the Town. They live in towns that are west of here like Corinth and Luzerne and so forth. So they would most likely use that road to come up to the office. Pretty much everyone else would use the other main roads, like the Northway, use Exit 20 and also Route 9 to access the site. We went through and assigned all our traffic to those intersections, analyzed them in terms of what the increases in delays or so forth, and what we determined is that at the intersection of Route 9 and Gurney Lane, the existing signal is adequate, but the timing’s need to be adjusted. At the intersection of Gurney Lane and the southbound off ramp, it’s an unsignalized intersection, and the congestion there can be, you know, quite intensive, not only during an off peak time such as now, but also particularly in the summer, and what we identified was that that intersection was in need of a traffic signal. Now the impact of the project will be mitigated by that installation of that traffic signal, and then some, because the delays that are experienced there will also be reduced further beyond the impact to the project. So the installation of the signal by the project will help mitigate that existing congestion that you see out there today and also during the summer, and that’s as brief as I think I could get in terms of the traffic. MR. BRYANT-I have some questions, Mr. Chairman. MR. ABBATE-All right. Why don’t we do this. Why don’t we let them finish their presentation. MR. LAPPER-Well, if there are traffic questions, no problem. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Go ahead. MR. BRYANT-You mentioned about 30% of the employees are going to use West Mountain Road because they live in Corinth or wherever. MR. LAPPER-Or in Queensbury. MR. BRYANT-Okay. Did you do any study about Corinth Road? I mean, if I lived south of Queensbury and I worked at that facility, rather than trying to get on the Northway at that location, because I imagine the amount of traffic is going to be substantial, I would probably go down West Mountain Road to Corinth Road and then catch the Northway at 18 to avoid 19 also, because that’s a traffic problem. Was any study about the number of people that actually live south of Queensbury, South Glens Falls, Saratoga, so forth and so on? What’s the percentage? MR. WERSTED-I could get into the details of the percentages of who lives where and so forth. Overall, there’s about 25% of the employees live in the Town of Queensbury. From there, there’s about 13%, all the way down to less than one percent, are spread across 46 towns in the area. The people from South Glens Falls and so forth were included, and they were determined to come up various locations, including the 26 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) Northway, and also some percentages coming up from Corinth Road and using Aviation Road to come over to West Mountain Road. The predominant flow of the 30% from West Mountain Road are employees that live, you know, on that side of the Town and also towns further west, which isn’t practical to come all the way to the Northway and then take that up to Exit 20 and then get off and come to the office. MR. UNDERWOOD-What percentage have to go north? MR. WERSTED-Approximately 10 to 15% via the Northway and via Route 9. There’s also a percentage coming out from 149 from the Whitehall area. MR. UNDERWOOD-So what are you going to do in the summertime when it’s maximum gridlock time, you know, because I’m just thinking in the sense of, you know, we’re addressing parking here tonight, but at your peak times, which are four to six pm in the summertime, it’s oftentimes a complete disaster up there. Do you know what I mean? I live over on the east side of Town and to go north I avoid going up to that Exit 20 at all costs, most of the summer long. It’s been somewhat mitigated with the new bridge at Great Escape in there, but, at the same time, the stacking coming off the Northway, getting on to go to 149 to Vermont, and vice versa, you know, when traffic is coming the other way from Vermont at certain times on vacation days and things like that. It seems to me that when you’re looking at the numbers here, I don’t have a problem with the building because I think the building itself, if you interpret, if you went to doctors offices, you know, smaller units, individual units spread across that whole 16 acres, and you’ve got a single building, as opposed to a single building, it’s a wash between the two. Maybe the single building has less of a presence and less of a disturbing factor for the green space. MR. LAPPER-It also actually has less of a traffic issue because you’d have patients, which you don’t have, and we’ll get into that, but that’s an important point. MR. UNDERWOOD-But I’m just thinking, in knowing that you have an “F” rating on all these roads or your feeder roads coming off the Northway, and that’s strictly, I think, as a result of the design of those off ramps coming from the south. That’s not in your control to deal with that, but at the same time, I’m just wondering in a sense, are we going to make the situation like intolerable, you know. MR. WERSTED-Right. The office is unique in the sense that the morning traffic that would be using the Northway and getting off at the northbound ramp is all coming in before Great Escape opens, before the outlets open and so forth. So it’s much easier to get into and there’s much less of an impact when you start considering the outlets in the summer, traffic generation. When we start talking about the people who are exiting, you know, we have people who are getting off the Northway, you know, who are heading towards Vermont and so forth, most of the traffic from the site will be making a right turn onto Gurney Lane and then making another right turn onto the Northway to head south. So it’s much easier to get on the Northway there, and it’s also kind of in the reverse flow of where people are getting off the Northway and heading towards Vermont for a Friday weekend and so forth. In addition to that, A/GFTC will be commissioning a study of Route 9, you know, along the Outlet areas, to look at some of that summer congestion, and see if there’s any, you know, solutions that can help improve the traffic conditions there. MR. LAPPER-I think it’s important to talk about how we’re going to improve the situation and talk about the ramps as well, to get to a Level of “C”, because Jim mentioned a Level of Service “F”. MR. WERSTED-The other note is obviously the project is proposing a traffic signal at the southbound off ramp. When you’re trying to come down, get off of that exit in the summer, you know, it’s difficult because you’ve got a lot of traffic who has all the priority on Gurney Lane coming across the bridge, turning to either go straight or turn left to get on to the Northway to head south, and they really have the right of way because the side road, which is the southbound off ramp, has to stop. With the traffic signal, what it allows us to do is to provide gaps and provide breaks and in the main, in Gurney Lane traffic to allow people to get off at that interchange. So it’s going to be, it’s going to mitigate the project, but it’s also going to improve the existing congestion that you see out there today. MR. URRICO-In your study, did you do any analysis of the number of cars that would be leaving the premises during the middle of the day, when people traditionally go to lunch 27 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) or run errands, and how that would impact the side streets there, because I can see them skipping Route 9 altogether and using the back roads. MR. WERSTED-Yes. As part of our signal warrant analysis, we had to project the traffic volumes throughout, you know, about 10 to 12 hours out of the day. What we had done is we had looked at other office developments and looked at the distribution of traffic that they have throughout the day, and included in the signal warrant analysis that was submitted to the Town Planning Board and also to DOT. We have a graph in there that demonstrates that the primary inflow of traffic occurs during the morning, obviously, when all the employees arriving. There is a smaller peak in the middle of the day where you have employees running out to lunch and running errands and so forth, and then you have a much larger spike in the afternoon when you have all the employees leaving, you know, to go home in the evening. While there is a spike in the middle of the day around lunchtime, it’s about a third to two-thirds less than what your morning and your afternoon peaks are. So with that and our analysis, you know, we’re looking at the peak conditions, that being the morning and the afternoon. While there is, if you go out there at 10 o’clock in the morning or 11 o’clock, there’ll be less traffic than if you go out there at lunchtime. The lunchtime, you know, crowd, so to speak won’t be as high as the morning and the afternoon. MR. URRICO-But there will be a crowd. You said you looked at other office developments. What other office developments would be similar to that condition there? MR. WERSTED-We looked at an office development in the Town of North Greenbush, the Rensselaer Tech Park. It has approximately a million square feet of offices and development in there. There is no walkable places to get to. It’s kind of an isolated, you know, on Route 4, so at lunchtime if you’re going out you have to drive. We also looked at two other office developments in that same area. One is the East Greenbush Tech Park, and they have several hundred thousand square feet. MR. URRICO-Is that the one off Route 4, is that on Route 4? MR. WERSTED-Yes, and then another building included, it was formally the Phoenix Life Insurance building, and that was located off of Third Avenue Extension, previously. It’s now relocated, but we used the distributions throughout the day of all of those. The distributions of each of them support each other. We had used the average of all three of them to estimate the distributions throughout the day of this project. MR. LAPPER-And these assumptions have been reviewed by DOT and Warren County DPW. We had to sit down with them and go through it and get them to concur. MR. URRICO-I’m just curious how you can predict which direction a car is going to go into, to go to, from there midday, and also, if one of the shifts ends at three o’clock, when normally the school buses run, how are we going to get around that factor as well? Because that’s going to be an additional factor that’s going to back up traffic. MR. WERSTED-It’s certainly a factor where the tenant is located today. It’s a factor near any school. It’s not something that is unusual, and it’s a fact of life. If you’re driving out around three o’clock and there’s school buses out, you’re going to have to contend with that. You’re going to have to obey the rules of the road and stop and, you know, it’s not something that is necessarily going to be unusual or any significant, you know, further impact. Had the project been right next to a school, we would probably review the mid afternoon peak hour as well, when the school would be leaving, but because the project is isolated in this part of the Town, that’s not an issue. MR. URRICO-Well, the thing is, if the traffic heads south on West Mountain Road and Mountain View Lane and heads to the Northway from Aviation Road it will hit the School. MR. LAPPER-Well, we need to talk about that assumption because most people are getting on the Northway at 20. MR. WERSTED-Yes. I mean, the major percentage is getting onto the Northway. There’s a minor percentage heading towards Mountain View Lane and so forth. Those intersections that we had looked at at the request of the Town, and also of the County. We had reviewed those, and we showed that the project itself isn’t going to have any impact at this time. MR. URRICO-But there will be a percentage. 28 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. WERSTED-There will be a percentage heading in those directions. Correct. MR. URRICO-What was the percentage again? MR. WERSTED-Between, well, 30% heading down West Mountain Road and then approximately 15% down, heading towards Aviation Road and 15% heading down towards West Mountain and so forth. MR. URRICO-Okay. MR. UNDERWOOD-Because here’s what I’m thinking, too, you know, in the sense that, if you’re going north and it turns into a disaster every day when you get out of work to try and get across the Northway and get onto that northbound turn over there over on Route 9, I’m thinking that you’re going to see a whole exodus of people saying, well, I’m just going to cut up over Gurney, you know, go up over that hill, up to the Lake George exit, you know, and do it that way. You can see people taking the easy way out, which would be a negative for those people up on there which is essentially a rural area. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but all I’m saying is you’ve got to take into account all the possible effects. MR. LAPPER-We’ve certainly looked at that and looked at the distribution, and DOT and DPW have to approve of this, but anyone who’s taken that route to 21, that’s not a road that you like to travel. You can’t travel fast. It’s beautiful, but it’s certainly not something, if you’re trying to get somewhere quickly, to avoid a crowd, going north over there is just not very efficient. MR. ABBATE-Do you have anything else you’d like to present, gentlemen, at this time? MR. LAPPER-Yes. So, in terms of where we are in the analysis, we’re looking at the fourth prong of will the granting of the variance have an adverse effect on the neighborhood, and that was traffic and we’ve satisfied the traffic review agencies, and we’ve had all these meetings, and what Ken didn’t get into was that their asking Rich to also put in two right turn lanes and that’s going to bring the Level of Service from what is currently an “F”, which has nothing to do with this project, to a “C”, and Rich has agreed that he will do that, when asked by DOT. That’s something that the State should be doing, but they’re not, and Rich is going to wind up paying for it. MR. UNDERWOOD-Are you talking a direct onto the on ramp going south? MR. LAPPER-Off the southern, the southbound ramp and on, but both of those. So the next impact issue is stormwater, and I want to bring Tom back to review that, and I want to just say that it was also mentioned in the Staff Notes that Rich is boring under the Northway at some considerable expense to hook up to the sewer line on Route 9. So there will be no wastewater impact on the site, because the wastewater is not going to go into the ground. It’s going to go back down to Glens Falls and be treated in the plant. There’s already a water line that the County brought under the Northway at Gurney Lane a number of years ago, and now Rich is going to bring the sewer line as well. So this site will have public sewer and public water. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Just another important thing. What was important to Travelers as well is there’s fiber optics on Route 9, and when I was discussing this project site with the County, back in June or July, when they were proposing a 112,000 square foot building, three stories on my property, it was important to have the fiber optics brought over to them as well. So with pulling the sewer line, directional boring under the Northway, I’m bringing fiber optics over as well, and just for the record, again, I’ve said this to the County at several meetings, and Planning Board, that the sewer line is and has been sized for Warren County for their facility on their site, because they’ve expressed interest that they definitely would want to utilize the sewer line. MR. LAPPER-Rich raises another point that’s worth mentioning at this time. That when we talk about the character of the neighborhood, we already have the Warren County Annex and the West Mount Health Facility, which are there, which were built before people worried about buffers. So they’re very, very visible. So there’s already, in terms of the character of the neighborhood, we already have an office complex there. So this is the same as what’s already there. Tom, in terms of stormwater. MR. NACE-Very briefly, what we’re doing with stormwater, the soils on the site are very deep, well drained sands. We’ve done borings at the building site, went down 50 feet and did not hit any groundwater, which translates to an elevation out in our stormwater 29 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) basin that there’ll be almost 30 feet below our stormwater basin. For certain it is not saturated. It’s open sand that’s available to treat stormwater. So what we’re doing, we’re taking the building roof and dividing it up into two pieces and putting in two under the pavement infiltration chamber, series of chambers to take the stormwater, treat it, and let it filter into the ground. The paved areas are all being collected in a series of catch basins. The catch basins will be an extra deep sump to collect silt without having it go down the pipe so that it can be cleaned directly out of the catch basins, intercepted at the source. Those all collect together and come into a stormwater basin in the location of the existing sandpit. I’m sure most of you have been by the site. That sandpit out there is an ideal location to reuse for and restore for a stormwater basin. The stormwater basin will have a pre-treatment area and a main infiltration basin. All the stormwater will come into the pre-treatment area. Almost all of the smaller storms, about 90% of the annual runoff, will be treated in the pre-treatment basin and will not even get to the final stormwater basin. So that’ll all filter into the ground. That basin we’ve relocated from our original proposal, to get a little further away from the stream. At the Planning Board meeting there was some concern voiced about keeping the stormwater as far as possible from the wetland and the Critical Environmental Area. So we’ve moved that back out of the Critical Environmental Area. We’ve also sent the stormwater plans to Dave Wick at the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation and asked him for his review and comments, and we got a letter back from Dave that I’ll just summarize his closing paragraph. It says, Overall I feel that the plans presented will achieve the goals for stormwater management on this site. Given the size of the infiltration basin and chamber systems, the existing soils, the vertical separation of the infiltration basin to groundwater, and the horizontal separation to the nearest shown surface water body, it is my opinion that all accepted stormwater quality and quantity standards will be met or exceeded. As such, I do not believe that this development as proposed will have any measureable impact on any surrounding water body surface or subsurface, and I’ll pass out a copy of that. MR. LAPPER-So I think that addresses the test and explains why we need the Area Variance. The last one is whether the difficulty is self-created, and I would just say that the Queensbury Zoning Code doesn’t distinguish between different types of office uses, and there are certainly some types of office uses that would need one space per three hundred square feet, but this particular type of office use, an insurance call center, needs more spaces, and again, you’ve seen this before, Angio Dynamics, the Adirondack Cardiology and Tribune, just the three that I can recall from just this past year, and I know that Councilman Strough has said on the record that the Town is looking at but hasn’t done anything about changing the parking requirements. We shouldn’t have to request variances all the time, but different uses have different needs. So that’s our principal case. The public hearing’s next. We’ve heard the public hearing a number of times. We understand that the neighbors feel very threatened by this piece of vacant property being developed. We’ve tried to show you that we’re trying to limit the development and be as sensitive as possible and exceed what the Code requires, and there are obviously people that just would like this to stay as a green site, but this is not open space. It’s a privately owned site, zoned for offices. I want to just quickly add also that previously this site was zoned for single family residential. There was another developer who proposed single family residential. The neighbors were up in arms, seven years ago. After that the Town Board changed the zoning to the PO zone and the PO zone allows for multifamily residential and for offices. Rich came in with a proposal a year and a half ago for an apartment complex for multifamily. The neighbors were up in arms. Rich withdrew it and at the time said, you know, we’ll be back with an office zone, and subsequent to that the Town Board changed the office zone as it is now that within 1,000 feet of many of the arterial roads, including West Mountain Road, you’re not allowed to have residential. So the only thing that’s permitted, except for public type uses, cemetery, school, church, parking facility, primarily the only thing that’s left as a private use of this site is office within 1,000 feet and that’s almost the entire site within 1,000 of West Mountain Road. So what he’s proposing here as an office complex is the only thing you’re allowed to do in Queensbury on this site, but we’re certainly not trying to max this out with all sorts of buildings and all sorts of development which would take down all the trees. We’re trying to do this as carefully as possible. We’re sorry that the neighbors feel so slighted, but we’re trying to do everything right here and it’s certainly an important tenant and an important business for the community, and I’m sure we’ll have response after the public hearing, their comments. MR. UNDERWOOD-Can I ask a question? If you compare the size of this office building, like your large medical building down on Bay Road, is that about the same size? MR. LAPPER-No. 30 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. SCHERMERHORN-No. The building on Bay Road, that one is 40,000 square feet. So this is more than twice the size, but to put things in reference, that sits on like three and a half acres, that building. Where this is sitting on, I think we said 17 acres. MR. LAPPER-So double the size of that building, Jim. MR. UNDERWOOD-How does your parking, I mean, what’s the adjustment in parking from that to this? I mean, what would you think number wise? What have you got down there for numbers on parking? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I don’t remember, but I do know that with medical, the one thing I’ve learned, including my own office building on Bay Road where I have a physician below me, it just seems like you can’t have enough parking. The physicians offices are so busy, there’s times that people are, I’m finding they’re parking on this side of my grass because these physicians have these peak hours. I’m having the problem down at Lawrence Street right now that Glens Falls Hospital leases. I bought one of the Kamyr buildings where Serlin is. I got a call yesterday. I go down and the parking lot’s packed. Pearl Street’s packed. Lawrence Street’s packed. Physicians draw a lot of traffic because they have people in the waiting room. There’s people in the examining rooms. So I don’t know what the magic number is for these, but I know at least Travelers has, they know what works for them, what works for their business. MR. UNDERWOOD-Do you remember, Jon, what they had with the Cardiac Associates, how many, we had to have, we granted? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I think that it was something in the six’s also. I think that the number, the ratio was close to this. Perhaps Craig remembers, or, Tom, do you? MR. NACE-Sixty and ninety stick in my head. Sixty is permitted and ninety sticks in my head. MR. URRICO-Just so we have some sort of comparison, the current location of Travelers, what is the floor space there? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I believe that square footage I’ve been told, because it’s really cut up, it’s in the old Montgomery Wards building, I believe that’s like 72,000 square feet, I’ve been told, but we could definitely confirm that. MR. URRICO-And how many employees do they have there now? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Currently the same. MR. URRICO-And how many spaces do they have? There’s not 500 spaces there. MR. LAPPER-There are. I mean, they have that whole field that was Montgomery Wards, and they park in the back. I mean, parking. MR. URRICO-Yes, they share that with McKesson, don’t they? MR. LAPPER-McKesson parks in the back, though, because their door only opens towards the cemetery. So they don’t park up front, but if you went there, you’d be amazed at how many spaces there are. MR. URRICO-I don’t think there are 500 spaces there. MR. LAPPER-I’m sure that there are, because McKesson has a couple of hundred employees on top of Travelers. MR. URRICO-Around the back, but they only park in the back. MR. LAPPER-Yes. Travelers is split up. They have people that enter, they have an entrance on the back. I’ve been there. So in the front it may not be 500, but between the front and the back I’m sure that it is. MR. URRICO-I don’t want to disagree with you, but I think they have a lot less, and I’m just curious as how they’re able to accommodate their staff now. MR. LAPPER-It’s the same thing. They have to have a parking space per employee. So, I mean, I can certainly come back with that number. 31 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. URRICO-Okay. MR. UNDERWOOD-Is there any sense that, you know, I’m just thinking from a practical standpoint. If you have a lot of employees that are generated from certain areas, is there any sense of running a van or anything like that, just to cut down on the traffic? I mean, everybody likes to drive their own vehicle. That’s obvious, but, you know, you’re thinking for future points, you know, when everybody might not. MR. LAPPER-Nobody can afford gas anymore. MR. WERSTED-Yes. I mean, it’s certainly an option. One of the things that we recommended in particular with probably more specifically to the summertime when traffic congestion is more of an issue, is allowing the employees to have flexibility in their schedule. Obviously you’re going to have a core set of people who have to be there and leave at a certain time, but allowing that flexibility, you know, would possibly allow people to work an extra half hour a day and then take off early on a Friday to beat getting out of the area before, you know, that occurs. MR. LAPPER-The bottom line in our lease is that Travelers has said this is the spaces that we need for our employees. MR. ABBATE-All right. Do we have any other members on the Board who would like to ask questions of the appellant or counsel at this time? If not, I’m going to open up the public hearing for Area Variance No. 59-2007, and I’m going to ask that those wishing to be heard please be kind enough to raise your hand, and I will certainly recognize you. I will ask you to come to the table, speak into the microphone and to identify yourself. Let’s see, why don’t we start with the front. Sir, would you be kind enough to come up to the table, please. PUBLIC HEARING OPEN DENNIS FRANKLIN MR. FRANKLIN-Dennis Franklin. I live on West Mountain Road. I’d like to say one thing about a statement here, that we were all very happy with the zoning the way it was and the proposed 13 houses. It was the Town, in their wisdom, that changed it, and we’ve been fighting it ever since. We don’t believe it fits with the neighborhood. I also wonder, is there a mechanism that we can have peer review for the applicants’ design professionals? Because, you know, their opinions, and they are opinions, are like Olympic medals. They’re gold, silver, bronze and lead, and we’re hearing their side of the story. If I could address Mr. Nace’s statements about the view, his own pictures show the balloons above the trees, or excuse me, not above the trees, but through the trees. The traffic study, when it addresses sound, says that there is no understory to these trees that are here, that the building, in fact, will provide better sound barrier to the Northway than what’s there, the trees. So when you look through those trees, there’s no understory. So the building is very visible. So it’s a battle of words. No, you can’t see it above the trees, but you can see it all through the trees, and it’s sort of like taking a traffic study in January. We don’t have leaves on the trees here seven months of the year, but that’s one issue. The other is, I read Mr. Nace’s stormwater report, and he said there’s no effect because the treatment basin, which is strictly a passive basin, you know, it’s treated only by the sun evaporation and absorption. There is no positive mechanism there. He went on to say that all the grease, grime, salt, oil, antifreeze, falls in that parking lot, that will be collected into those basins poses no harm to the environment because by the time they pass through 23 feet of sand, they’re rendered harmless. I mean, if this is a new technology, then we should be using it over in Fort Edward and everywhere else. One of the problems with a parking lot that size and the Critical Environmental Area is there’s no treatment here. It’s just all being collected near a critical area and being dumped into the ground, and is there any mechanism in the Town to make sure that these sediment basins are cleaned out, that those basins are maintained, and also, what are we doing with all the snow from this project? If you look at something so finely landscaped and treed, I think I did a simple calculation saying if we had a one foot snowfall, that’s 8400 cubic yards of snow that’s got to go somewhere, and what time is that operation going to happen to the neighborhood, and I don’t think it means just how many people live directly around this. People a mile away, two miles away are going to be affected by this traffic and this type of operation. So I would suggest that, in your study, we need our own studies, either paid for by the applicant or paid for by the Town, to really assess what this is. These are the mouthpieces. I’m not saying they’re lying, but it’s their opinion. Traffic studies are certainly opinions. When 32 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) you say delay a car one second in traveling down a certain point on West Mountain Road, well, let’s say it is only one second, but that’s twelve and a half percent, and when we keep hearing that we have to have these 500 jobs, I cannot believe there’s no place in all of Warren County, in Queensbury, where this project couldn’t be sited, and I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Schermerhorn has to keep paying for a traffic light and a lane and everything else, when in fact Travelers is going to pay for it. I’m sure he’s not taking that out of his pocket. So it’s just one big sob story about this project. When in fact we should not grant the additional parking. If he wants to build a parking lot and it’s economically feasible, great. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. Let’s see, why don’t we go to this gentleman in the back of the room, please. Yes, sir. LOU BUCK MR. BUCK-Good evening, everybody. My name is Lou Buck. My family and I live at 251 Gurney Lane where we’ve resided for the past 25 years. I’m here this evening as a resident of this area of Queensbury where the development of an 85,000 square foot office building is being proposed at the intersection of Gurney Lane and West Mountain Road. I’m also here in my capacity as President of the West Mountain Corridor Residents for Responsible Land Use. I respectfully encourage the Zoning Board of Appeals not to accede to the request for the parking variance under consideration. When this area of Queensbury was rezoned Professional Office space several years ago, the underlying intention was to foster the development of low impact professional offices which would be compatible with residential use. As described in Article Three, Zoning Maps and Zoning Districts, and I quote, the Professional Office district encompasses areas where professional offices are encouraged. These are located along arterials adjoining residential areas where compatibility with residential uses is important. As defined by Queensbury Zoning Code Chapter 179, Article Two, Definitions and Word Usage, the definition of Professional Occupation is one who is, and I quote, engaged in professional services, including but not limited to all members of the fields of medicine, law, architecture, engineering, surveying, accounting, insurance planning or financial planning. In Article Four, Schedule of Regulations, Parking and Loading Regulations, the parking requirement to accommodate the professional staff, clients, customers and patients availing themselves of these professional services, is one vehicle per three hundred square feet of gross leasable space. The professional offices situated on the west side of Bay Road represent the type of professional offices which were originally intended for this section of Queensbury along the West Mountain corridor. This cluster of eight or so individual professional offices is comprised largely of medical and dental practices. The parking areas adjoining eight of these professional practices have a total of approximately 150 parking spaces with an average of 18 spaces per professional practice. This is professional office space. The project being proposed for the West Mountain Road and Gurney Lane intersection is not professional office space. The building being proposed is a large commercial office building. This 85,000 square foot structure is not suited for the rural and residential West Mountain Road/Gurney Lane corridor. In the Town of Queensbury’s Open Space Vision Plan, the Adirondack Northway and Gurney Lane are characterized in the following manner. Each has its own character that contributes to the Town sense of place. It’s only proper that these elements, the forested edge of the Northway, for example, be recognized and protected. All too many communities south of Queensbury are losing or have lost their unique character, that sense of place. The majority of the estimated 500 employees who would work in this office space are not professionals rendering a professional service as Article Two of the Queensbury Zoning Code defines Professional Occupation. These individuals would be engaged in the clerical operations of a major, nationwide insurance carrier, providing, among other things, backroom support to independent agencies and corporate clients across the United States. It is the professional insurance brokers and sales people and independent agencies, similar to Cool Insurance, McPhillips Insurance, the O’Brien Agency, and Loomis & LaPann, from whom we individuals purchase our home, auto, and life insurance. It is these licensed insurance brokers and sales people, not the 500 administrative and clerical staff who provide the type of professional service which allows insurance professionals to fall within the category Professional Occupation, along with other professional service providers like licensed physicians, dentists, architects, etc. The developer is requesting a variance for additional parking to accommodate 252 more vehicles above and beyond the approximate 285 which are permitted for an 85,000 square foot building in a Professional Office zone. The parking variance being requested is for a total of 537 vehicles. This represents a variance of roughly 90% above the permissible number of vehicles in a zone designated Professional Office. The sheer magnitude of a 90% variance being suggested clearly suggests, beyond any equivocation, that this project, involving a large commercial office 33 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) building, is being misrepresented as a project to development Professional Office space. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. Sir, you’re next, and then we’ll go with the lady with the red sweater will be next. RICHARD LINKE MR. LINKE-I have to warm up for 30 seconds, and while I’m warming up, I would like to do a magic show. No one is going to be hurt by this, okay. We have 537 cars in the morning, well, let’s call it even 400 at lunch, and then 537 in the afternoon. Watch what happens. This is 1500 automobiles being dumped upon our neighborhood by Mr. Schermerhorn’s project, and this is a good way for you to kind of visualize what kind of a mess is this guy putting on to our neighborhood. Okay. That was fun. All right. Now I’ve got that out of my system. I’m going to try to calm down here. Okay. Thank you. I obviously am very frustrated by this project. Recently I’ve been frustrated in getting the latest traffic report. I went over, that was due last Friday. I went over Monday morning. They couldn’t find it. Maybe later. I said, well, I’ll come back at four o’clock. Came back at four o’clock, and they said well, our machine is broken. Our machine is broken, why don’t you come back tomorrow. I came back tomorrow. Well, the clerk isn’t here. So anyway, I decided to get a new website for Queensbury Planning.com. I’ve registered that mark. We now have a nice, new website for the Planning Department. It’s .com. It’s not .gov, but what it means is we’re going to now have a little bit of a more even playing field in dealing with the pressures from Mr. Schermerhorn driving the bus through Queensbury and through the Town Hall and whatever. We have now a site. You’ll be able to do a Google on Queensbury Planning.com and up will come our site. STUART LINKE MR. S. LINKE-Queensbury Zoning. MR. R. LINKE-Queensbury Zoning. Okay. Now it’s going to be navigable. You’ll be going through and being able to see the things that I’m talking about tonight, and I realize that my time is so short, I’m going to go to a larger view here, Queensbury Zoning.com. All right. Overdevelopment, 30 years, overdevelopment is the issue. It’s not building something. It’s building in an overdeveloped way, and we’ve all seen the Wal-Mart parking lot size. I’m going to go quickly. These answers and these questions that you have to, as the Board, has to answer, will there be an undesirable change produced in the character of the neighborhood? Well, we have Route 9. We have that firestorm of commercial. We don’t really want his wildfire to come spreading into our neighborhood and setting the whole area on fire. West side is Rural Residential. It’s not a great big mega parking lot. You go over the bridge to the Northway to the west side, it’s a whole different world, Gurney Lane. Now, very interesting, Gurney Lane, five acre zoning, protected residential, trying to make Queensbury look good, and he wants to put this mega project right within, well, less than 1,000 feet from a five acre zoning situation, from a cemetery. Anything out of character here in the neighborhood? We have Gurney Lane recreation area, West Mountain, barn, just, you know, right down the road. Character. Now look at this. I would like you to look carefully at this image, and look at this image. This is out of character, folks. I’d like to go back to that. This looks like it’s in Wyoming somewhere. This is the character of this west side, not this. Now, six acres of blacktop, did you figure it out, six acres of blacktop he has. I’m not going to get into Professional Offices, but I would like you to think about parking spaces for people in this office building. Five hundred and thirty-seven people is more than you see in that picture. The fact is, whether the building is PO or not, or allowed or whatever, it is a commercial sized parking lot, and if the variance goes through, it’s an industrial sized parking lot. It’s bigger than 99.9% of the rest of the parking lots in Queensbury. Now, look at his view here to the building. It looks rather smallish, that’s because of the angled view. Notice that there are only 63 parking spaces shown and they’re empty. Now, look down below. That gives you a better idea of what this is going to look like. Look at the span of space on either side, and he has proposed trees, one, two, three, not enough. Unbelievable. Massive commercial project out of character. I’m going to go on because I’ve got to run. Will there be a detriment to nearby properties? Of course. Here we are at the exit ramp. Cars backing up already. More traffic means more danger. No pedestrian sidewalks. We have three traffic lights. He wants to put in another one. We’re going to have backed up gridlock. If the light is green, so what. You’re not going to be able to go anywhere. Look at this. Figure the traffic. How is it going to go? Gridlock. You’re not going to be able to move. MR. ABBATE-Mr. Linke, excuse me, sir, but your time is up. 34 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. LINKE-Okay. Well, maybe someone else would love to. AUDIENCE MEMBER-I’ll give him my time. MR. ABBATE-Would you like to give him your time. That means, of course, you won’t be able to testify. AUDIENCE MEMBER-That’s all right. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Linke, you have five more minutes. MR. LINKE-In the midst of this, we have West Mount Heath Care. In the midst of all of this gridlock. Now, Exit 20 bridge, the whole infrastructure around here is not built for commercial, heavy duty traffic. Can you imagine, on the bridge you can’t go by. Traffic problems will extend beyond, certainly beyond 20. People are going to go down to 19. They’re going to have to go through two school zones, 25 mile an hour school zones. Then, on the corner of Aviation and Mountain View, you have disabled children crossing in wheelchairs on a two lane road. Then, Mountain View, straight away. That’s going to be good. We take this shortcut, but think about it. It’s not a legal road, apparently. It’s narrow. Notice there are no sidewalks. In the wintertime, think about a snow bank in there, and I feel so sorry for the people living there. You can’t back out of your own driveway, if there’s this string of cars coming and going. Bonner Drive, Lehland Estates. They’re all landlocked there. They only have one way out. They can’t go another way. Some traffic, Exit 21, out of character. Okay. Quality of life will diminish. Property values will fall. Nobody’s going to want to buy these houses along Mountain View Lane when you have this new traffic. Is the variance substantial? Well, I was trying to be nice. Sixty to eighty percent. It’s more than that. It’s extreme. This is important. Please look. These red spots are the parking spots, the extra parking that he wants. That’s a lot of extra parking spots that we don’t want, and his engineer is talking about balloons on the building. Well, we’re talking about parking tonight. We’re talking about parking and seeing a sea of cars. Look, if you don’t grant this variance tonight, that space could be green space. That could be more buffer zone. Okay. This is the fourth question. Environmental, yes. Everybody else can talk about that, but move on. Three scenic roads, heavily impacted by this six acres of blacktop. Notice the CEA, Critical Environmental Area, is right in his parking lot there, in fact a corner of the building. Okay. I’m not going to get into that. I do want to talk about this. Don’t damage that, and by the way, any of these images you can see on the website, including the Board and Planners. Two lane bridge, and I’ve trying to get the traffic report, as I said. It’s bogus. Nowhere are they talking about the tractor trailer trucks. They’re talking about how many cars can fit on a ramp, but they’re not talking about tractor trailer trucks coming from Canada, coming from Vermont, slowing things down. The area is not built for commercial. Look at this. I guess this guy wants to go up on the shoulder and probably hit somebody on the way out. All right. Was the difficulty self-created? The applicant had an opportunity to present a low impact, low density professional office project and he chose not to. He chose not to. The interests of one individual cannot be allowed to interfere with the well-being of the community as a whole. He can’t set a fire on his property that’s going to blow over and effect everyone else, and, a little political note here, all throughout your language, in all of the laws and regulations, it says conformity with all the provisions, not just the politically convenient ones. Thank you for your time. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much, Mr. Linke. Do we have anyone else in the audience who’d like to address? The young lady in red, please. Would you be kind enough to speak into the microphone and just tell us who you are. TANYA BRUNO MRS. BRUNO-Good evening. Tanya Bruno, 119 Gurney Lane. My family and I have lived there for about 10 years. It’s necessary for me to repeat what I’ve repeated before, and that is I’m a member of the Planning Board, and have recused myself on this particular project because I had spoken as a member of the public in January of ’06 regarding the same site other project, the townhouses. So I felt it necessary for the clarity of that. Also bear with me, I had a written statement and I decided to scrap that. So I’ve just got a couple of points that I’d like to make. This is perhaps more of a Planning Board issue, and I will mention it to them when we sit in front of him again, but a source that is directly involved with the County planned building, of the new annex to the new Municipal Center, said that the County hadn’t looked into joining the sewer line as of two weeks ago, and I would just like to suggest that this Board or the Planning Board should request the documentation from the applicant that would be received from 35 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) the County stating that the County’s interest, if that is indeed true. Two other notes, actually. Just in response to some of the statements made by Mr. Lapper and Creighton Manning’s engineer. In terms of the houses within a half mile, a quarter mile, and where they compared it to, between this building and the Tribune building, they’re in different parts of the Town. The Open Space Plan determined our neighborhood as unique as you saw, that Mr. Linke just showed. So I really don’t think that that’s a good comparison. The other point is that the school buses. Comparing where Travelers is right now to where it could be in the Gurney Lane, completely different area. That’s a commercial area. Sure school buses can go through there, it’s Route 9. School buses in our area, that’s a whole other thing. Kids are stopping and getting off. We’ve got the park there. Traffic wise, increased traffic on Gurney Lane, something that Mr. Buck didn’t mention, that many of the people on Gurney Lane have tried to do for years now, was to get the speed limit slowed down on Gurney Lane, and they did end up putting up signs, two to three years ago, slowing the traffic down to 30, 35 miles an hour. That really doesn’t happen. Some people mind that. Others don’t. The important point is that you would not believe the number of near accidents that we hear and see outside of the park every summer. It’s incredible. Those didn’t show up in the traffic report, but it is a dangerous area, and to increase that, the difference during Americade is incredible. We had a couple of motorcycle accidents right by our house, within that one week, just because of the increased traffic. Okay, and to the point that I really wanted to get to. Mr. Lapper had pointed out or said that the project could not be built out, no, that the project could be built out more on the size of a property of 17.8 acres. I disagree with that. The project could not be built out more. The site will not support it. As it is, some of the parking and almost part of the building is in a CEA, like Mr. Linke had just shown, which I think is a great graphic, because the CEA line on their map is very light. Because of the CEA, the Critical Environmental Area’s proximity, 64.9% of green space is almost irrelevant. If the CEA area is removed from the green space calculation, I’d like to know what the calculation, or the percentage of the green space would be. I don’t have my scale with me tonight. It would be easy enough for Mr. Nace to pull it up on his program and do a little area calc, but, in other words, to figure out, take that CEA area out, what’s your green space compared to what the parking with the building and all of that is. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 30% or less. Given some of the other projects that we have looked at around Rush Pond, one in particular was a private residents on the other side, there were some unusual land forms that the applicant had to work around in order to get their driveway in, because otherwise it would have involved blasting and that type of thing. They had a very small part of a driveway that was permeable, and quite frankly the hoops that we put them through to try to keep the least of that away from the environmentally protected area was incredible. MR. ABBATE-Your time is up. Thank you very much. Yes, that gentleman in the back of the room, that’ll be two, then I’ll move right over to here to this group. You, sir, and then, you, sir. Good evening. LEN FOSBROOK MR. FOSBROOK-Good evening. Mr. Chairman, members of the Board, my name is Len Fosbrook. I’m President of the Economic Development Corporation here in Warren County, and I’d like to give you some of our concerns relative to this project. Seventy percent of Warren County is inside the Blue Line or in the Adirondack Park, and development within the Adirondack Park, as you all know, is very difficult. Only 30% of our land mass lies outside of the Park, and we anticipate that lands that are zoned for office and light industrial will continue to see more pressure as time goes by. Simply because we are trying to recruit, retain and expand the economy here in Warren County. Now we’ve been talking with this client, Travelers, for several months, and we have offered them a variety of solutions relative to, you know, their project and their expansion, and the first one we offered was the CNA building in Glens Falls, but that didn’t meet their specifications because they didn’t want to be cut up on several floors. In fact, they’d prefer to be on one floor rather than two, which this building would allow them, and our second choice was to put them at the Exit 18, Glens Falls Technical Park. However, the City of Glens Falls refused an offer which they made at that Park. So we found it very difficult, from there forward, to try to accommodate their needs, and it seemed that this site was the site that they found that best suited their needs. Our concerns are that 500 jobs and a payroll estimated to be maybe around 18 million dollars is very significant to this economy. There are two types of businesses in our community. There are the primary businesses, which generate their income from outside the area and bring those dollars to our community, and there’s the consumable business, which are made up of about 70% of the businesses, that use that income that turns over in our economy to support them. If we lose Travelers, and it’s very possible, because once these businesses look at their options, they look at all the options, and that includes 36 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) other locations outside of this County, then we will potentially lose that payroll, those jobs, and a corresponding loss in the other businesses that depend on that payroll. So we’re concerned that we try to retain these jobs at whatever value that we can. Certainly we don’t want to be disruptive for the community, but we do support retaining Travelers in Warren County. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-I thank you, sir. I believe the gentleman, there. Would you be kind enough to come to the table, speak into the microphone and identify yourself, please. Good evening, sir. SAM BUTTO MR. BUTTO-Good evening. My name is Sam Butto. I live on 75 Gurney Lane. I’ve been there for about 14 years. What I’d like to do, first, is to read you a proposal that was submitted to the Town Planning Board last time, not a proposal, excuse me, it’s a petition which was read into the record and handed to the Town Planning Board which was addressed both to the Town Planning Board and to the Zoning Board of Appeals. I’d like to read it just for the record. The undersigned object to the proposed Schermerhorn office complex on the Gurney Lane and West Mountain Road intersection. We are residents in and around this area and feel that the addition of 537 or more vehicles coming to and going from this office structure during the work week would gridlock an area which is already congested with traffic flow. In addition, the project would destroy the area’s rural character by placing a box store structure at the site. This, along with our concern that runoff would severely, or could severely effect environmentally sensitive areas, causes us to urge both the Town Planning Board and the Town Zoning Board of Appeals to deny this project. Now there were 125 residents that signed this petition. That’s in the record and the petition itself is at the Town Planning Board right now. Just to let you know, you have to know that traffic is already an enormous problem there, and it won’t be solved by any traffic light or whatever traffic circle that’s being proposed here. The traffic study that’s been done, I believe was done now, and needs to be done during the peak time of the summer. I think you need to ask for that before you can determine whether or not there’s going to be an impact. Somebody’s already said to you about the significance of the extra parking spaces being somewhere around 88% more than what would be due. Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, that in your opening remark, you made certain reference to this Board being a quasi- judicial Board and that you were going to be reviewing facts, both evidenced by. MR. ABBATE-The evidence contained in the record. MR. BUTTO-Correct. What I’m saying is, Mr. Schermerhorn, I’m glad to hear you say that. Mr. Schermerhorn has said to you that he has tried not to circumvent the rules. He’s tried to work straight with you and he’s tried to follow all the rules and regulations. When in fact, on Friday, he went to the Board of Supervisors and asked for a resolution essentially to muscle, have the Board of Supervisors muscle both the Town Planning Board and the Town Zoning Board of Appeals into passing his project. That’s totally inappropriate. MR. ABBATE-Excuse me. I can assure you no one will muscle this Board, sir, under any circumstances. MR. BUTTO-I understand you’re saying that, sir. All I’m saying is the process that he (lost word) was to try and get that to happen, and it’s in the Chronicle today. You can read it for yourselves. MR. ABBATE-And also, did I hear you right when you said that there was a petition signed by 125 people, and we got a copy? I don’t have a copy in my records. MR. BUTTO-I’m saying that the copy is retained in the Town Planning Board’s records. Right now they have it. MR. ABBATE-You said a copy was sent to the Zoning Board of Appeals. MR. BUTTO-No, sir. I said that this petition was intended for both the Town Planning Board and the Town Zoning Board of Appeals. MR. ABBATE-We never received it. MR. BUTTO-I’d be happy to give you a copy. 37 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-Please. MR. BUTTO-I’ll get a copy to you. MR. ABBATE-If you present that to us, we will certainly introduce it as a part of the evidence in record. MR. BUTTO-Very good. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-You’re very welcome. Thank you, and I think I promised that gentleman right there, please. All right. PAUL DERBY MR. DERBY-Good evening. I’m Paul Derby. I live at 86 Ash Drive. I am President of the Glen Lake Protective Association, and I’m here representing the Association. We currently have 321 voluntary members. On October 25, 2007, at a meeting of the membership, by unanimous vote, they voted that I could and would represent them on this particular project. So I’m here with their grace. I’m also Assistant Professor of Sociology at Castleton State College in Vermont. I’m Coordinator of the Community Studies Program there, of the American Democracy Project. I’m also the Green Campus Initiative Coordinator, which is an environmental sustainability initiative, and in January of ’08 I will be defending my doctoral dissertation on the Ecological History of Glen Lake, and this is my first public announcement, no surprise. My conclusion is that over the last 200 years the ecology of the lake has degraded and continues to degrade, and the primary reason for that is because of unregulated and overdevelopment in the watershed. I have five points to make this evening. The first is as a professional Social Scientist. The applicant was up here for more than one hour making argument. Limiting the time of public comment, according to Social Science, is unfair and undemocratic, and I understand that you have a right to do it. MR. ABBATE-Excuse me. Say that again, please. MR. DERBY-I’m saying that limiting the time for my five minutes is really an unfair process. MR. ABBATE-Let me explain something to you, sir. Under the law, I do not have to accept any type of public testimony. I only do it as a courtesy. Under the law. So continue. JOHN SALVADOR MR. SALVADOR-No, you must have a public hearing. MR. ABBATE-Sit down, Mr. Salvador. MR. SALVADOR-Mr. Chairman, Town law says you must have a public hearing. MR. ABBATE-I will request you to recuse yourself. I’m warning you. Go ahead. MR. DERBY-Okay. Thank you. I’m just making the comment as a Social Scientist that it’s democratic process. I’m not saying that you’re not doing that. I’m just saying that limiting time, you wonder why some people are frustrated. Okay. I’ll move on to my environmental comments. The second comment is that the applicant stated that this site, quoting, can accommodate far more development than is being proposed. That there are two slots here that another parking garage could go in, that another building could go in. As the woman stated, I think two or three before me, that argument or premise is really inaccurate because the vast majority of that second lot, maybe all of it, and almost all of the green space has, in fact, in Critical Environmental Area, and therefore there are limitations about the types of development that can happen there. The third piece is that the Glen Lake Protective Association opposes this variance because the applicant has not proven that this development will not do environmental damage to the Glen Lake watershed and to Glen Lake, and I just want to direct your attention to the Glen Lake watershed management plan, which was adopted by the Town of Queensbury in 1997. I know the Planning Board has a copy. I’ll certainly give you a copy of this. Quoting from that plan, Page 33, the Town Planning Board, Zoning Board, and the Department of Community Development, when making decisions on projects located within the Glen Lake watershed, are to use the guidelines set forth in the plan as a tool and guide to controlling point and non-point source pollution within the 38 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) watershed. Chapter Four of this plan lists recommendations and goals. Section One goal is to, quote, protect and improve the water quality of Glen Lake and its tributaries. Under Section Five, new development is to quote, ensure that future development within the greater Glen Lake watershed is appropriate and sustainable. It is the opinion of the Glen Lake Protection Association that the proposed development which would be built entirely within the Glen Lake watershed in no way would improve the water quality of Glen Lake and its tributaries, and further that the applicant hasn’t proved that it won’t do environmental damage to Rush Pond and Meadow Run tributaries. Further, Point Four, st on November 1, I appeared before the Planning Board and the GLPA, Glen Lake Protective Association, in writing, asked the Planning Board to make the applicant do a full blown Environmental Impact Statement, and that if this was not done, that we would ask for reasoning to the Glen Lake Protective Association in writing. The applicant voluntarily tabled their application that evening. Therefore no decisions were made. Therefore we don’t know if a Full Environmental Impact Statement will be required, and as of this moment, I have not received any correspondence from the Town, as was directed by the Chairman of that committee, Chairman Hunsinger. Thus I don’t know if this Board can act at this point about your issue, because we haven’t resolved the issue about whether an Environmental Impact Statement will be done. MR. ABBATE-Your time is up, sir. Let me ask you a question, you indicated something, a piece of correspondence was submitted to us? MR. DERBY-No, to the Planning Board. MR. ABBATE-I’m sorry. Okay. The Planning Board. MR. DERBY-I asked the Planning Board that they ask the applicant to do a Full Environmental Impact Statement, and that if they weren’t required to do that, that the Town, the Board or the Staff, give their reasoning in writing, and they were directed to do that. I don’t have that. So I don’t know what that decision is. Therefore, we don’t know if there’s going to be a Full Environmental Impact Statement, and I think that impacts what happens to the parking decision and your other decisions here. My last point is regarding the opinion of Dave Wick on the project stormwater. I want you to know that the Glen Lake Protective Association did not request that Dave Wick do this. We also had no knowledge that he was doing this analysis for the applicant, and I was not aware of this until late this afternoon when I was cc’d this e-mail with this plan. This is interesting because the Glen Lake Protective Association thought that Dave Wick and Warren County Soil and Water was, at this very time, working with the Glen Lake Protective Association on a rather substantial grant, a more than $100,000 grant, to do a detailed survey of the problems of stormwater runoff at the lake and within the watershed. The position of the Association has been very clear in the public. It’s been publicly out there, and I feel that Dave Wick’s opinion appears to be a conflict of interest that he’s working with both parties at the same time, and therefore, we’re going to need to get another, someone else to look at this and requesting time, 90 days, to go out and hire and expert, look at the stormwater plans, get a rendered opinion, and we ask that you table that until we can get that information, and, just in conclusion, we just need to see, I mean, we’re very concerned about the environment. Of course at Glen Lake, it does affect us. It’s more than nine people. We’re talking about a large community that really is working hard to try to better our environment, and we really need to be assured that this won’t affect us. MR. ABBATE-Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. MR. DERBY-Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Good evening. STUART LINKE MR. S. LINKE-Good evening. My name’s Stuart Linke, and I grew up on Gurney Lane, and I’d just like to comment on the character of the neighborhood, since that is one of your points of concern. I think that there is absolutely no doubt that increased traffic to the point of gridlock would change the character of the neighborhood, and that paving six acres of green space in the neighborhood would be a detriment to the neighborhood, and I’m a graduate student at Harvard University right now, and I’m considering where to live when I finish my graduate work, and as far as moving back here, if the character of the neighborhood does not remain a rural, mountainous, scenic road area, I don’t know if it’s got the same sort of appeal, and, you know, if that’s changed, if my opinion changes, I’d say that there was a change in the character of the neighborhood, and if I wanted to move to an area with parking lots and gridlock I’d move to Paramus, New Jersey not Queensbury, New York. So, thank you. 39 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-All right. Thank you very much. I have to go to this lady in the blue, please. MR. MC NULTY-Mr. Chairman, I’m sorry. I’ve got a very early morning commitment. So I’m going to have to leave. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you, Mr. McNulty. I appreciate that. Brian, would you like to sit in? Please, ma’am. GAIL BUTTO MRS. BUTTO-Good evening. I’m Gail Butto and I live on Gurney Lane. I’m one of those nine homes in the rural, scenic area. Any use of this tract of land that would require 537 parking spaces would be an egregious imposition on the rural nature of the adjoining neighborhood. Not only would a project of this overblown size leave an irrevocable scar on this scenic, wooded, Adirondack skyline, because the congestion it would cause in traffic overload it would give Exit 20 a new imprint in people’s minds. Exit 20, a place to avoid. This is certainly not the impression the merchants on Route 9 corridor want to convey to our permanent residents, nor to our vacationing guests. My primary concern, however, is not the inconvenience of the traffic overload. It is the potential for danger that it will surely generate. The undeniable impact of the sheer numbers of cars, 537 each morning an evening, as well as the noontime lunch runs and the lunch delivery cars, is going to be monumental. We have no guarantee that the tenant will always be a tenant that works in shifts as well. Add to that support vehicles such as delivery trucks, garbage trucks, postal vans, UPS trucks, landscaping trucks, plows, beeping, maintenance trucks and cleaning service trucks. I am gravely worried that this heavy daily traffic flow, much of which will be at a standstill, will undoubtedly cement the gridlock that currently occurs on Route 9 and that it will extend across the two Northway bridges. These two overpasses are only wide enough to accommodate two vehicles. There is only a 30 inch shoulder on each side. Consequently, any fire, police or medical vehicle would be prevented from responding to an emergency awaiting their timely arrival on the other side. Even if, out of the 179 per shift, one third, is moving, even that, that’s maybe 55 people, put 55 people, 55 cars at a standstill on that bridge, and no emergency vehicle will be able to clear it. This already sensitive area includes the West Mount Health Facility, Warren County annexes, the Gurney Lane pool and recreation center as well as many residences. Why add to that population with the burden of an additional 500 to 600 workers and vehicles. All would be denied the expectation of a speedy delivery of emergency responders. This is a recipe for a disastrous outcome. Since the western side of the Northway, between Exits 19 and 20, was never intended to be a commercial zone, I respectfully request that the Zoning Board consider an emergency services assessment of the problems a project of this magnitude would surely create. Please include in this assessment, all the stakeholders, especially those who must drive those rescue vehicles. Please give all the residents and all the workers in the neighborhood an assurance that we will not be left unprotected from an emergency situation. We appeal to you to protect us by denying this parking variance. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. Yes, sir, please. Good evening. BOB FALLMANN MR. FALLMANN-Hi. My name’s Bob Fallmann. I live on Gurney Lane. I’ve been up there for about 28, almost 30 years I guess now, and Dick kind of stole a lot of my thunder. So I’m going to have to do a few things. I guess the first comment I’d like to make is on the balloons. I didn’t like the balloons at all. I don’t see how you could put four balloons in the middle of a pine forest and say that approximates what an office building, an 85,000 square foot office building’s going to look like, in the middle of six acres of blacktop. No way. To me that stretches my imagination. I’d also like to make a comment, I know Mr. Lapper had mentioned when he was describing Professional Office that it was really designed to act as a transition zone between commercial areas and residential areas. That property across the street from this project is zoned one acre residential. Most of Gurney Lane is zoned five acre residential. An 85,000 square foot building with six acres of blacktop is not transitional to that type of a neighborhood. That’s way out of whack. Mr. Underwood made a good point. I live on Gurney Lane right now, and he says when that jams up, the traffic jams up, on that road, they’re going to go across Gurney Lane, and you’re absolutely right. It used to be that way up until this summer that the people from Luzerne would come over there in the morning on Gurney Lane to avoid the Route 9 traffic by the outlets there, but even they’ve stopped because 40 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) you cannot get across that bridge in the morning when The Great Escape is operating. When I come down that hill in the morning to get across that bridge there, many times I can’t even make it to the Northway. I have to turn down West Mountain Road and go down that way. The same situation when you’re coming back. I go over Aviation Road and come back West Mountain Road, you can’t get through there, and no amount of playing with the traffic lights is going to help that any. That traffic light at Route 9 on there, the people, there are so many are cars trying to get through that one intersection there, they just get gridlocked because everybody’s trying to inch their way through before the light changes. They get caught in the middle of the road and nobody can go anywhere, and the same holds true for the exits on the Northway. In the morning on that southbound exit coming off there, that traffic backs up onto the Northway already. I’m not even talking about the project being in there, as it is right now. That’s a very dangerous situation. Same thing on the south side. You can go across that bridge sometimes and the south side’s backed up on the other side of that trying to get off to go to The Great Escape. It’s, you know, you can talk about traffic surveys, but you’re not, this is a very unique situation. We live in a tourist area up there. You’ve got all the people going to Vermont getting off at that exit. You’ve got people going to Great Escape or Lake George and everything else. You’re not going to find that in a traffic book. You need to, if you want to know what the traffic’s going to be like there in the summertime, you’ve got to do that survey in the summertime when they’re there. You can’t do it in October after all the summer people have gone, the leaf people are gone, and before the skiers get there. It’s meaningless, and the other thing I think Gail touched on the safety situation on here. Right now, as that situation is in the summertime, you couldn’t get a safety, a fire truck through that intersection or an ambulance through that intersection. You’ve got a nursing home over there now that I’m sure on occasion requires an ambulance. If you’re going to put a 500, I know there’s probably going to be more than 500 employees in that building, what are you going to do when one of them has a heart attack and The Great Escape’s running? Minutes matter in something like that. Somebody could die because of that, because they just couldn’t get help in time. What if you had an incident like what you had down at Travelers down here with the, a year ago or so when they had some sort of a gas problem or something, you had to evacuate a lot of people. How would you get any help to them? There’s no way. That traffic situation there is just a disaster waiting to happen as it is now, and to try to compound it with more cars, with 500 and some odd more cars, it’s crazy. One last thing, too, I wanted to mention. I guess Mr. Lapper, in his summation here was talking about, he mentioned that Rich had, Mr. Schermerhorn had proposed an apartment complex back in, I’m going to say it was in January or February of 2006, and that he had withdrawn that project, which is true, and he said at that meeting he asked Mr. Hunsinger whether, you know, the people of the neighborhood would support a four story office building, and there was a resounding no. If you don’t believe me, I think that’s on the record of tapes, and, Mr. Schermerhorn went ahead and bought the property anyway. thth He didn’t buy that property until the 16, I think it closed on the 16 of April 2006. Mr. Hunsinger at that meeting had said to him, you know, he advised him, he didn’t tell him anything, he just advised him that you might want to consider doing something like on the west side of Bay Road that the neighbors would go along with. End of story. I thought I needed to clear that up. MR. ABBATE-Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. All right. This gentleman right here, please, sir. DON ROSS MR. ROSS-Hi. Good evening. I’m Don Ross. I live on West Mountain Road. I live between Bonner Drive and Gurney Lane, and one of the reasons that I just bought a piece of property over on the west end, or east end, because I’ve got to get off the west end because of this road. Back in I think 2004, I requested a traffic study from Warren County, which they did for West Mountain Road, and back then they said the traffic, the latest study they had was back in 2001, which gave a count of about 3200 cars on West Mountain Road a day. So, and they said that’s probably, according to the national average, it’s one to one and a half percent increase each year. So you figure that’s six years, that’s another, what, nine percent, six to nine percent of traffic on that road, and now you’ve got to add another, he said 30% of the 500, that’s almost another 200. So you’re talking about 4,000 cars on West Mountain Road a day. That’s ridiculous. I mean, I can’t get out of my driveway now. I go to work at eight o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got to wait for probably five minutes for cars to clear Gurney Lane, or I mean, Bonner Drive and West Mountain Road in order to back out to get to work. There is just way too much traffic on that road right now, and I can’t imagine putting another 200 cars on that road a day. They’re saying 30% of the 570. That’s too many cars for that road. It can’t handle it. Thanks. 41 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-You’re very welcome. Thank you. Yes, ma’am, please. Good evening. NORA BUCK MRS. BUCK-Hi, how are you. My name is Nora Buck. I live on Gurney Lane and have for 25 years. First of all, I do want to apologize. I am quite nervous and my voice is quite tight. I’ve never done this before. So, apologies for that. I notice some of my neighbors, however, with the same kind of tightness and I think that’s all because this is really, really important to us, and I think that needs to be presented. The project engineer addressed what could be seen, and the traffic guru tried to blind us to future problems in an already nightmarish situation, but those aren’t my particular concerns tonight. My concerns are what is going to be ruined. With these additional parking spaces comes the traffic that you get to fill them. The obvious pollution, congestion, accidents, dangers to pedestrians and bikers and runners that use that area. What’s going to be ruined? Once you’ve ruined this part of Queensbury, it’s ruined forever. Even after Travelers leaves to yet another new home eventually 20 years down the road, that area is gone. You can’t get it back. Mr. Lapper suggested that Mr. Schermerhorn is doing us a favor by not ruining the land as badly as he could. Yes, thanks for that. He also mentions that far fewer people will be directly affected because so many fewer people live within a quarter mile of this site. That just proves how ill-suited this project is to this site. We’re zoned five acres. Of course there’s going to be fewer people there. We’re zoned five acres. Five acres per home next to 500 parking spots. I just don’t see it. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-You’re very welcome. Thank you. Mr. Salvador, please. JOHN SALVADOR MR. SALVADOR-Good evening. My name is John Salvador, and I’m not a resident in the Gurney Lane area, but I have a lot of interest in the interpretation and the meaning of our Code. Before I get into the subject of parking, you know, I’d feel a lot better tonight if Travelers was here. It seems like they’ve lost their tongue. Everyone has to speak for Travelers. Travelers could be an applicant here, if they’re really serious about this. The other thing this Board should remember, everyone should remember, tenants come and go. Tenants come and go. The variances you grant go with the land. Now they’ve made a big case here tonight, centered around the needs of Travelers. As we know, they come and go. I did the same thing Mr. Urrico did. I went and counted their parking places. It seems to me they could live with what’s allowed here, from what I count. You confirmed that, didn’t you, Mr. Urrico? Thank you. Mr. Lapper made the comment that Mr. Schermerhorn could flippantly put in a public parking lot. Public parking lot’s open to the public. If you were a tenant on this property, would you want to share with the public? Parking public usually gets, you park for a fee, and parking fees are sales taxable. The practical difficulties of accomplishing that preclude it from every happening, and what’s the need for public parking out there? There’s a requirement here that there will be a consolidation of land. I think the intent, the purpose of Professional Office zoning is subdivision of land. Subdivision of land, so that you get smaller facilities on a given lot, spread it out. I see that as being counterproductive. Now I know it’s a small lot that they’re talking about, but I really believe the whole thought around Professional Offices was a subdivision of land. The schedule here shows that the SEQRA Type is Unlisted. Now you’ve heard all about the Critical Environmental Area. There is mention here, in Staff Notes, that consideration may be given to a coordinated SEQRA review given the proposed New York State DOT involvement. Do we know what that involvement is or is going to be? And maybe this should rise to a Type I action. Being in a Critical Environmental Area. That’s something that could happen. Mr. Schermerhorn makes the comment that sewer capacity is available. I’d like to see those calculations. I’d like to see how he’s going to get down Sweet Road, down to that pump station, and if it’s going to work, and is there capacity for an out of district user? The capacity of that line’s been committed for district users, even though they’re not tied in yet. So that has to be sorted out. Back to the subject of parking. Staff has characterized this project, they say the relief requested from parking requirements. I think that’s a poor description of what’s required. The relief is requested from parking limitation. There’s a limit on how much parking you can put here, and it’s limited by the number of square feet of office, that’s the limit, and you don’t need a variance to have less. If you want to put in less parking, you don’t need a variance, and I think the intent, the intent of that, the way that’s worded and the limitation is to prevent urban sprawl. What you have here is a parking lot with a building in the middle of it. That’s really all you have. The big issue is the parking, how we’re going to handle that. In any case, I think the parking space limitations are driven by the building square footage, the limitations. The 88% relief speaks for itself, speaks for itself. It was not to be foreseen. The planners and the zoning people that put 42 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) the 20% relief in, that could be granted by the Planning Board, understood that there were certain types of professional office that maybe needed a little more, a little more than what was allowed in the Code, and rather than come to this Board for a variance, the Planning Board could grant it. The Planning Board, given deference to the type of professional service that’s in the building. So the 88, to me, the 88% relief should have precluded any furtherance of this project for Professional Office. It’s just way out of bounds. We’ve talked about the six acres of parking. That wasn’t foreseen in Professional Office zoning. That just wasn’t foreseen. One parking place per 300 square feet of office space is quite a limitation. It’s quite a limitation. You can get more than one person working in 300 square feet of space. You usually do. So, as I say, the way the zoning is laid out, it’s a limitation. We don’t want the urban sprawl, and that’s what we’re getting here. Feasible alternatives, I mean, if I really wanted to take an operation of 500 employees and stick them out in the boonies, so to speak, you know, you might provide some shuttle service for them. You might provide a, maybe there’s public transportation available that would help them. Maybe there’s a carpooling arrangement. Some other alternative to just one parking place per employee. I think that’s outrageous. Again, the relief requested is very substantial, very substantial, and should not be granted. The other thing I’d like to point out that the subject of the appeal that you’ve been issued, been noticed on is quite different from this. It has really nothing to do with parking, and one should not be dependent on the other. Your addressing and issuing whatever variance you want to or the denial of the variance is truly independent of the subject of that appeal. So thank you for your time. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much, Mr. Salvador. MR. BUTTO-My name is Sam Butto. I’m on Gurney Lane. There was one other point that I wanted to make to the Board, that there’s been a lot of discussion about these 500 and some odd jobs, and everybody’s sensitive about that’s a very emotional issue. Mr. Schermerhorn, Mr. Lapper and some of the Town government officials have indicated that they were going to be saving 500 jobs, that there would be a layoff of 500 people, and I just, for the life of me, I’ve been in personnel and employee relations for over 30 years. I can’t believe anybody, any company would layoff 500 people. The people who would be on the bread line would be the people who made the decision in that company to lay 500 people off, because they’d never be able to get to recruit, hire, and train people to do the same thing. It would be extremely costly. These people that they’re talking about, maybe they’re going to move to Saratoga County. We don’t know that, and I agree with Mr. Salvador. We should hear from the Travelers people. If they truly intend to do something like that, or if the Town has information, you shouldn’t be the people who have to have that weigh on your shoulders and sway your decisions one way or another because of that factor. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. I’m going to go right here. This lady right here, please, and then you are next, sir. Good evening. KATHY FRANKLIN MRS. FRANKLIN-Hi. I’m Kathy Franklin. A lot of people have said a lot of what I had in mind to say, and I didn’t actually mean to use these pictures as an exhibit, but I think I’m going to have to at this point. MR. ABBATE-By all means. MRS. FRANKLIN-And I only have one copy. MR. ABBATE-That’s quite all right. We’ll pass it down. MRS. FRANKLIN-I live right next to this proposed project, but I think the reason that so many people have signed petitions and so many people have stayed up all hours of the night to come to the meetings and so many people have organized and tried to get together, is because this area means a lot to a lot of people. Those are the people who drive by casually, and if you look at this pictures, you’ll see what you see coming down West Mountain, and what you see going up the Northway, or actually north on the Northway, and I didn’t do Gurney Lane, because my camera ran out of battery, but if you look at the other set of pictures, you’ll see what’s on the right hand side of Bay Road, which is not an 85,000 square foot building. It’s about half of that, with about a third of the parking, and you can see that those two things don’t really go together. I mean, I don’t think I can really say it as well as you can see it in those pictures. They don’t make much sense together. There’s got to be a reason that this 300 square feet per one space, other than the fact that, you know, as an overreaction to K-Mart’s parking lot. I 43 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) think that people put a limitation on the parking spaces because they want to put a limitation on the potential pollution, light, noise pollution, traffic congestion, safety issues. Those things are all keyed into this number. That number is not arbitrary, although it was made out to be somewhat arbitrary. The light, the blacktop, the activity all affect animal life, migration, coyotes, Bard owls. I know both of them are there. I hear them. As well as deer, fisher cats, foxes, piliated woodpeckers, lots of little brown birds. All of those things depend on the water in that area. The water itself flows from his pond to the brook down below to the Rush Pond through the sands, through the 23 feet of sands, I heard somebody was saying that doesn’t work. It does. All of the watershed heads towards Rush Pond and Glen Lake, and I’m no expert. We had an expert. It occurs to me that we need a lot more experts. We don’t seem to have anywhere near enough information. We don’t have a Full Environmental Impact Statement. We don’t have a full safety statement. We don’t have any real clear sense of who this tenant will be 10 years from now. What we have is a lot of fright, fright that we’re going to have economic development, no economic development, and then on the other end people feeling like there’s not going to be a place to be. We just heard a young man say he doesn’t want to come and live here and work if it doesn’t look like a good place to live and work. That’s what zoning is for, is to make us have a community that can sustain economic development and have an environment in which you would want to live. It’s a balance. I think this whole process is actually, the project that’s been proposed has actually improved over the last two months because of this balancing going back and forth between the neighborhood and the applicant, but I have a feeling there’s only so much improvement that can be made in something that just doesn’t fit. I guess that’s all I had to say. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. Okay. This gentleman on the end. JOHN STROUGH MR. STROUGH-John Strough, 7 Woodcrest Drive. When this got zoned Professional Office, we took into consideration what the 1998 Comprehensive Land Use Plan said, and by the way, I think you’ll find the words pretty much mimicked in the 2007 Comprehensive Land Use Plan. I’m willing to bet that you could even look into the 1988 Comprehensive Land Use Plan and you’d see the same thing, that being that this area, the west side of the Interstate, is an area that is rural, residential, and has some serious environmental issues, and that any development that should occur there should take all that into consideration, and we did. So when we zoned it Professional Office, what we were looking at is, you know, something along the lines of Evergreen, near Sokol’s Market, or on the west side of Bay Road. In other words, something that was residential appearing, professional offices that provide a professional services to the neighborhood and to the community, clustered, shared parking, well vegetated and blended right in well with the residential area that it is. So that’s what was envisioned. Now, because someone owns a piece of property and it’s zoned a certain way, we all know that you don’t have any given right to develop it in the maximum way that the Town Code allows you to. You have to take environmental considerations, facts into consideration, but given that, we want Travelers to stay here, and we want Travelers to be happy, but Travelers is a commercial office. I just spoke of a professional office providing professional services, and that character, that traffic, everything is different than a commercial office. This is a commercial office where you’re going to get an AM burst of traffic. You’re going to get noon burst of traffic. You’re going to get a 5:00 p.m. burst of traffic, and by the way, you know, when we’re considering variances and we’re considering with the proposal in front of us, we have to take a look at maximum impacts and worst case scenarios, not Travelers that they may have, you know, not everybody leaves the office at five or goes there at eight. We have to look at it, and it’s a potential of, you know, maybe it isn’t Travelers. Maybe it will be 537 employees going in at eight o’clock and leaving at five o’clock. We have to look at it that way. We have to look at the worst case scenario, but aside from that, you have something like a commercial office like this, and there’s certain types of community planning that it goes well in. For example, where Travelers is located, there is a symbiotic relationship going on with Travelers, 500 employees and the pizza shops, McDonalds, Paneras, the hair salon, the post office, all of these live in a little economic community, and they all help to boost one another. They live in a symbiotic relationship. So that’s the way you want to locate something like this, or the other thing is, if you wanted to stimulate the economy of a local area, you’d locate this in an area where you’d want to stimulate the economy, for example South Queensbury or along Main Street or many other places. I’m sure Mr. Fosbrook will find many others that need economic stimulation, because once you locate something like this, it has a tendency to develop the economy around it, because 500 employees want walkable amenities. They want to be able to walk to a hair salon, walk to a post office, walk to a restaurant, walk to a café, okay, for lunch and breakfast, or 44 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) morning breaks and pm breaks, and that’s good, and that’s good, but you know what, located where they are here on Exit 20, if that’s where they do end up locating, there’s not going to be any further economic expansion here. They’re going to be caught in this building and they’re going to be caught in this parking lot because there’s nothing walkable near it. It’s zoned residential all around it. It’s not the best thing to do for community planning is to locate this where it is. So, having said all that, you know, this is not what was intended to go there. That’s why we zoned it Professional Office for something a lot more lower impact than this. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Thank you. MR. BRYANT-Mr. Chairman, may I ask a question? I don’t know if you’re going to be th here on the 12 or not, so I want to ask you this question, because you mention about intention of the Code and so forth and so on, and something that has puzzled me since the onset of this whole thing. You go to great lengths to describe Professional Office and shared driveway, vegetation, etc., etc., etc., but when you look at the actual Code and you look at the usage chart, one of the allowable uses in the chart is office. Okay. It doesn’t differentiate between commercial office, which is not even, you know, a designated term in the Code. It doesn’t differentiate between commercial office and professional office. It’s an allowable use in a Professional Office zone, but now you’re talking about intent. So you see there’s a big gap there? MR. STROUGH-Well, no, I don’t, because if you look under the definitions of Professional Office and Professional, in our own Town Code, I think you’ll see it quite differently. MR. BRYANT-I see that. MR. STROUGH-Yes. MR. BRYANT-But one of the allowable uses in a Professional Office zone is office, okay. MR. STROUGH-Yes, and office with a limitation of one parking space per 300 square feet of leasable floor area. Period. Now that should tell you something about what was expected. Now, if you cluster the offices and they share their parking, you know what, in an ideal Professional Office situation, you could probably come up with parking that required less. MR. BRYANT-But in reality both of those offices are allowed in that zone. MR. STROUGH-Well, something ought to tell you something’s wrong if they’re asking for a 90% variance. MR. BRYANT-We’ve been known to grant 100% variances. I just want to clarify that, because there’s a lot of discussion about Professional Office, but it’s in the table. Office is in the Table of Use. MR. STROUGH-Well, the basic argument is, is this particular proposal right for this particular area. That’s the bottom line. All the rest of that is miscellaneous, and given what we’ve said in the 1998 Comprehensive Land Use Plan and the 2007 Comprehensive Land Use Plan and the Town’s adopted Open Space Plan, and the Glen Lake Watershed Plan, and all those other documents, they all speak to this area, and they all say the same thing. Anything that should go in here should be very low impact. MR. BRYANT-Well, I think, as a Town Councilman, I think ought to reconsider, when they revise the zoning, they ought to make it a little bit more clear what is an office, what is a professional office, and this is allowed in this zone, and be more specific, because. MR. STROUGH-Well, as you know, I did re-write the Professional Office. I didn’t bring it up, but I did re-write it, and I wrote, re-wrote, I said there’s, you’re not going to get one Professional Office zone to fit every area of the Town. The Town is quite diverse and quite dynamic. So, I said, you know, there may be different types of Professional Offices that would be in different, more suitable in different types of areas. For example, you have the mixed use area on Main Street closer to the City. Maybe that would require one type of Professional Office zoning. Then you have what Richie Schermerhorn has developed along Bay Road. That’s another type of Professional Office zoning, but here, given the environmental sensitivities and the rural character and the residential character of this side of the Northway, I suggested even another type of Professional Office area similar to what I described, something of low impact, residential appearing, well 45 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) vegetated and environmentally friendly. That’s what I described. That never got adopted, but you know what, regardless of whether it got adopted or not, if you read it, does it fit? If it fits, maybe that’s what should go there. MR. ABBATE-And I’d also like to bring to the attention of the Board and the public the fact that, in spite of the fact that an ordinance may be ambiguous, nonetheless, we are compelled by law to take into consideration intent, what would be the intent, and I think Mr. Strough has made it quite clear what the intent was. Okay. Thank you very much. MR. STROUGH-Yes. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-Go ahead. I’ll give you about two minutes. MR. LINKE-One minute. MR. ABBATE-One minute’s good enough. MR. LINKE-I’m Richard Linke on Gurney Lane again. Just for one minute, and this is a personal appeal to you, the Board, as human beings. A lot of bad stuff in life happens, and there’s nothing we can do about it. There are a lot of unintended consequences to what we do, things that we don’t, we can’t foresee, but this is something that can be prevented. This is not good. This is not good, and it can be prevented by you. That’s my personal appeal. Thank you. MR. BRYANT-I have a question for Mr. Linke. I’ve been thinking about this all night, as the conversation has been going. I want to know how long it took you to eat all those popsicles. MR. ABBATE-All right. Let’s continue. I’ll give Mr. Salvador one minute, please. Sixty seconds. MR. SALVADOR-Thank you. I think I pointed out at the Planning Board hearing that the term Office Building has no definition, has no meaning in our Code. Okay. The applicant has made application for an Office Building. It has no definition in our Code. However, our Code does address Office. You mentioned the fact that it’s an allowable use with Site Plan Review. This is what we say an Office is. It’s a building that has been planned, developed, and operated as a facility to accommodate one or more separate offices as its primary use and where other uses such as restaurants, taverns or health clubs are secondary or accessory uses. There’s none of that secondary or accessory use here. This is an office building. It doesn’t even qualify as an office. It’s not one or more. It’s only one. So I think the Code addresses the question you had. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Thank you. Sir, please. Please come to the table, speak into the microphone and identify yourself, please. DAVID BRUNO MR. BRUNO-David Bruno, 119 Gurney Lane. Just a few quick points that you’re going to make your decision on is the relief substantial, and I think this has been hammered home pretty well tonight, that nearly 100% relief is significant. If I was here asking for 100% relief on my garage, I think you’d take me to task pretty quickly. So, just on that, I think this should be denied. The fact that feasible alternatives are not existent is merely a result of the developer’s poor choice of planning, and the difficulty is self-created when he previously proposed a plan, before purchasing the property, and knew very well that this was not going to be a feasible alternative when you come and request nearly 100% relief on a variance. So just on those simple facts I think that this should be denied up front, which is what you keep basing all your decisions on, your five points. So, just simple last minute quip right there. MR. ABBATE-Thank you very much. Okay, Counselor, would you like to respond, please? MR. LAPPER-Very simply, if you deny this variance, you’re telling Travelers that they cannot locate anywhere in our community because office, whether it’s an office in the industrial zone where office is also a permitted use, or office in this zone, office, under the Code, is one space per 300 employees. Travelers is not going to double the size of their building to accommodate these employees. So if this variance is denied, you’re telling them that they can’t go anywhere in the Town. When Travelers came to this site, Rich didn’t buy this site for Travelers. He bought the site because of the zoning and 46 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) Travelers came to him. They went to Len Fosbrook to the Economic Development Office, and said show us the sites in Town where we’re allowed to build this building, and a lot of times you’ll see variances because of side setback and other things, permeability, because you have a site that’s too small to accommodate the use. This is a very large site. What Tanya Bruno said about the CEA is something that we need to talk about, because when I say you could put a much larger building, you don’t have to have anywhere near the buffer. The Code does not require the kind of buffer. We wouldn’t be here for a variance. We could propose a project with much less buffer. We’re trying to be as sensitive as possible to the neighborhood, but again, we don’t have to make this building invisible. The issue with the CEA, the Critical Environmental Area, is a 500 foot buffer of the Rush Pond area, and we have no impact whatsoever on the CEA because the only thing that we’re doing, we moved the building out of the CEA. The only thing we have in the CEA is a couple of rows of parking, but all of that parking, as Tom Nace explained, drains to the pre-treatment basin and then the infiltration basin, both of which are outside of the CEA. So there’s no stormwater that’s being infiltrated or running off into the CEA. We’ve been so careful to do this project right, to address all the issues. If people, you know, we understand this is an emotional issue for the neighbors. It seems overly emotional for an office building, because an office building is a quiet use, regardless of the cars. They’re not there at night and they’re not there on weekends, but Rich has done everything that he can, in terms of traffic, in terms of stormwater. When we had the fellow from Glen Lake talk about we’re not doing anything to improve Glen Lake, when we were here at the last Planning Board meeting, he spoke about the impact on Glen Lake. So we said, okay, we’re going to go Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District, which is Dave Wick, and send him the plan and ask him what he wants us to do, if there’s any suggestions that he has to make this better, and we got a letter from him which said, I’ve reviewed your plan, and you more than comply with all of the applicable regulations and in my opinion you will have no impact whatsoever on any surface or subsurface water. That’s a very strong statement. We were obviously pleased to get that, but Rich also reached out to the President of the Glen Lake Association, after that night, sent him an e-mail and said if there’s something that you’d like us to do, if they’re really interested in improving our project, we’re happy to work with you. He never responded to Rich. So for some reason, even though he’s the head of this group, they have some agenda where they don’t want anyone to develop anything on this lot. Now, when you look at this lot, think, for a second, about State Farm in Malta. That’s similar. It’s a much larger facility, but you’ve got a corporate office that’s just adjacent to an interchange, that’s at Exit 12. This property is zoned Professional Office. When Councilman Strough talks about what his intention was, his intention did not make it into the Zoning Code. So there’s no rule. When Allan said about Professional Office and Office, everyone here is saying the title of that Zoning Code is Professional Office. It has to be professional. Well, Craig Brown’s determination that we’ll talk about next time is that this is a professional office because it is insurance, but regardless of that, office, which there’s no such thing as commercial office, but office, which means office which is non-professional, is also a permitted use in this zone, so whether you call it office or professional office, it’s a permitted use in this zone. So Travelers, a major employer in Town, Len Fosbrook said $18 million payroll, is looking for a site to re-locate. They want to have their own building. So they look at the few sites that are large enough to accommodate them that are properly zoned, but in Queensbury, you have to have a certain amount of parking. So wherever they go, they would have to have a parking variance just like Tribune did. So if this is turned down, you’re basically telling them that they can’t locate anywhere in Town, and that is a major component of our economy, one of the larger employers. Glens Falls Hospital, the medical device companies, I mean, this is one of the big employers in our community. They’re asking us to do everything right on this site. Rich has been willing to make changes. At least one of the neighbors acknowledged that, we’ve made the building two stories because that’s what we were asked to do. We moved everything out, the building outside of the CEA. We included this buffer. Now most of the neighbors are talking about traffic, and we’ve met with all three traffic review agencies. The fellow that started out, Franklin, said who’s looking over their shoulder, who’s reviewing this. Well, the Town Engineer is reviewing this. We already have a signoff letter from the Town Engineer, and the three traffic agencies are looking at this, and we’ve met with them, and they’ve given us their consent. We’ll have letters in a few days from them. We went to Soil and Water to talk about stormwater and they sent us their letter. We’re not trying to avoid any regulations. We’re trying to do whatever we’re asked to do and better. We’re trying to protect the neighbors, but at the same time, this site is allowed to have an office building in it, and this is an important tenant, and it’s right next to the Northway. It’s certainly rural and beautiful, in the vicinity, but putting an office building in an office building site is what you do, next to the Northway and across the street from the County. This just should not be this emotional issue. People are obviously very threatened and they shouldn’t because when this thing gets built, it’s going to be well buffered, and a lot of brick, very quiet, very attractive. 47 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) Nobody drives by Rich’s buildings on Bay Road and says, oh, that’s a bad thing for the economy or that’s a bad thing for the environment. It’s well designed, well constructed. Let me see if there’s anything else that requires comment at this point. There’s a lot of talk about gridlock. This is not for us to just say, of course Creighton Manning are recognized as experts, but everything that we do has to be reviewed and approved by the traffic agency. So when we’re done, this will be a vast improvement over the situation that’s there now, and that’s something that you ordinarily wouldn’t expect because the requirement is to mitigate your own impact, not to mitigate existing impact, but anyone trying to make that left turn off the northbound exit now, you can sit there for minutes. Putting a traffic light is something that ought to be there now, it’ll be there for the project, and it’ll be better when we’re done than if this project never got built, and the traffic consultants and the traffic review agencies are going to say that. Certainly before the next meeting, I will investigate a little bit about spaces that are there now, but I mean, we know what we’ve been asked to do in the lease, and we know how many employees there are, and we’ll provide you with the traffic review letters because we’ve been assured that we’ll have those next week. Tom, do you want to add anything, Rich? MR. BRYANT-Mr. Chairman, I have a question. MR. ABBATE-By all means, please. MR. BRYANT-Do you have another visit before the Planning Board, before you come before us again? MR. LAPPER-We don’t, because what happened is that because of the appeal, they can’t act until you act on the appeal. So their meeting is going to be postponed. MR. BRYANT-Yes, but I think originally, just jog my memory here. I thought originally we asked for recommendations? MR. LAPPER-You didn’t. MR. BRYANT-From the Planning Board. MR. LAPPER-No, not on this project. MR. UNDERWOOD-This is the first time we’ve heard it tonight. MR. ABBATE-We’ve asked for a recommendation on a couple of other cases that Mr. Lapper represents, but I don’t believe, in the Schermerhorn, we requested comments from the Planning Board. MR. LAPPER-We’re here for the parking variance, and I think you understand the issue with the parking, because we’ve addressed that for other tenants. Here, obviously, we have neighbors. MR. BRYANT-Yes, but it’s all related to the other Planning Board, and if you have more parking then you have more traffic. MR. LAPPER-Right, and it’s our responsibility to make sure that we satisfy the traffic agencies that we’re mitigating the parking, and we will provide that to you at the next meeting, but in terms of the Planning Board, they’re precluded from acting until you act on the appeal. So the meeting that would have been scheduled for two weeks from now has been postponed for another week. MR. URRICO-I have a question for Mr. Lapper and a question for Staff. MR. ABBATE-By all means. MR. URRICO-Is Travelers the only proposed tenant for this project? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. URRICO-There is no other tenant? I was thinking that McKesson is back there and maybe they’re looking for another location as well. MR. LAPPER-No. We only have an agreement with Travelers. MR. URRICO-Can they sublease? 48 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. LAPPER-Yes. I mean, the lease gives them the right to sublease, but they have a facility here with the employees that are here now, and again, I don’t have a crystal ball. I can’t say what’ll happen in five years, but they’re an important component of our economy, and they approached Rich and they proposed a lease. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Let me just, you know, of course everything looks sided when it’s the developer talking, but Travelers has made it very clear that it’s very important. They want to stay here. They said out of the 35,000 jobs that they provide for employees across the nation, and actually have a place in India they said, out of the country, and they said that these 500 employees that work in this community, this is one of their best call centers, out of everywhere. They have some sensitive issues, which you’ve read about in the paper. That’s one concern they have with the health issues. They don’t know what’s going on. There’s been nothing determined that there is anything wrong, but they have stated to me very clearly that, out of 35,000 jobs, 500 is just a small, small percentage. Now when people sit here and they say, it’s going to cost them money, well, we’re talking about billion dollar companies. They have made it clear that if they can’t get somewhere they will have to move, and they’re not threatening. They’re just saying that if they don’t have a place in Queensbury, they’re going to have to go somewhere. Now whether that’ll be out of this County or out of this State, I don’t know, but it is very important that I feel that we keep them here. Now I’ve offered other sites. I have other sites. The problem is you’ve got to go through the engineering, the Phase I Environmentals, I’ll give for your example. Exit 18’s a site I have behind McDonalds. I’m getting ready to close on it. I think it’s a great site, but traffic down there, we’d have to do the full blown traffic studies. I’ve got to do the Phase I’s, the topos, the engineering. I’ve got to bring the sewer. It took a year just to get all the stuff I have now for 20. MR. LAPPER-And we’d need a parking variance. MR. SCHERMERHORN-And we need a parking variance. That’s the thing. Jon, at first I’m thinking, gee, Jon, you’re making it sound like Queensbury won’t want them if we can’t give them a parking variance. They have said exactly how many parking spaces that they need based on their employees. Right now, the way the Code is, it doesn’t matter where we put them in Queensbury. The Code will not allow them to have adequate parking. The only place I could think of is if K-Mart moved out. That’s the only parking lot, honestly, that would accommodate them. I think, and I know this is a sensitive subject, but I do know the parking is required, and, you know, the days of people carpooling and stuff, and, I mean, that sounds great. Aaron Frankenfeld, you know, we talked different options, he did with the consultants, with, you know, commuter buses or whatever, but this day and age, it’s rare that people carpool. Will they start? Probably, because fuel prices are getting so high. So maybe the traffic will go down, but I do know that Travelers has made it very clear to me that they will be looking at options within the next month or two if something can’t resolve, and when people in the public said, well, Travelers, how come they’re not here? They already have reached out to the Town Supervisor. They have met with some County people. They’re doing what they’re supposed to. They go to Len Fosbrook, Economic Development, and he worked with them for quite some time, but truthfully, you know, they picked the Exit 20. They came to me. They liked the site. It’s right on the highway where a lot of these businesses are located. Now Mr. Strough is talking about pizza parlors, and, you know, hair dressers and all this. Well, I think Travelers, a Fortune 100 company, knows their business. They know what they need. They know what they want. I think if those were all concerns, they wouldn’t even be talking to me or addressing this situation. So, I mean, I’m not certainly forcing anything down Travelers. They simply came to me and they liked that site, and we’re certainly just doing our due diligence, and again, I know there’s so much talk about the stormwater. It’s been addressed. It’ll be addressed again at the Planning Board. Traffic, which is a huge thing, I said it from the beginning, but that is not up for anybody in this room to determine. When they said a lot of opinions are flying, well, you know, the only ones that are going to matter at the end of the day is Warren County Department of Public Works, Bill Lamy, Aaron Frankenfeld, and New York State Department of Transportation, Mark Kennedy. Those are all the qualified individuals. We can all sit here and give our different scenarios and what ifs and what ifs, and could we do this, but at the end of the day, it’s up to them, and I have to certainly follow whatever they recommend. So if they say a light, and I’ve got to put turning lane which has been suggested to me, I’ve already agreed to all these things. So we will certainly have a full bullet proof traffic answer within the next week or two. MR. BRYANT-One more question, Mr. Chairman. MR. ABBATE-By all means. 49 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. BRYANT-Just out of curiosity, how long is the commitment with Travelers? Have they got a five year deal? MR. LAPPER-It’s 10 years with a renewal. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes, I’m not even supposed to discuss the length. It’s client confidentiality, but it’s a long-term lease, with a lot of renewals in there. Let’s put it this way. They said they’ve been here I think it’s 21 years now, over in that Plaza, and they kept expanding and expanding, and they said that this is one of their best centers. They do not want to uproot these people. They want to stay here. They want to stay here. MR. BRYANT-Well, the reason I ask is obvious. I mean, we don’t want to be making a decision for a company that’s got a two year commitment. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes, and certainly you can probably understand that I, being the owner of this building, and leasing it back to them, it would be a horrible devastation to me if it was short-term and they moved out on me. I mean, any developer runs that risk. I mean, sure, you could have the best agreements for 10, 20, 30 years, but if they go bust tomorrow, you can’t get blood out of a stone, but they’re giving me a firm commitment to stay here. MR. ABBATE-Okay. Now, you’d like to say something? MR. LINKE-One comment. MR. ABBATE-Okay. This’ll be the last comment this evening. I am not going to close the public hearing, ladies and gentlemen. I will keep the public hearing open, because if th you were not here, we will have a special hearing on the 12 of December to discuss the appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision and then make a decision that evening, and the reason we’re doing that is because it’s possible, in the appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision, there may or may not provide new information for us to make a decision, and procedurally, I’ve been advised by two law scholars that is the only way to go, if we’re going to uphold a judicial review. So I’ll give you 60 seconds, and then we will continue and go from there. Yes, please. MR. LINKE-Just one comment. The thing about losing jobs. I don’t want to sound callous here at all, but I think the traffic person said that only one quarter of these people that work for Travelers lives in Queensbury. That means three-quarters live somewhere else. So if they had to go to South Glens Falls, it would be okay. The community would be okay. People would still have jobs. Don’t get scared by the we’re going to lose all of these jobs, I think, unless somebody, you know, correct me if I’m wrong. Thank you. MR. ABBATE-All right. Thank you very much. Now, in view of the fact that we have yet to hear the appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision, which may or may not provide new information, there is in fact, and has been confirmed, that we do have this room for th the 12 of December, and public notice will be made. At that time, we will not only hear the appeal of the Zoning Administrator’s decision, but a determination will be made on Area Variance No. 59-2007. At this point, I’m going to adjourn the remainder of the appeal procedures for Area Variance No. 59-2007 to 12 December 2007. I need a second. Is there a second? MR. URRICO-Second. MR. ABBATE-It has been seconded by Mr. Urrico. MOTION TO TABLE AREA VARIANCE NO. 59-2007 SCHERMERHORN RESIDENTIAL HOLDINGS, L.P., Introduced by Charles Abbate who moved for its adoption, seconded by Roy Urrico: Southeast corner of Gurney Lane & West Mountain Road. Adjourned to 12 December 2007. st Duly adopted this 21 day of November, 2007, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Urrico, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. Garrand, Mr. Clements, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Underwood, Mr. Abbate NOES: NONE 50 (Queensbury ZBA Meeting 11/21/07) MR. ABBATE-The vote to adjourn the remainder of the appeal procedure for Area Variance No. 59-2007 to December 12, 2007 is seven yes, zero no. In a vote of seven yes to zero no, this Board will adjourn for a special hearing on 12 December 2007. On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Charles Abbate, Chairman 51