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1997-10-28 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING SECOND REGULAR MEETING OCTOBER 28, 1997 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT ROBERT PALING, CHAIRMAN CATHERINE LABOMBARD, SECRETARY GEORGE STARK CRAIG MAC EWAN LARRY RINGER MEMBERS ABSENT TIMOTHY BREWER ROGER RUEL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR -JOHN GORALSKI PLANNER -LAURA NOWICKI TOWN COUNSEL -MILLER, MANNIX & PRATT-MARK SCHACHNER STENOGRAPHER -MARIA GAGLIARDI MR. PALING-Good evening. I’ll call the meeting to order, please. MRS. LABOMBARD-The first item on this evening’s agenda is Site Plan No. 36-97, Type Unlisted, for Sean J.T. Garvey. Zone: Light Industrial One Acre. MS. NOWICKI-Are you talking about Myron Rapaport and Phyllis Holtz, or no? MR. PALING-They’re taken off the schedule. MR. RINGER-They’ve got a public hearing, though. You may want to note that it’s postponed. MR. SCHACHNER-Both Rapaport and Holtz are off, you’re saying? MR. PALING-Pam told me they’re both off, right. MRS. LABOMBARD-I should have said something. I thought you knew. MR. MAC EWAN-Holtz has to re-apply. So we wouldn’t even need to open up the public hearing. MR. PALING-And Rapaport doesn’t have a variance, it’s my understanding. MS. NOWICKI-Correct. They don’t have a variance, the variance that they need. You’re asking if you need to open the public hearing for Myron Rapaport? MR. PALING-We don’t usually. MS. NOWICKI-You’re right. You don’t usually. You can re-hear it in November, based on the information for the ZBA. MR. PALING-Okay. MRS. LABOMBARD-That’s fine. I would have said something if I had realized that. So, back to Sean Garvey. NEW BUSINESS: SITE PLAN NO. 36-97 TYPE: UNLISTED SEAN J.T. GARVEY OWNER: SEAN, PETER, MARC GARVEY ZONE: LI-1A LOCATION: 483 QUAKER ROAD 1 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) APPLICANT PROPOSES TO CONSTRUCT A 23’ X 63’ CEMENT BLOCK ADDITION WITH 5.8’ X 10’ OVERHEAD GARAGE DOORS. ALL USES IN LI ZONES ARE SUBJECT TO REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE: UV 62-1997 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 10/8/97 TAX MAP NO. 109-3- 13.2 LOT SIZE: 3.99 ACRES SECTION: 179-26 SEAN GARVEY, PRESENT STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 36-97, Sean J.T. Garvey, Meeting Date: October 28, 1997 “The applicant proposes an addition to an existing structure. All projects in light industrial zones are subject to site plan approval. The addition that the applicant proposes is to be used for car washing and storage of cars. The proposed addition will be built on an existing impermeable surface. The applicant does not indicate any drainage plans on map because there will be no new impermeable surface created. The applicant is putting in a drain pipe in the addition that will connect with the existing drainage plan. The applicant has indicated that the dry well is eight feet in diameter, and eight feet deep. A background research on the parcel indicated no previous drainage problems. Therefore no drainage problems are anticipated.” MR. PALING-Okay. Would you identify yourself please? MR. GARVEY-I’m Sean Garvey. MR. PALING-Okay. This seems pretty straight forward. Do we have any questions or comments from the Board? Anything you wanted to tell us about this? MR. GARVEY-Basically my brothers and I have been in business in Town for 20 years now. We’re at this new location we’ve been at for 12 years. We’ve expanded tremendously during that period of time. We’re initially a single line dealer, Volkswagen, and now we’re Hyundai. We’re taking on Arrow, which is a four wheel drive, and we also have doubled our used car sales in that period of time. So we need, our facilities are extremely cramped now and we need more room to work, and to service our customers. MR. PALING-Okay. George? MR. STARK-They already did an environmental impact statement on this, a short form? MR. MAC EWAN-An EAF. MR. GARVEY-Yes, and that was accepted with the Zoning Board of Appeals. MR. PALING-Okay, and Warren County Planning says there’s No County Impact. All right. We’ll go right to the public hearing. Is there anyone here to speak on the Sean Garvey application? Okay. If not, the public hearing’s closed. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED NO COMMENT PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. PALING-What do we need, a Short Form on this one, Laura? MS. NOWICKI-Yes, he filled out a Short Form. MR. PALING-Okay, but we need to do a Short Form SEQRA, if you would, please. MR. MAC EWAN-Mark, on the ZBA variance, they make a notation at the top of the page that they already did the EAF? MR. SCHACHNER-It appears that way, yes. Motion That a Review of the Short EAF shows there are no negative impacts on the environment. Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-Then why do we need to do another one? 2 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. SCHACHNER-Because, unless there’s been what’s called a selection of one lead agency, then each agency that reviews a particular project has to go through its own SEQRA review. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thanks. Sorry. RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE RESOLUTION NO. 36-97 , Introduced by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption, seconded by George Stark: WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for: SEAN GARVEY , and WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: 1. No Federal agency appears to be involved. 2. The following agencies are involved: NONE 3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury. 4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant. 5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law. th Duly adopted this 28 day of October, 1997, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Stark, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Ringer, Mr. MacEwan, Mr. Paling NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Brewer, Mr. Ruel MR. PALING-Okay. Does somebody want to make a motion? MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 36-97 SEAN J.T. GARVEY , Introduced by George Stark who moved for its adoption, seconded by Larry Ringer: As written - Applicant proposes to construct a 23’ by 63’ cement block addition with five 5’ x 10’ overhead garage doors. th Duly adopted this 28 day of October, 1997, by the following vote: AYES: Mr. Ringer, Mr. MacEwan, Mr.Stark, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Paling NOES: NONE 3 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) ABSENT: Mr. Brewer, Mr. Ruel MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. MR. GARVEY-Thank you very much. SITE PLAN NO. 41-97 TYPE: UNLISTED PHILLIP H. MORSE & SUSAN K. MORSE OWNERS: SAME ZONE: WR-1A, CEA PROPOSAL IS DEMOLITION OF PORTION OF EXISTING RESIDENCE, REMODELING OF PORTION AND CONSTRUCTION OF ADDITION. PER SECTION 179-79 ANY EXPANSION OF A NONCONFORMING STRUCTURE IN A CRITICAL ENVIRONMENTAL AREA IS SUBJECT TO REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE PLANNING BOARD. CROSS REFERENCE: AV 65-1997 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 10/8/97 TAX MAP NO. 9-1-19 LOT SIZE: 1.58475 ACRES SECTION: 179-16, 179-79 MICHAEL O’CONNOR, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 41-97, Phillip H. Morse Susan K. Morse, Meeting Date: October 28, 1997 “The applicant proposes to demolish and remodel a portion of the existing structure and construct an addition to the existing structure. All projects in the WR-1A zone and CEA require site plan review. Due to the size of the project a visual concern arises. The agent has indicated that another landscape plan is being developed to ease this concern. By examining the drawing it is difficult to determine what is to remain, what is to be constructed, or remodeled. By talking with the Agent the following was determined: the south side of the house (kitchen area) will be removed down to the first floor - this is where the addition will go. The north side of the house (excluding the open deck) will be removed to the second floor. This is to be remodeled. The boat house is only having stairs on the south side added for access to the boat house upper level. There is no apparent visual interference from other neighbors. The applicant is applying for variances from the height restrictions section of 179-16, garage restrictions section 179-16, and greater than 50% expansion section 179-79. The applicant is also applying to the Town for a septic variance. The use of holding tanks in a year round residence will be considered at the 10/20/97 Town Board meeting. A storm water management plan was submitted and sent to Rist Frost Engineers to review.” MR. PALING-Okay, and they got the variance from ZBA? MS. NOWICKI-Yes, they did. MR. PALING-And Warren County Planning, what did they say on this? I don’t seem to have anything from them. MS. NOWICKI-Okay. Let me read Rist-Frost’s comments. MR. PALING-Okay. MS. NOWICKI-Rist-Frost comments. “The sewage holding tank design appears to be in accordance with the Town’s requirements if the Town decides a variance is warranted. The plans should have a note that all work will comply with the New York Guidelines for Urban Erosion and Sediment Control. The design concept presented in the Stormwater Management Report is generally acceptable but the plans are schematic and do not contain final requirements such as grading so we can evaluate if the proposed concepts are adequately implemented. We recommend filter fabric be placed between the crushed stone and adjacent soil material in drywell construction.” MR. PALING-Okay. Mike, have we got the County thing? MR. O’CONNOR-Mr. Chairman, it was sent to the County in error, because there was no County jurisdiction. So then they withdrew it from the County after it was sent, and there’s a notation. MR. PALING-Okay. So the Warren County Planning just doesn’t apply. MR. O’CONNOR-Right. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-Okay. MR. O’CONNOR-There’s a notation in file that the Town withdrew it from the County, based upon the agreement that the County has, that they’ve gotten into with Area Variances. MR. PALING-Okay. Would you identify yourselves, please. MR. O’CONNOR-Mr. Chairman, I’m Michael O’Connor from the law firm of Little & O’Connor, and with me is John Mason. We represent Phillip & Susan Morse who are the applicants to build this residence at the end of Assembly Point, and we’re here to make a presentation on their behalf. MR. PALING-Yes. I think what you were going to show us is a little different than what we have. MR. O’CONNOR-No, not really. MR. PALING-What am I reading here? MR. O’CONNOR-I think that that’s maybe a misunderstanding, which I can talk about a little bit. MR. PALING-Go ahead. MR. O’CONNOR-I presume that most of you have been out to the property. If you haven’t, we have colored coded in a copy of the tax map which will show you the Morse parcel. It’s at the end of Assembly Point. It’s on the easterly side of Assembly Point, and I’d share that with everybody. Maybe you have and maybe you haven’t. Basically, we’ve made two other presentations on this application. We’ve made an application to the Town Board requesting a variance for the holding th tanks. That was approved, I think, on October 20. We made a presentation to the Zoning Board of Appeals asking for three Area Variances, and they were approved last week at the ZBA meeting, and maybe because I’ve made two other presentations, I might skip something, but if you have a question, ask me. I’ll try to be brief. This is a large house. It is between 13 and 14,000 square feet. Given the couple of Area Variances that we have, they don’t effect the amount of permeable land or the ratio of building to the lot. We were in compliance with them. This is something that the Morses have been looking at for almost a year, and they’ve been planning with John Mason and with others, trying to make it as much in compliance as they could, and if you take a look at what they’ve done, I think you’re going to see some of their efforts. They would like to preserve, and they are going to preserve part of the structure. The area shown in yellow here is existing patio, and they are preserving that untouched. The area in green is an enclosed glass porch, with a living room and fire place. That area is going to be preserved to above the floor joists that are part of the ceiling of the first floor. So everything from the second floor up will be taken off and structure will be built over that. The area in blue is part of the existing house, and that will be demolished down to the first floor, and then it will be part of the reconstruction with the wings that will be added to it for the new residence. This basically is the outline of the new residence and the patios. What we’ve submitted to you, or part of what we’ve submitted to you, was a drainage plan, stormwater drainage management plan with an actual mapping of it. You have some comments there by Rist- Frost, and we’re willing to abide by those comments. We have no problem with them. There’s one question, I think, as to one paragraph. They’re saying what we have presented is in part schematics because we don’t have necessarily final topo, and we’re willing to accept a condition that we submit that once we have the final topo and final grades. This is basically a residence, and we will be grading through the structure once it’s there. I think what they want to do, and they also want to see final, final landscaping plan, particularly around the residence. If you took a look at the stormwater management plan, you will see that we have guttered most of the house, if not all of the house, and that we have leads from the gutters going off into ground infiltration devices, and I think the important, or what they wanted was to see our landscaping, our final landscaping didn’t interfere with those structures when they were actually constructed, and there’s plenty of room on the site so that there’s no problem. We will abide by that and are happy to accept their letter or compliance with their letter, as a condition to your approval. The other thing that we did have and we have with us is a landscape plan, and we have David Linehan from Jim Girard Landscape and Maintenance Corporation with us tonight also to show you what we have done for the landscaping, and this is the plan that we’re talking about doing. Part of the application and part of the, one of the reasons for the variance for the holding tank area, and I have it with me, and the holding tanks will go in this area down in here. If we put in a conventional septic system, we would clear out all of that area or almost all that area except for the setbacks. So they have the ability, and they think it’s more environmentally sensitive to use holding tanks, so we asked for the variance and obtained the variance to do holding tanks. I think what Staff is talking about when they say we’re going to submit other plans, or let me go over for another minute, and again, I’m presuming that you’ve all 5 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) been there, but for the purpose of your record, I’d also like to submit this cardboard showing of how visible the house is that’s there right now from the road. On one side of this house, there will be a 90 foot setback from the side yard, the other side there will be a 70, it’s 75 on this side, and 90 on this side, and those setbacks are actually from small fingers. If you actually went to the house principal on this side, you’d probably add another 50 feet. This is a finger which has the two garages in it, and a golf practice area. The actual house on this side is about where the existing house is, and it’s probably 150, as I look at it. On this side over here, to this part of the structure, the setback will be 90 feet. They’re far in excess of what’s required. This is a good sized lot. It’s a big house, but it is on a large lot. It’s my understanding that given the existing growth that’s there, the house is very likely not to be visible from either of the two side boundaries. The intention here and the direction that Mr. Morse has given Girard Landscaping is that he wants to protect his privacy, and he looks upon the plantings that are along the edge of the property as an integral part of that privacy. It may be a little different than a lot of other applications where you’re trying to get most people’s intent, in some degree, the design is to say give privacy from the road so that the structure doesn’t intrude upon the road. This is going to be his residence, and he does not want his yard out on the highway. He does not want his yard visible out on the highway. This is a series of photos. You saw those photos there. The only way you can see into that site is right where the driveway is. That house that’s on that site is taller than this existing house. Those photos were taken probably within the last month, and you’re going to see that there is heavy growth right along this area. What’s shown and depicted on that landscape plan is fairly true of what is there. These are some other random photos that we didn’t select because they were even more dense as it’s showing what was there. At the ZBA hearing, there was some comment that some of the trees that are on this side of the existing driveway are dead, and Mr. Linehan has verified that for me when he did the site review. He had up to 11, if not 17, trees that are dead in there. Our intent and our representation to you is that we will review all of that, and if we replace anything in there, we will replace it in kind or with greater density. We understand that some of these areas in here are leaf bearing or deciduous trees. Our intention is to mix in there some conifer, so that we have more of a year round representation of what is the natural buffer there. MR. PALING-Are you indicating that you might be removing some live trees to do this? Anything you take out is dead? MR. O’CONNOR-We’ll take out the dead ones, and try and put in 100%, so that we don’t have a problem and don’t have to come back and re-visit it again. We have not gotten final plans for that, and we’ve talked about that. Until we actually get in there and see what’s got to be removed or replaced, we won’t have those. We will probably, and I’m not sure they call them the smaller, the shorter trees you’re talking, we will put in some shorter conifers, as to some of the leaf bearing trees that are shorter. It’s really brush, and you can see it in the photos. It’s not necessarily trees at that level, and that basically is what we’re going to do with the landscaping. We do not, and there are trees shown on the landscaping area, along the waterfront, we do not intend to remove any of those trees. They’ve laid this out pretty well to preserve as much as possible the mature growth that’s on the site. We can overlay one map to another map. We actually had a survey that was put together that showed the existing trees. If you’ve been on the site, in the area of the house, it’s pretty well treed. That, basically, and I don’t mean to beg the question. We’ve got maps on maps here. We’ve got a lot of people. We’ve got Jim Hutchins, who is the engineer who designed the stormwater management plan and the stormwater operation with us, and we’ve got Joe Peon who is the architect. One other thing we might show, we have the model. So that you have a sense, okay. If you take a look at any of the renderings, it looks like a great wall, but if you look at the angle of the home, you will see that you really will have a hard time seeing this home from end to end in any close proximity. I suppose if you got as far away on the water as you can get from this direction of Assembly Point, you’d probably be able to see the house from end to end, except for the trees that are down by the boathouse. I don’t know if it’s a 90 degree angle or whatever, but if I hold this at this side, and there’s always a danger of making a model. If you stand over the top of the model you wonder what it looks like or not, but just to give you a perspective of the front view from the lake, I think we’re very well hidden from the parkway, from the roadway. We’re hidden from the two neighbors. You’re not going to see that much from the lake. There’s different levels. There’s different materials. All of the materials aren’t selected. What we have there is very representative. We made a representation that we would use earthen tones only. We made a representation, and we stand by the representation, are willing to make it part of the application, that we will not have any more glass on the front of the house than what we showed on our plans. So that basically is what I would show you as far as stormwater management, landscaping. I would touch upon the application for the dock staircase. We had proposed to build a staircase on the existing dock, I guess on the south end of the dock. I’d like to withdraw that request. We have found that it’s not necessary, but I’d like to show you what we’re going to do instead, and I don’t think it requires, I’m not sure it requires a site plan or inclusion in site plan, but it’s a modification to an existing 6 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) dock. So I would ask you to include it. We have found that this is a, John, would you come up and make sure I’m doing this right? MR. PALING-Are these stairs these stairs? MR. O’CONNOR-No. They are stairs that are in the ground that simply go up to the retaining wall. These stairs were going to be on this side over here. JOHN MASON MR. MASON-But we’ve found that on this center pier, directly underneath this roof, we can put a pull down attic set of stairs. So we don’t even need to show any stairs at all. It’ll just be a hook. MR. O’CONNOR-But it’s a modification to an existing dock. MR. MASON-I don’t even know if it requires site plan. MR. O’CONNOR-We would like to have your understanding and your approval that we’re going to put in a pull down set of stairs inside the dock itself, and they’d be in this location here. MR. PALING-That’s within the dock. I don’t think it makes any difference, does it? MRS. LABOMBARD-Is that living area up on top? MR. MASON-It’s only five and a half feet high. MRS. LABOMBARD-Okay. MR. O’CONNOR-The house roof will be slate. MRS. LABOMBARD-So you’re going to take away the visible staircase? MR. O’CONNOR-No. In the past, you apparently pulled yourself up the second level through a hatchway inside, and pushed a ramp out the back of those, there were doors there. You pushed an aluminum ramp out to the land, and then used that as your access to get up and down. So it was there for storage only. MRS. LABOMBARD-Right. MR. O’CONNOR-And they were going to do away with the fact that you’ve got to pull yourself up through this hatch, and put a set of stairs on the south side of the dock, but he really didn’t want to do that, and they found out that they can do it this way here. MRS. LABOMBARD-So you’re just taking the stairs away and just putting the attic stairs? MR. O’CONNOR-Yes. MR. PALING-Okay. Any comments or questions by the Board for now? All right, then we can go to a public hearing. We’ll open the public hearing on the Phillip and Susan Morse application. Is there anyone here that cares to speak about this, pro or con? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED JOHN SALVADOR MR. SALVADOR-My name is John Salvador. I don’t want to speak pro or con. I have some questions. I know here on your program for this evening that this project is listed in a Critical Environmental Area, and further it says here that any expansion of a nonconforming structure in a Critical Environmental Area is subject to review and approval by the Planning Board. Is that the only reason why this is being reviewed and approved by the Planning Board? MR. PALING-In this case I think it’s more, goes beyond that. I’m going to refer it to our Staff or legal. 7 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. SCHACHNER-What’s the difference? It’s subject to our review. It’s subject to site plan approval. I don’t know, why get into it? MR. GORALSKI-Once you’re required to do a site plan review, all the considerations listed in Site Plan Review section of the Ordinance are. MR. SCHACHNER-Right, regardless of what kicks it in. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. SALVADOR-So it’s not just the fact that it’s in a Critical Environmental Area? MR. GORALSKI-That’s not all that’s being reviewed. MR. SCHACHNER-We didn’t say that. We didn’t say it’s not just that. What we said was it doesn’t matter. It’s subject to Site Plan approval. So I don’t think it’s worth belaboring or taking the Board’s time to go through the Ordinance and figure out all the different reasons why it’s subject to Site Plan Review. It’s subject to Site Plan Review. The applicant doesn’t dispute it’s subject to Site Plan Review. The Board doesn’t dispute it’s subject to Site Plan Review. I’m guessing you don’t dispute that it’s subject to Site Plan Review. So that’s where we’re at. MR. SALVADOR-Okay. I would like to point out that the variances that were obtained before the Zoning Board of Appeals, the project was not presented as being in a Critical Environmental Area. I believe the Critical Environmental Area that’s referred to here is the Critical Environmental Area that has been established by the Lake George Park Commission. Does the designation of this CEA here trigger jurisdiction by the Lake George Park Commission, and if so, I believe their stormwater management regulations are determinative. MR. PALING-I can’t answer that. MR. GORALSKI-We don’t enforce the Lake George Park Commission regulations. I suggest you speak to Mike White. MR. SALVADOR-Is it incumbent upon the applicant to get a jurisdictional statement from the Lake George Park Commission? MR. PALING-I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you go on with your questions, rather than establish a dialogue, and then we’ll come back and answer. Is that the final question? MR. SALVADOR-I’ve completed my questions. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. SCHACHNER-The answer to the question, if you want me to answer it, is it’s not incumbent on the applicant or any applicant to get a jurisdictional statement from the Lake George Park Commission or any other agency. If the project is subject to Lake George Park Commission jurisdiction or the jurisdiction of any other agency, it’s incumbent upon the applicant, just like any other applicant, to deal with that agency. MR. PALING-Thank you. MR. SALVADOR-My point being that at great length Mr. O’Connor spoke about stormwater management. Now, there is design criteria in the Lake George Park Commission Regulations concerning stormwater management, design details. If the Lake George Park Commission, it’s jurisdictional, then that stormwater management plan should reflect their requirements. Thank you. MR. PALING-Thank you. Okay. Who else would like to talk on this matter? DAVE WELCH DR. WELCH-I’m Dave Welch from the Environmental Committee, and I really just have one question, and I don’t know the answer to it. Is there any obligation, on a structure of this type, in this kind of a location, to use no glare glass? And is it being included? 8 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-We’re going to have to refer the question to you, John. MR. GORALSKI-Certainly there’s no regulation about no glare glass. I think if there is an aesthetic question that it would certainly come under the purview of the site plan review application, if you feel that there is some impact created by the glare from the glass along the lake, and, you know, that’s a consideration you can make. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. GORALSKI-But there’s no regulation saying you’ve got to use no glare glass. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. If not, public hearing is closed. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MR. PALING-This is an Unlisted Action, I believe. So we need a SEQRA, and is the Short Form, again, okay? MR. GORALSKI-Yes. MRS. LABOMBARD-“Could action result in any adverse effects associated with the following: One, existing air quality, surface or groundwater quality or quantity, noise levels, existing traffic patterns, solid waste production or disposal, potential for erosion, drainage or flooding problems?” MR. PALING-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Wait a minute. Does the stormwater management plan address all the aspects of runoff, and is Staff and engineers satisfied with that? MR. GORALSKI-The engineers have not signed off on the stormwater management plan yet. MR. MAC EWAN-Then how can we do a SEQRA? MRS. LABOMBARD-Well, you’re right. MR. STARK-If there is an increase, it would be small to moderate, wouldn’t it be? And it could be mitigated? MR. GORALSKI-I’ve got to say, you know, I’ve got to defer to Rist-Frost, and, you know, I would be more comfortable if I had something from Rist-Frost. MR. O’CONNOR-Can I speak on that? MR. PALING-Go ahead. MR. O’CONNOR-Okay. As I understand what we have, and I think Jim Hutchins talked to Rist- Frost about it. If you look at paragraph number three, that may be what you’re speaking of. It says design concepts presented in the Stormwater Management Report is generally acceptable but the plans are schematic and do not contain final requirements such as grading so we can evaluate if the proposed concepts are adequately implemented. We have no problem to your conditioning your approval to us showing that the final requirements such as grading do, are installed such so that the design concept of the stormwater management plan is adequately implemented. MR. MAC EWAN-How do you suggest we go through a SEQRA, though? MR. O’CONNOR-They’re saying that the concepts are sufficient. We’ve got 69% permeable, or you know, we’re over the permeability area, and what you’re talking about is infiltration trenches. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s never been a practice that I’m aware of that this Board’s ever done is do a SEQRA without having all the engineering up front in order to do a SEQRA. MR. O’CONNOR-I’ve never seen this comment come back to us, in all honesty, as to the calculations and report that you have. You have a calculation as to the amount of stormwater that we create. You have calculations as to the stormwater drainage, infiltration systems that we will install and they are shown on the plan, and I think basically they’re trying to say, make sure that 9 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) you don’t put your plantings, with the extensive landscaping that we’re talking about, in the way of those infiltration systems. MR. STARK-John? MR. GORALSKI-Yes. MR. STARK-Are you looking at the Rist-Frost letter? th MR. GORALSKI-Yes, October 24. MR. STARK-Okay. It says “The design concept presented in the stormwater management report is generally acceptable.” Okay, but just because it doesn’t show grading plans, they can’t, I would say, from that, that Levandowski’s satisfied with it. Except that it didn’t show the grading on the final plan. MR. PALING-And he wants to go beyond a schematic layout. John, would you be comfortable with that being a condition of the proposal, that what he’s asked for in Paragraph Three be met and submitted to you for approval? MR. GORALSKI-My concern is that I don’t want this to get into a battle between the engineers, and I haven’t spoken to Bill Levandowski about this. This is just a matter of providing a grading plan that would satisfy, I mean, it would be much better if we had had this before hand. I wasn’t here, and I didn’t hear why it wasn’t presented, you know, with the application. MR. PALING-And we’ve got to answer Craig’s question in regard to SEQRA, too. We’ve got to satisfy that. MR. GORALSKI-I am not familiar enough with the Stormwater Management plan that was presented to say that this is a simple matter or not a simple matter. I can’t give you an answer. I have to go with Rist-Frost, and they’re asking for more information. MR. O’CONNOR-I have no problem with you conditioning your approval upon it. You conditioning a Certificate of Occupancy on it, and make it a part of the building, or conditioning the building permit on it, not issue a building permit. MR. PALING-Will you read that part of SEQRA again. MRS. LABOMBARD-“Could action result in any adverse effects associated with the following: One, existing air quality, surface or groundwater quality or quantity, noise levels, existing traffic patterns, solid waste production or disposal, potential for erosion, drainage or flooding problems?” MR. PALING-Okay, and drainage is where you’re concerned. If we made it part of the motion, Craig, are you comfortable with that? No, you want to see it beforehand? MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MR. PALING-And I think, John, you’re saying that, too. MR. MAC EWAN-I just want to be sure that they’re going to sign off on it. MR. GORALSKI-You have two issues here. You have the SEQRA issue and the Site Plan Review issue, okay. The site plan review issue, if you want to make some kind of sign off from Rist-Frost a part of your site plan approval, I guess I don’t necessarily have a problem with that. As far as whether or not you can look at your SEQRA, your EAF and determine that there’s no impact on stormwater runoff or surface water runoff, whatever the term that they use there, without having this information, and that’s something you folks are going to have to decide. MR. O’CONNOR-If you make it a condition, aren’t you then saying that we will be in compliance with the Town regulations? MR. PALING-It would depend upon the way we word it. What my concern is, is can we do this? Or have we got to wait for the actual compliance in Rist-Frost’s mind of this? 10 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. MAC EWAN-Have we ever done a SEQRA before without having all the information in front of us? MR. STARK-John, it says the design concept presented in the stormwater management plan is generally acceptable. MR. GORALSKI-Right. MR. STARK-Okay. Just because the final grading isn’t there, how does that effect it? JIM HUTCHINS MR. HUTCHINS-My name is Jim Hutchins. I’m the engineer that designed the stormwater. I received a copy of this letter last Friday. I personally phoned Bill Levandowski and discussed it. Basically what he told me, he said, I’m happy, as he said, with the stormwater concept, in other words, how you propose to deal with the stormwater generated. He said, what I would like to see is the plan that you proposed incorporated with a grading plan, just to make sure that the trenches are not running either down hill or uphill. He said, I just want to make sure that they’re on level ground. Says the other thing that he used was that I would like to see the landscaping concept also on stormwater plan to make sure that the landscaping does not interfere with where you have the stormwater trenches placed. From that, I got the impression that he was satisfied that what we had proposed would handle the stormwater. He was looking for the details to make sure that what we showed could be built, particularly with, in terms of the grades. He indicated to me that he didn’t seem that this was an unusual request. Obviously, I didn’t talk to him about the SEQRA issue because I didn’t know that it was going to arise. MR. STARK-Have you talked to Levandowski? MR. GORALSKI-Not about this specifically, no. Typically, the way these things happen is Rist- Frost sends their comments to us and to the applicant. The applicant either has the comments addressed prior to the meeting, or we wait until the comment. MR. HUTCHINS-I talked to Bill Levandowski, again, about that, and he said, I said, Bill, should we try to address these before the meeting. As I recall the conversation he said, Jim, I don’t think we can at this point, and he did indicate to me there was a possibility that the Board would consider approval contingent upon meeting his request. MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t mean to throw a monkey wrench into everything here, but I don’t ever recall this Board ever doing a SEQRA review without having all the facts up front. We’ve held up projects until we were sure that we had all the proper engineering. MR. O’CONNOR-But I don’t think it’s a matter of not having the proper engineering. Typically what we’ve done with the engineering comments is either the engineer of the project or we say we will comply with all the requirements on the letter, and that’s basically what we’re saying we’re doing here. MR. PALING-Except we’ve got SEQRA involved. MR. O’CONNOR-Okay. You’ve got an over one half acre lot. You’ve got one single family residence going on there, a large one. You’ve got in excess of the area necessary for permeability. I think you’ve got a test pit on here that shows that you’ve got six foot of soil, at least in the area of the test pit. I don’t know what the likelihood of not being able to come into full compliance is. I just don’t see that. It’s a matter of trying to overlay a topographical map, a as is or to be graded to, a final grading plan, a landscape plan as it’s finalized. MR. MAC EWAN-But, Mike, everything you’re referring to is referring to site plan review. We’re talking for the SEQRA. For us to do a pos dec or a neg dec, we need to have all the information up front. MR. O’CONNOR-As I understand SEQRA to have a problem, you have to have a likelihood of impact, a possible or, you know, a likelihood of negative impact of significance before you can not give a negative declaration. MR. MAC EWAN-In order to get a point of either doing a neg dec or a pos dec, we need, as a Board, to have that information in front of us to make an intelligent decision on it. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. O’CONNOR-But you’ve got a written stormwater management plan. MR. MAC EWAN-What the rest of these people do up here is fine by me, but for my peace of mind, I want Rist-Frost to say we have no problems. It’s acceptable to us. That’s what I’m looking for. MR. O’CONNOR-My problem with that is, I don’t know. It’s not simply a grading plan. That’s the biggest part of it. It’s not the. MR. STARK-Mark, what’s that sentence mean, “the design concept presented in the stormwater management plan is generally acceptable”? Is that enough to go on or not? MR. SCHACHNER-Well, that’s really a Board decision, but I think that in fairness to Rist-Frost, I don’t think you can take that portion of the sentence and deal with that as the entire concept. Rist-Frost goes on in that sentence to say, “the plans are schematic and do not contain final requirements such as grading so we can evaluate if the proposed concepts are adequately implemented”. I mean, to me, this is really a Board decision. It’s not a legal judgment call. To me, that sentence, I think I’m agreeing with Staff, and perhaps with Mr. MacEwan, that to me that sentence would seem to indicate that Rist-Frost needs further information regarding grading to see if the applicant is actually going to be able to implement the concept that Rist-Frost generally feels is an appropriate concept. MR. MASON-We can’t adequately implement the concepts until when the structure is done. So if you read this, if the proposed concepts are adequately implemented, and say that you cannot pass SEQRA until that’s the case, you must wait until the project is completed. You can’t do that. MR. MAC EWAN-You can’t build your project until we can make that kind of SEQRA. MR. GORALSKI-No, see, that’s wrong. I know that’s not what Bill Levandowski’s saying. What Bill Levandowski is saying is that he can’t determine, you can come in and say, I need this much storage capacity for a stormwater system, okay, but until he sees the final plans, he can’t tell if you’re going to be able to build that stormwater system on the site. I believe that’s what that statement is saying. MR. PALING-Well, okay, is it a Board decision, that if we were to make a motion to pass this with the condition that Rist-Frost expects, for a better word, be met before anything is done? Are we doing anything wrong? MR. GORALSKI-You have two decisions to make. One is, can you answer the questions in Part II of the EAF? The second is, you need to make a resolution for the site plan review. If you complete the first part and say there is no negative impact, you have enough information to determine there is no negative impact, then you can go on to the second part which is making a resolution. MR. PALING-I don’t think you’re answering my question. What you’re saying, if I understand what you’re saying then, we’ve got to wait for the information. We can’t do anything. What I’m asking is, can we go ahead conditionally, pass the SEQRA conditionally? MR. GORALSKI-You can’t do a conditioned negative dec, no. MR. SCHACHNER-Not on the SEQRA. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. O’CONNOR-You can make a negative dec, though, on the basis that the project will only go forward if it complies with Rist-Frost’s letter. MR. PALING-That’s saying the same thing just a different way, isn’t it? MR. SCHACHNER-I’m not sure it is. I think the applicant’s indicating you could make compliance with the Rist-Frost letter a condition of site plan approval. MR. O’CONNOR-Yes. 12 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. SCHACHNER-And that’s correct, but what Staff is indicating, and Staff is absolutely 100% correct here, is that the threshold question is whether you have enough information in front of you to answer the questions on Part II of the SEQRA form, and I think Staff is saying that although it’s up to you, we’re reading the Rist-Frost letter as indicating that there’s additional information that Rist-Frost would like to have to be able to assure this Board that you have enough information before you to intelligently answer the question about stormwater management. MR. PALING-Okay, and I think there’s a question of asking the Board, polling the Board and seeing how we feel. MR. STARK-Okay. If you had a letter from Levandowski in front of you saying the stormwater management plan is fine, you know, without understanding it or anything, that would satisfy everybody, right? MR. PALING-Yes, I think so, to oversimplify it. Yes. MR. STARK-Okay. Why don’t you poll the Board and see if we have enough information now. I take this that it’s acceptable right now. MR. PALING-All right. Well, do you all understand the question as to whether we have sufficient information to complete the SEQRA? Larry, I’m going to start with you. MR. RINGER-I think we do, and if we make any approval on this, that we subject it to Rist-Frost. So, I’d say yes. MR. STARK-You mean the site plan? MR. RINGER-Site plan. MR. PALING-Well, we’re talking SEQRA now. You think it’s okay, that we have enough information? MR. RINGER-To continue. However, if we go further than that and do the approval, then we make those approvals subject to compliance with all of Rist-Frost’s requirements. MR. STARK-That’s fine. MR. PALING-Cathy? MRS. LABOMBARD-Well, it does say here that what we’re saying here from Levandowski is that the plans should have a note that all work will comply with the erosion and sediment control. So that’s saying that they really don’t have the note yet, and he’s saying, you know, that they really don’t contain the final requirements, so they can evaluate if the proposed concepts are adequately implemented. I know at the end they’re going to have all of those final requirements, and that the end product is going to be okayed by Bill Levandowski, but right now, I think we’re putting ourselves out on a limb. They’re not all there. So what’s another few days to get everything intact and then we can do the SEQRA and get this project off the ground. That’s the way I feel. MR. PALING-George? MR. STARK-I echo Larry. MR. PALING-Okay. Craig? MR. MAC EWAN-You know where I stand. MR. PALING-Okay. Then I guess it’s up to me. Because of the way that, I was going one way, now I’m going the other way. Because of the way you’ve put it, then I don’t think we’ve got adequate information to continue with this, and I think we’re going to have to wait until we do get sufficient information to do a SEQRA complete, with the information in front of us. MR. O’CONNOR-Can I see if I can get a hold of Bill Levandowski and maybe have him clarify it from what he told us before, before you make your final motion this evening? MR. PALING-You mean do it by phone? 13 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. O’CONNOR-Well, I’ll see if I can get him to come over. MR. PALING-I have no objection to something like that. MR. O’CONNOR-All right. Let me try. MR. PALING-I think it’s a little unusual, as they say, but anybody object to that? MR. O’CONNOR-I’d just as soon say that as opposed to coming back another month, that’s all. That’s the only thing. MR. PALING-All right. MR. MAC EWAN-We’d be willing to set up a special meeting for you. MR. O’CONNOR-I don’t think that’s necessary. MR. PALING-We’ll just push this aside until you, we hear from you later this evening. MR. O’CONNOR-Okay, and if I come back in and simply say, I can’t get a hold of him, then at your own leisure you’re going to make a motion to table it for further information? MR. PALING-Yes. MR. O’CONNOR-Okay, because I don’t want to interrupt what you’re then contemplating. MR. PALING-Okay. SITE PLAN NO. 29-97 TYPE I NEWMAN DEVELOPMENT GROUP OF QUEENSBURY, L.L.C. OWNER: QUAKER VILLAGE DEV. CORP ZONE: HC-1A LOCATION: NE CORNER OF QUAKER AND BAY ROAD PUBLIC HEARING ON DEIS. WARREN CO. PLANNING 10/8/97 JON LAPPER & MARC NEWMAN, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MR. PALING-Tonight, as Cathy said, we’re going to be talking about the Draft Environmental Impact Statement. In other words, we’re going to limit our conversation as best we can to environmental issues. There is a site plan review that will be a separate meeting a couple or three weeks, whenever, and at that time we’ll take up site plan issues. I’m trying to definitely cut the line between the two of them. It’s practically impossible, but we’ll ask ourselves and anyone else that’s speaking on this to realize that tonight we’re here to consider environmental issues only. Now after this meeting is over, or when the public hearing is open, then the public comment period is open, th and will stay open for 10 days, be closed approximately November 8, that there will then following that, the Final Environmental Impact Statement will be brought before us for review, and it will be accompanied by a Findings Statement that we’ll use as a guide. In other words, what they’re saying is any questions raised tonight will be answered in the Findings Statement and in the Final EIS, and that we’ll be reviewing it again in it’s final form, but tonight it is the draft form, and it is for environmental reasons only. The site plan will also have its own public hearing. John, do you care to add anything to that? MR. GORALSKI-I think that was well done. MR. PALING-Okay. All right. With that, would you identify yourselves, please. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. For the record, my name is Jon Lapper, on behalf of Newman Development Group of Queensbury. Sitting next to me is Marc Newman, the principal of the company. What we had planned on to start the public hearing is just to do a short presentation to talk about the project, Marc and I starting out, and then having three of our consultants, the engineer, the traffic engineer, and the wetland specialist, because traffic on the impact on the Halfway Brook corridor are the most significant potential impacts, just to give an overview for the Board and for the public mostly, because the members of the public that are here tonight haven’t been here previously when we’ve appeared before the Board, and then turn it back to you and open the public hearing. We weren’t planning on responding to specific questions raised by the public tonight, because we would be answering in the FEIS, but if the Board has any questions or if there 14 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) are specific questions that are raised by the public tonight that you’d like us to address, we’re here to do that. MR. PALING-Okay. That seems fine. MR. LAPPER-Okay. I’m pleased to be representing the Newman Group because they’re a quality company and this was not a site that was necessarily an easy site or an inexpensive site to design. It was, as we all know, previously developed with commercial and office use. So it wasn’t like taking a blank pristine site for doing the development, and we had to take into account the fact that there were already buildings and impervious surfaces. We think that because that is an older development, that when we’re done with this, by bringing this site into compliance with the Code, in terms of setbacks, the green way along Bay Road, that it’s going to be much nicer, aesthetically, and certainly provide shopping opportunities that don’t exist in Town right now. Marc will start off telling you a little bit about the company and the project. MR. NEWMAN-Okay. Thanks. I am Marc Newman, and it’s a pleasure to be here this evening. My company is based in Binghamton, New York. We’re a New York State developer. We’ve been involved in many different projects, primarily in New York State, although we’re doing a lot of projects or proposed projects in Pennsylvania right now. When we were going out looking for different locations for this particular tenant we had in mind, this Town really appealed to us for a lot of reasons. One, the demographics were good. The look of the Town was good. It had character. It had a good feeling. We were able to convince our tenant that they should, typically with a tenant or with a retailer, in this case Lowe’s, typically, they will work in a fashion from south to north or west to east, or something along those lines. Like for instance, when they were in, they had a store in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The next obvious spot on the map was Binghamton, New York, which we developed with them, and they work in that manner. We were able to convince them that they should take a very hard look at this market place and not wait for their Albany, New York expansion to occur before moving northbound, which would be the logical move, heading up in the area. They came to Town with me. They loved the community. Their corporate people, the president of the company visited your community and really liked what they saw here, just as we did, and the project went on to get approved internally by Lowe’s corporation, and eventually going to a lease, which is signed and fully executed, obviously, subject to certain contingencies. From my dealings with, I’ve worked with a lot of retailers, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, Target, Sony Theater’s, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Cole’s Department stores, and probably practically every retailer in the nation, and I’m proud to say that this particular retailer is one of the finest companies that I’ve personally been associated with. They’re people of their word. They do what they say they’re going to do, and they, I think it’ll be a real true asset to your community. They pay their people well, their employees. They have good growth, they have growth from within the company. Once you’re part of the team, there’s growth opportunities. It will bring substantial amount of jobs and stability, and I think it will overall improve the economy here during the construction phase of the project. Local contractors will be used, for the most part, I mean, within the region, not necessarily in Queensbury, but within the region. It was our intent to buy most of the materials here, purchased locally. So anyway, we, again, we’re pleased to be here. Our company, just real quickly, we are a development company that is truly involved in every one of our projects, from the planning stages, from locating the properties, to the planning stages, to the construction phases to the completion stages, and we are also a company that takes property management very, very seriously. Property management, to us, is an ongoing, upkeep of the property and making sure that the property is being taken care of in the proper manner once the project is completed, and we will do that in this case. So we’ve spent practically a year now, actually over a year. We’ve been under contract for a year, excuse me, almost a year, working this particular site. There’s been a lot of bugs to work out of it. There’s been a lot of issues, and I don’t mean issues meaning big, insurmountable issues. I mean, just issues to make things work, and we think that, with what we have, and what we’re proposing, we’ll create a great, again, a great project for everyone here, and thank you for giving us the opportunity. MR. PALING-Okay. Then what, for the balance of the meeting, I’m wondering if we should hear the engineering comments, and the County comments, and then perhaps go back, Staff comments, I mean to say. They are reasonably extensive, and I assume you have a copy of the Staff comments. We could perhaps go over those, unless there’s a better suggestion for the format that we use. MR. LAPPER-Before the public hearing? MR. GORALSKI-It’s up to you. If you would like to go through all of our comments individually and have them answered tonight, you can do that. 15 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-Yes. MR. GORALSKI-However, that’s not necessary, because the Board knows what our comments are. They will be incorporated in the Final Environmental Impact Statement, and each one of those comments will have to be individually addressed in the Final Impact Statement. MR. PALING-But what’s different than any other? We always know your comments. We have them to read before hand as we do tonight. MR. GORALSKI-Usually you don’t get written responses to every comment. You’re going to get a written response to every one of those comments. MR. PALING-All right. Then I guess the question is, is it valuable to the public, then, to hear what these comments are. MR. GORALSKI-That’s up to you. MR. PALING-I kind of think it is. MR. GORALSKI-Okay. MR. PALING-And I’d like Laura to go over them, as we usually do. MR. LAPPER-Well, Mr. Chairman, we thought that we’d put on the engineers really quickly to just explain to the public, because I think that some of their questions, because this is the first time that they’re seeing a presentation on this site, we could probably answer them by just doing an overview of the general site design, the traffic improvements that we’ve planned and how we’ve stayed away from the stream corridor and the wetland. MR. PALING-Okay. This wouldn’t be intended as a question and answer, but rather an explanation, and overview. MR. LAPPER-Right. MR. PALING-All right. If you want to do that, then we’ll come back and do the other. Okay. ED GARRIGAN MR. GARRIGAN-Thank you. My name is Ed Garrigan. I’m with C.T. Male Associates. I’ll try and stand so I don’t block people’s view, and I’ll give you some of the pertinent facts about the site. The site is 25 acres. When we’re complete with the development, approximately 15 acres will be developed. That’s a little bit less than what’s there now. Some of the environmental constraints that we had to deal with are, Number One, the Halfway Brook. It is a trout stream, and we have to address the fact that we cannot pour stormwater directly into the creek as it currently does. Right now there is no management of the stormwater. Our design takes that into account, and we will manage the stormwater and detention ponds, and discharge the rate at a predisposed rate. The other issue was the site, if you ride down the road, you can see it’s a very flat site. That’s not always good. In order to accomplish a stormwater management plan that works, you need some grade. The water has to be able to flow downhill. So what’s that’s caused us to do is design a fill of this site. We have to raise this site up enough in the northwest part to get the water to flow to these detention ponds, so that it just doesn’t lay there and pocket. So we’ve come up with approximately an average of six feet of fill across the site. We will stay out of the wetlands, and out of the zoned, the flood zone that follows along the Halfway Brook. Part of the problem that exists now with the site is there’s a bridge across the brook. In a two year storm event, our mottling indicates that bridge goes under water. In a five year event, it’s totally impassable. The new bridge that we’ll put in will not have that problem. It’ll be out of the water. It’ll have a wider opening under the bridge that will allow all the water to flow. It will not effect any of the properties upstream. We will not restrict any of the water to cause upstream flooding, which was a concern of one of the residents, or the owners of the bank across the street. We’ve also laid this site out with some wider curb islands between the parking aisles, which allows more planting of trees. Quite often you see people, they put in curb islands that are very narrow. They put a tree in there, it lasts the first winter. These are wider aisles. They’ll give a much greener effect. They’ll allow those trees a better opportunity to grow. We’ve got a lot of open green space, as you can see on the plan. We’ve colored the green areas so that you can see how much the green is, and all this area to the east will remain undeveloped with our main storm detention pond here. That will be a 16 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) grassed pond. That will also be green area. I think that’s about all I need to say on the project. The setbacks, we are setting the building back from the right-of-way of Bay Road 345 feet to the building. There’s an additional approximately 100 feet of the garden center, but the building will not be up close to the road. It sets back from the road. There’s a 75 foot buffer that we maintain from the edge of the road to the parking lot. So we have maintained all the buffers that are required for pavement and buildings. MR. LAPPER-Okay. I think we’ll put Don on to go into detail about the stream and the wetlands. DON COOGAN MR. COOGAN-My name is Don Coogan, and I work with Terrestrial Environmental Specialists. We’re the environmental consultants for the project. Our main focus was on wetlands that are located on the east side of the site, Halfway Brook, which Ed explained is a regulated stream and endangered/threatened species. We contacted agencies for potential occurrences of endangered/threatened species, and based on their comments, we did reviews for Karner Blue Butterfly and the small white Lady Slipper. Neither of those species occur on the site, and appropriate habitat does not occur on site. So we were clean as far as the concerns for endangered, threatened species. These are Federal wetlands that occur along this eastern edge. They’re also State regulated wetlands. It’s State regulated wetland GF-19, and it’s a Class II Wetland. I don’t know if you can see it very well, but the regulated area outside the wetland, 100 foot zone, is also regulated by DEC. The Corps just regulates the wetland itself. Halfway Brook, again, a regulated stream, a trout stream, has very high water quality standards, and it was important to avoid Halfway Brook. Newman went through a lot of different designs to try to stay away from both the wetland and the stream, and we played around with a lot of options, and we found that the best way to do it was just to completely avoid the problems, which they did. They avoided the wetland. They avoided the stream. They’re bridging the stream, and they have not encroached on the wetland area. So, what we did was we provided DEC with a permit application. We didn’t have to provide the application to the Corps, although we did as a courtesy, and that is in review right now with the agencies. MR. LAPPER-That’s a point that we want to just clarify. When we had first come to you and submitted the Long Environmental Assessment Form, we had anticipated that there would have been a Corps permit required for fill within the stream corridor because of the bridge and the bridge abutments. The project was re-designed so that we would have this expansion, the bridge that would be completely above the stream so we wouldn’t be doing any work in the stream corridor, and that eliminated the requirement for a Corps permit. MR. COOGAN-That’s correct, but we are within this adjacent area of the DEC wetlands. So that requires an Article 24 Permit from the DEC. The interesting thing about this is the amount of impervious area proposed by this development is less than what currently exists on the site right now, within the adjacent area, and again, like Ed said, all your stormwater right now just sheet flows off. It’s uncontrolled. Once the system is in, I know six feet of fill sounds like a lot, and it is, but that’s got to be, it has to be to move that water to the detention pond in order to control stormwater on the site. Once that’s in place, a grass swale will be located right here, and it’s going to be an underground pipe. We’ve taken this into consideration. It leaves the detention pond, goes through this underground pipe. It’ll help to cool the water, because that was one of the DEC’s concerns about thermal stress on the creek. It will go through the grass swale, further cooling the water, and then it’ll bleed into the wetland. As it bleeds through the wetland, it’s already going to be treated stormwater. It’ll sheet flow out, thereby cooling it some more before it enters Halfway Brook. It’s a heck of a lot better option than just directly discharging into the brook, and that’s about it for us. MR. LAPPER-And then next is Dennis O’Malley, our Traffic Engineer. DENNIS O’MALLEY MR. O’MALLEY-Good evening. My name is Dennis O’Malley. I’m from Transportation Concepts, and our job was to take a look at the traffic issues related to this project and come up with a solution to try to help alleviate some of the traffic problems directly related to the site, but I think more than that what we’ve done is to try to take a look at some of the problems which exist, which are not directly related to the site, which are already there, and we think have taken some strides to improve as well. If you’ll remember in the traffic report which was given to the members of the Board, this process started very early, even, in fact, before we had the Scoping Session here to talk about the areas that were of concern with relevance to traffic. We had some preliminary 17 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) discussions with Warren County about Bay Road and Quaker Road to see what kinds of concerns that they had, assuming that a project similar to the size of the Lowe’s that’s currently on the table might have on the site. So we had some ideas from them, early in the process, about areas that they had some concern relative to traffic and transportation. The traffic report looked at the areas that were set forth in the Scoping Session. Copies of the report were provided to the Town, to Warren County and to, ultimately, GFTC I know got copies of it and I know DOT has been reviewing it for GFTC. We’ve had ongoing discussions between all those agencies, and ourselves, relevant to the issues in regard to traffic, and we can boil them down, essentially, into two general areas. The first is the highway system directly adjacent to the site where the main access to the site, take a look at some larger scale and smaller scale, so we know where we are, and hopefully everyone can see. When I talk about the main entrance to the site, I’m talking about the entrance which is proposed directly opposite Glenwood Avenue, which is currently at that location. Currently, if you examine the intersection, this is Bay Road as it currently exists. Glenwood Avenue is here, and the Quaker Electric and the hardware store and the office complex and so forth are buildings which are in the parcel over here, reside over on this side of Bay Road. Currently as you know when you come north on Bay Road, it’s two lanes with a left turn lane at Glenwood and then these two lanes immediately dissolve into a single lane, to travel north. The shoulder becomes wide, which is the darker area you see here, and travels all the way up toward ACC. Conversely, traveling south, it sort of becomes two lanes before you get to Glenwood at this location, and this intersection is currently controlled as a stop sign. We, earlier in the process, talked to the developer about where access should be provided for this site. We had been involved in discussions about Quaker Road, in years gone by, and we know that Warren County, the Town of Queensbury, the Department of Transportation have all had an interest in Quaker Road and trying to find mechanisms to improve the travel along Quaker Road, and one of those things is to take a look at access points. If we looked at Quaker Road down here, this is Quaker and Bay, and currently, there’s a full access entrance which is located at this location, which permits all movements, rights in and rights out, lefts in and lefts out and that location. We indicated to Mark at that time, and we thought it would be advantageous to make sure that, Number One, we thought we could help this location by restricting the access at that location, not having that be the main entrance to the site, and essentially creating the need for another signalized intersection on Quaker Road at this location, which would create a condition which would be not too dissimilar to what you have at the Hannaford store and Quaker Road about a few hundred feet to the west of the Bay and Quaker intersection, and I think all of you that have traveled Quaker Road have experienced the times in which that left turn slot, for example, fills up in both directions, and there’s not enough room for people to store, and it can create some friction in the through movement. So we immediately said that we thought this would be less advantageous to have at this location and concentrate our point over here. It also offers some advantages, I think, for the Town, in the sense that this intersection, our observations of the intersection of Glenwood and Bay currently has some very real problems. It’s controlled by a stop sign. It has a fairly substantial amount of traffic which travels through the intersection. It’s difficult at times for people coming out of Glenwood to be able to turn left and go north on Bay Road. There were numerous occasions in where we saw near incidents. We’ve seen people come out of Glenwood Avenue, in the sense that they want to go north, turn right, come down this way, go into Quaker Electric, do what we call a jug handle effect, come back out on Bay Road and travel north. People become irritable at times when they wait too long, and they take chances. It’s just observations and numbers suggest that it’s a condition which needed to have some improvement. What we have suggested is that the entrance to the site be opposite Glenwood. Glenwood will not change, and will have the current geometry which is there. The site entrance has three lanes out, two of which are both for lefts and one of which has a through movement and a right. The intersection on Bay Road will have left turn lanes coming into the site, traveling south, and we’ll improve Bay Road so that we can meet more current standards for the traveling of this two lanes north on Bay Road, past the site entrance. You can see there’s two lanes that’ll travel up all the way past the north entrance to the site and then dissolve into a single lane, up in this area. Of additional concern that’s come up in the discussion is that we know that this is a bike route. Warren County Bikeway comes down Glenwood Avenue, and then goes up Bay Road, and obviously, right now they travel along the shoulder area. We will take a portion of that shoulder in order to make the two lanes north. So we needed to do something with the Bikeway, and what we have suggested is, and we think this is an improvement for the bikes as well, we’ll take the bikes off the road. Cross the road and come over and there’ll be a separate facility, parallel to Bay Road, on the site property, that will carry the bikes along the full length of the west face of the site property, past the service entrance, at which time they go back into the existing Bikeway. So that’s our proposal for the improvements at the main intersection at Bay and Glenwood. Over on, without getting into the details, we’re also proposing a traffic signal at the intersection, so that the stop sign would be replaced with a full traffic signal, and we think that’s going to be advantageous for all of the users of Bay Road as well. For the entrance off of Quaker Road, the County has asked that we construct a right turn lane into the site. The lane is about 200 18 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) feet in length with a full taper. It will be about 16 feet in width, 12 foot of which will be actual travel, pavement for travel, four foot of shoulder. One of the things that we had to be concerned about in constructing that lane is there’s a culvert which runs underneath Quaker Road. It dumps into the wetland area in the back. Building 16 feet of pavement created a steeper slope in that area. We’ve talked to the County, and the County has indicated what we can do in order to treat that, so that we don’t have to get into putting any fill in that wetland. So to the wet area, which has been marked as a wetland, will remain as is, and we’re not going to introduce any fill whatsoever into that wet area. This will be limited to rights in and rights out only. We’re working on the design with Warren County. We understand that we want to get a design in there which restricts as much as possibly anyone from taking a left out of the site, and I think ultimately we’ll come up with a design along with regulatory signing that will discourage as much as possible people from making that move. We believe we have a good site here. We believe that traffic conditions will be, in many cases, better than they are right now, especially at this intersection, with the addition of a traffic signal, and the improvement of the two lanes north of the site, traveling toward ACC. Any questions? MR. LAPPER-I think we’ll go through the Town’s questions next. MR. PALING-Okay. All right. Laura, do you want to read your, the engineering comments to us, please. MR. LAPPER-Mr. Chairman, would you like us to respond to each one as she reads them? MR. PALING-No. I would prefer that she goes through the whole thing, and then we can go back over them one by one, but lets listen to the whole document first. MS. NOWICKI-I’m not going to refer to each page number, because you each have a copy. MR. PALING-You mean the page number of what? MS. NOWICKI-I have Executive Summary, Page S-2. I’m not going to refer to that. MR. PALING-Are you referring to the applicant’s page number? No. MS. NOWICKI-No, my Staff Notes. STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 29-97 Draft Environmental Impact Statement Public Hearing, Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space, Meeting Date: October 28, NATURAL FEATURES WETLAND AND BROOK 1997 “ It is not clear what type of Erosion and Sediment Control measures are being used for the filtration features. If measures are not properly installed the measures may cause a greater erosion and sediment loss. This as applicable information needs to be included : a visual and written description of Erosion and Sediment Control measures for each of the filtration features: *Subcatchment, Reaches, Pond, and Link, and **Drainage Channels. These need to be located on the plans. *Staff found these features located in the DEIS document, **Staff found this feature on Drawing no. 97-314R Grading Plan. Where will Construction Detail 10C9 be located, “Detention Basin Out structure cross section”? Our concern with this feature is its use with the wetland. If this feature or the wetland are allowed to accumulate sediment will the feature still be able to operate as a filtration feature? Staff has not encountered a detailed landscape plan for Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space. There is no apparent permission granted from the NYSDEC Exhibit II-7 Wildlife Resources Natural Heritage Program to use . “Data Sensitivity- the data provided in the report…This report is for your in house use and should not be released, distributed or incorporated in a public document without prior permission from the Natural Heritage Program.” What pollutants and particulates are anticipated to occur in the filtration features? Will the filtration features be monitored for pollutants and particulates? Staff’s interest is to be aware of the potential pollutants and particulates that already exist in the Wetland and Brook. An example of particulates is sand. An example of pollutants includes oil, gasoline, deicing material. In this section it was mentioned that chemicals were needed for site operation and maintenance. What chemicals will be used? An example would be a deicer. Staff recommends that the Exhibits that relate to this section B. Summary of Potential Impacts and Proposed Mitigation Measures 2. Impact on Water (exhibit II-3, II-4, II-7, etc.) be mentioned here. This is similar to Executive Summary, page S-5, B. Summary of Potential Impacts and Proposed Mitigation Measure., 4. Impacts on the Growth and Character of the Community Can a roof drainage plan be developed? 19 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) TRAFFIC Which drainage feature will the stormwater flow be directed to? Staff is concerned that the study was done when Adirondack Community College was out of session. The intersection at Bay and Quaker is impacted by traffic going to and from ACC. Staff would recommend a traffic evaluation of the ACC traffic impact. Staff is concerned about the impact on Glenwood Avenue, is this road able to handle anticipated traffic? Staff has a concern with the access on Quaker Road. The “right only entrance and exit” will have the potential to cause vehicular incidences. Because patrons of the Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space will attempt to make left turns in and left turns out of this access. This problem was not addressed in the Study in regards to listing alternatives to this potential problem. A metal guard rail has been proposed on the East side of the project. Is this guard rail required by NYSDOT? Is this guard rail required by the Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space, if so, why? Staff feels that a metal guard rail will detract from the visual aesthetics of the site. A low berm might provide the same function and be more visually acceptable. The Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space can provide adequate parking. Staff would like to know if it is possible to not pave some of this area? This non-paved area could be paved in the future as needed. However, this unpaved parking area can not be used in the permeability ratio Section 179-66 B (6). Staff is concerned about traffic turning right onto Quaker into a lane which is often backed up. A right turn lane from Quaker onto Bay would help, or the right turn onto Quaker from Lowe’s could be eliminated with traffic directed to the controlled intersection at OTHER Glenwood instead. It is not clear that all Public Service providers were made aware of the retail space. This is in reference to Exhibit II-8 Town of Queensbury Department of Wastewater, “for sanitary sewer capacity of 4500 GPD for the Lowe’s Home and Garden Center”. Staff would like to know that all Public and Private Service Providers were notified. Currently, there is no bridge construction information. What type of bridge is going to be put in? Staff would recommend to the Planning Board to suggest an alternative lay out plan of buildings and parking be considered. For example placing the parking in the back of the building. Placing the garden center on the east side instead of the west. This would hide a 16 foot tall chain link storage area and loading dock that currently faces Bay Road, which is the main entrance. Landscaping around the Garden Center with plantings or intermix a decorative fence and landscaping. This would make the main entrance an aesthetically pleasing view.” And that means leaving the Garden Center where it is now. “Orientate the retail space so the dumpster and masonry walls are not seen from Quaker, or provide sufficient landscaping to hide the dumpster and mansonry walls.” MR. PALING-Okay. One other thing I think we might note is that the County, we have a document from the County saying disapproved. This, however, is only a temporary condition, for lack of information. MR. GORALSKI-Right, and I can explain that. They, because they didn’t have the full Draft EIS, and the full set of plans and everything, they felt that it was incumbent on them to deny it at that time. However, once they have all this information, they are going to re-hear the application, and that will be done prior to you making any decisions on this site plan review. MR. PALING-Okay. Now, are there any other letters that should be read in at this point? We have several. MR. GORALSKI-There’s a couple of letters from the public you might want us to read in here. MR. PALING-All right, as part of the public hearing. MR. GORALSKI-Right. MR. PALING-Okay. We’re not into that yet. MR. GORALSKI-Rist-Frost has not made any written comments yet. I will have them to you prior to the end of the comment period. th MR. PALING-Okay, by the 11 or whatever? MR. GORALSKI-Right. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. GORALSKI-I believe the Warren County Planning Board will also have comments prior to that. 20 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. Okay. You can address these tonight or however you want to handle it. MR. LAPPER-Whatever you prefer. We’re happy to address them, if that’s what you feel is appropriate. MR. PALING-I would think it appropriate if you would address them, yes. MR. LAPPER-Okay. For some, I will address and some I will call on the engineer and traffic engineer. MR. PALING-Just tell us where you are on the paper so we can keep score. MR. LAPPER-Okay. We’ll go through them right down. Part of the Staff comments, I think Laura was reviewing the DEIS, and then she got the copy of the detailed site plan later, after she’d started her review. So I know that some of the erosion control information is provided in the detailed site plan, and we go into detail about the erosion and sediment control measures. You’ve seen that now. The detention basin and out structure and accumulation of sediment, I’d like to ask Ed to respond to that. MR. GARRIGAN-The storm basin has perforated under drain. During construction, that perforated under drain will have to be protected, so that sediment does not build up in the under drain. In a construction atmosphere environment you have a lot of sediment build up. So it needs to be protected, as well as the outlet structure. Once the site is functional, grass is growing in the basin, you shouldn’t have that condition. Regular maintenance, as Mr. Newman has indicated, they do a lot of maintenance on their sites, will alleviate any potential problems with that. MR. LAPPER-The next issue was the landscape plan, and we have also now provided the detailed landscape plan, including specimens, as part of the site plan. MR. PALING-Yes. That’s the grading, the C-4 and the C-6 I think prints answers that. MR. GORALSKI-Yes, right. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. LAPPER-Okay. We did get permission from the Natural Heritage Program. They asked us just to white out some specific information as to exactly where the location is, and we did that, but we’ll give you the full answer to that in the FEIS. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. LAPPER-Okay. The pollutants and particulates, that’s something that Ed should address. MR. GARRIGAN-Visual observations will be made during construction, for sheen on the water or anything like that. No sampling is generally required in a SPDES Permit such as this, for construction activity. That would only be for industrial activities. As far as removal of grease and oil and petroleum products, initially, the particles will get caught up in the filter fabric that’s placed in the bottom of the basin for that exact cause. If there’s any build up that gets out, the wetlands, the function of a wetlands is actually, it cleans the water. It will filter as well. The accumulation of sediment in the bottom of the basins, periodically that will have to be removed, probably in the spring time if you’ve had a lot of snow and a lot of sanding over the summer, that’s a site maintenance issue. The chemicals that may be used on the site, generally speaking there may be some fertilizer on the green areas, the plantings, the landscaped areas, and potentially salt as a deicer in the winter. MR. LAPPER-Okay. The Exhibits we will refer to them, as you’ve requested. The roof drainage plan, it may not have been specified, but there is a roof drainage plan. MR. GARRIGAN-There is. The roof drainage has been taken into account in our stormwater computations. There will be a line of, an underground like a header pipe that runs along the north side of the building that will collect the stormwater. It will be split. Part of it will come to these detention ponds, and part will go over to this part, but it has been accounted for. MS. NOWICKI-Okay. Right. 21 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. MAC EWAN-Did you say that pipe was going to be buried? MR. GARRIGAN-Yes. It’ll be underground, there’ll be downspouts. MR. MAC EWAN-How many feet? MR. GARRIGAN-I would guesstimate probably three feet. MR. MAC EWAN-Below frost line? MR. GARRIGAN-Yes. The same as the rest of the, it’ll be part of the stormwater management system. MR. LAPPER-Okay. The next page is on traffic impacts. So Dennis can address those. MR. O’MALLEY-As I have it on the list, the first issue that was brought up with reference to traffic has to do with whether the study was done when ACC was in session or not. I think ACC is in the session the first week in May, and if it is, then that’s when the traffic count was collected. The data at all the intersections was collected the first week in May. MR. GORALSKI-I’m not sure. There may be finals. It may not be a typical day. It’s something that should be checked into, exactly when, whether or not ACC was in session the day. MR. O’MALLEY-I can tell you that one other factor is that when we look at the intersection and we look at the most severe impact, we try to look at the time of day when most traffic travels through the intersection. All of the data that we have suggests that that occurs between four and six in the afternoon. There’s some 3200 vehicles an hour which go through that intersection of Bay and Quaker, and there are no other times of the day which even approximate that, and that’s historic data that we have for that intersection that’s been in existence for quite some time. MR. MAC EWAN-How long has that data been in existence? MR. O’MALLEY-It’s done on an annual basis by DOT for, I know the earliest date we have is 1988, and we had it up through and including 1996, 1997. MR. MAC EWAN-And the numbers for morning traffic didn’t come near that? MR. O’MALLEY-No. The reason for that is because in the afternoon all the retail activity, or preponderance, is open, in the whole area. The shopping centers are open. The places that are commercial and retail are open. In the morning you predominantly just have office space open, and then you get another spike which occurs during the afternoon at lunch time, between 11 and 1. I know historically in looking at colleges like Hudson Valley, we’ve seen that we get some spikes of traffic at Hudson Valley between 11 and 1, where there’s a significant amount of class changes that are occurring, and commuters are leaving the campus at that time frame, but even then, that total volume doesn’t even come close to what occurs during the afternoon peak hour when all of the office space, and people doing all the shopping and so forth around the system. Just to give you some idea, the afternoon peak hour reflects about 10% of the total daily traffic through the intersection. Other times, for example, the afternoon peak hour represents about 7% of that time, morning peak hour represents about 6% of that time, and we try to look at the most severe conditions, so that when we’re designing these facilities, if we can design them for the most critical condition, and it’s not a typical, for DOT for example, to design its facilities for the afternoon peak hour, you can then accommodate traffic during other times of the day, because the traffic volumes are of a lesser number. Even if, for example, the distribution of traffic were different, lets just say, for example, that the intersection of Glenwood and Bay, at 11 to 1 there was a significant discharge from the College traveling down to Bay and Quaker at this intersection, the signal timing is such that if it’s done well, it adjusts to those re-shifts of traffic, takes green time, doesn’t need as much green time on Quaker because the volumes aren’t as severe at the 11 to 1 time frame. It gives more green time to Bay Road. So the system is capable of adjusting to these times of day, but I can tell you that all historic evidence suggests that the most critical hour that occurs is between that four to six time frame in the afternoon on a week day. In fact, we did Friday, which is usually the highest of the five week days, because more people tend to shop on Friday night than any other night of the week, but if you want to check, I think ACC may have been in session, and if it was, we counted whatever impact they had at that time. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-What further analysis are we going to have in regard to this traffic study? MR. GORALSKI-You will receive comments from Warren County DPW. You will also receive comments from the Adirondack Glens Falls Transportation Council. MR. O’MALLEY-I think you have a letter from Warren County DPW. There’s been ongoing discussions, and to date, they are generally in concurrence with the recommendations that we’ve put forward tonight. I know I’ve talked to DOT on Holland Avenue in Albany which has been reviewing for GFTC the same traffic report, and at least they say a letter should be forthcoming, but verbal comments have been that they also concur with the recommendations of the traffic study. The second, the Staff is concerned about the impact on Glenwood Avenue. Is this road able to handle the traffic. The answer is simply, yes. Just for historic purposes, there are really two components to traffic on Glenwood Avenue. There’s a traffic volume, which is about half of what you see at Bay and Glenwood, from Woodvale down to Quaker Road, from Woodvale, actually a little farther east up in this area there’s about twice the traffic volume. It’s predominantly due to the activity of the health center, the racquet ball court, the office space that’s up in this area. There’s a significant amount of traffic that comes in at this intersection, stays up in this area and circulates then comes back out again. It never really gets down to Woodvale. We’ve observed it. We’ve seen it happen. The very simple answer is the projected traffic volumes with the traffic signal suggests that the level of service at the intersection with the traffic signal is more than acceptable. So we have no qualms about saying that the Glenwood, and remember, in a discussion, the real constraint on any traffic system or any highway is a traffic signal. It’s like a valve in a system. If these people were free to go at any time, the numbers would be more significant than with the traffic signal, because it’s stopping the traffic for some period of time to let Bay Road go, and in this case, Glenwood Avenue is moving independently of the site. They’re not moving together. So when traffic leaves Glenwood Avenue, it’s going to be turning right, left and straight and not have any opposition. That’s been set up that way so that these people do not have competition coming out from site traffic as well. Staff has a concern about the access on Quaker Road, the right only entrance will have the potential to cause vehicular incidences because the patrons of Lowe’s Home and Garden Center with Retail Space will attempt to make left turns in and left turns out of this access. As I indicated on my opening remarks, we’ve talked to the County DPW about the design of this. We will do everything that we can to design a facility that will discourage, as best as possible, the lefts out. We will also suggest that the no left turn signs be installed and make it regulatory, that if a left turn is made out of there, it’s in violation of Vehicle and Traffic Law. That’s not to say that if somebody wants to do it, Quaker Road late at night is a wide road, and you can turn right and turn around and make a U turn and go back. I’m not going to say that every car and every condition is going to be able to not be able to turn left, but we’re going to, but we’re going to make every effort to make sure that it’s going to be a difficult move for them to make. MR. GORALSKI-Excuse me, Dennis. You said that you would, if they put a sign up there, it’s a regulatory? MR. O’MALLEY-That’s right. MR. GORALSKI-In other words, what you’re saying is they’ll put a no left turn sign up there. The Sheriff’s Department could ticket people who come out and make a left hand turn? MR. O’MALLEY-That’s correct. An ordinance would be assigned to the sign, and if it’s done in prescription with the Vehicle and Traffic Law, you’d have a sign at this location right here, and then across Quaker Road, opposite, that says no left turn, and that’s the way the signs have to be installed to be in compliance, but if the ordinance is enacted with the signs, then they’re subject to violation and arrest, and violation of Vehicle Traffic Law. MR. GORALSKI-So an ordinance has to be adopted by? MR. O’MALLEY-The Town. MR. GORALSKI-By the Town. MR. O’MALLEY-That’s correct. MR. GORALSKI-Okay. 23 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. O’MALLEY-Metal guard rail has been proposed on the east side. Is the guard rail required by DOT? Of course DOT has no jurisdiction on any of the facilities that we’re currently involved with right here. Is the guard rail required by Lowe’s? I don’t think so. I don’t think Lowe’s really gets into guard rail issues or guide rail issues. Staff feels the metal guard rail will detract from the visual aesthetics. A low berm might provide the same function and be more visually acceptable. I could tell you the reason that we have recommended the guide rail out in this area, and I’m sure for the bridge, Ed can speak for that, is merely safety. We have a bridge here that’s going to be up in the air, and a vehicle going off that bridge into Halfway Brook is obviously not a very safe condition. The same thing happens over here. In order to protect this wetland where this culvert is that I talked about earlier, and provide for the right turn lane, we had to change the slope on the ground that’s currently one on four. That is for every one foot vertically that you go, you have to travel four feet horizontally. We had to change to one on two, which is permitted, if guide rail is installed, and the reason for that is obviously if someone were to veer off the road and you have a one on two slope, there’s a chance the car will slide down a hill, or depending upon speed, potentially roll over, and we’re trying to protect that situation against this culvert. It’s about 10 feet difference in elevation between the top of the outside of that right turn lane and the bottom of the culvert. So we have a 10 foot fall which is occurring, and the guide rail is there to protect them. MS. NOWICKI-Dennis, so you’re saying that it is required then? MR. O’MALLEY-It’s required, yes. MS. NOWICKI-Okay. MR. O’MALLEY-Warren County’s requiring it for our purposes, and I’m sure. MS. NOWICKI-Because you just contradicted your statement. MR. GORALSKI-You just said it wasn’t required by anybody. Now you’re saying it is. MR. LAPPER-By Lowe’s it’s not. MR. O’MALLEY-Not by Lowe’s, I said. Lowe’s is not a person who requires it, and I don’t think, and DOT’s not involved in this issue at all. MS. NOWICKI-Okay. MR. O’MALLEY-It’s required by the design that we’re constructing, and I think required by good engineering practice. MR. LAPPER-Dennis, we’ll answer the next question when we talk about the site configuration. MR. O’MALLEY-Okay. Staff’s concerned about the traffic turning right onto Quaker into a lane which is often backed up. A right turn lane from Quaker onto Bay would help, or the right turn from Quaker onto Bay could be eliminated, with the traffic directed to the controlled intersection at Glenwood instead. I can tell you that, potentially, that may be able to be done, but I would not recommend it, and I think because the success of any site is providing alternatives to people to exit and enter the site. Having two exit points, not counting this one up here which is a truck entrance, provides great flexibility. In this case, we have a more specific reason. As you can see, we don’t have a lot of space between Bay Road and the site circulation in here. In fact, we work very hard early in the process in talking about that and trying to estimate the traffic demand in here, during the afternoon peak hour, and during other peak hours when Lowe’s is busier than the time in which Bay and Quaker are busy, we needed stacking space in here when the stacking space in here when the traffic signal is red, and we didn’t want that stacking to intrude into the internal circulation. We went through a careful analysis and found that we required, in fact, we kind of drove the site, in the sense of providing reasonable space in here, but it was predicated on the number of vehicles using this intersection being a component of it and then a portion of them using this entrance or this exit as well. If we close that down and move this up into here, we get into a potential situation during peak hours where this traffic could back up into the site circulation and restrict any movement on the site, and we’re trying to avoid that. This intersection we also, besides our left turn, we were going to suggest, I think Warren County would do so as well, have that controlled by either a stop or yield sign. In which case what we’ve done is created an intersection. I think it’s an accurate statement. There are times, during peak traffic conditions, when this cue that builds up at the traffic signal gets back and gets into this area. However, at the tail end of the green at the 24 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) signal, all our observations suggest that people are moving through the area. At that point these people can make a decision, as they do at any other intersection, that it’s safe to proceed. We would certainly recommend that the site and that lane be there, and that that be an option for people to leave the site. MR. LAPPER-I think that’s it for traffic. Okay. You questioned whether all public and private service providers were notified. I believe that everybody has been now, and we’ll verify that. MR. GORALSKI-I think, we have a couple of more traffic issues that I’d just like to make sure the Board is clear on what we were asking, okay, and that is, maybe I can be descriptive in what we were talking about here. Would it be advantageous to have turning lanes similar to what you have at 9 and 254, where if you’re going to make a right hand turn, you don’t have to go through the signalized intersection. You can actually, there would be a turn lane, both on what would be the northeast quadrant there, and then possibly even on the northwest, coming down Bay Road, right there, and right there. I don’t know if all four, right there, and then, you know, on the east side of that. MR. O’MALLEY-If I’m not mistaken, I think Bay Road has, I think the geometry is a right, a through and a left anyhow. I think there’s only one through lane to go to Bay Road. MR. PALING-That’s right. MR. O’MALLEY-One of them is assigned as a right turn lane here, but in this direction you’re asking would a design, what we call a high type design similar to Quaker and Route 9 have merit. MR. GORALSKI-Right. MR. O’MALLEY-Well, it would be wrong for me to say it doesn’t have merit. Is it necessary? There’s no indication we have traffic volumes that need that type of design at this intersection. The number of right turns through, that move very easily through, and in fact, I suspect from observation in the field some of the people who turn right want to do it on red, they go over on the shoulder material, and then turn right anyhow. MR. GORALSKI-That’s not a good situation, is it? MR. O’MALLEY-Is it a good situation? I don’t know if it’s a bad situation. It happens routinely at sites all over, many intersections throughout the Country. MR. PALING-It would help that intersection considerably, though, if that were to be done. MR. O’MALLEY-Putting in the right turn lane? MR. PALING-Yes. MR. O’MALLEY-No. I couldn’t say it would help it considerably at all. I think the operation of the intersection is very good right now, with the right turns made from that lane. MR. PALING-I use that intersection a lot, and I guess I’m basing it on the delays I personally experience. There’s a curb there that you can’t get over. MR. O’MALLEY-Right in here? MR. PALING-Yes. MR. O’MALLEY-That’s just my opinion. I’ve watched the traffic, and I think there’s a lot of capacity left in that movement in there. Is it something that if someone wanted to just say, build it, sure, it would add some capacity to the intersection, but is it required or is it needed as part of this or something in the future on Quaker Road? I haven’t seen the evidence that that’s the case. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s an option that we can look at, right? MR. GORALSKI-Absolutely. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Is that it for traffic? 25 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. GORALSKI-I think that was it. MR. LAPPER-Okay. The public and private service providers, we’ll check, but I think that we have notified everybody, and we have. MR. GORALSKI-Are they aware that, aside from the Lowe’s building, there’s also going to be another retail user? That’s what we want to make sure of, that’s all. MR. LAPPER-Okay. You mean the 12,000 square foot out parcel? MR. GORALSKI-Right. MR. LAPPER-We’ll check that and let you know. The bridge construction information, you haven’t been provided with detailed, because we haven’t done a design yet. We know, we have a concept, and we know that it’s going to span from Quaker Road up the six foot embankment that we’re adding to fill the site, and that we’re going to stay out of the stream channel. We’ll probably be a lot closer to, and we’ll certainly have all that for site plan review, and we’ll be a lot closer in the next few weeks, and then the site layout, I’ll turn it over to Marc. MR. NEWMAN-Going back to your question on Page 5 of the sheet that I have, Drawing No. 97- 314R, The Lowe’s Home Improvement and Garden Center with Retail Space can provide adequate parking. Staff would like to know if it is possible to not pave some of the area. Basically, when we’re dealing with Lowe’s, dealing with any retail in this particular case Lowe’s, they have certain criteria for parking ratios. We, presently, are at the minimum parking ratio accepted to Lowe’s. When Lowe’s comes into an area, they do a market analysis. Based on the market analysis, sales volumes, how much traffic they need to have, how much business they need to do in order to survive. It’s been analyzed with Lowe’s. We would love to have less parking spaces. As a developer, I know, I’m going to get to that, but we’re at our minimum. To come in with a situation in a non paved area would be not acceptable to the tenant. In any situation under any circumstance, they would turn this site down, and they have that right to do that, as per the lease structure, because we would have a situation, potentially, where you’d be riding through mud. During the winter time, in the winter months, you’d have customers. You’d have mud being dragged across, potentially, the rest of this site, and it would be unacceptable, and we, right now, are at the minimum parking. The project that we have in Vestal, New York has 790 parking spaces. A slightly larger facility of 130,000 square feet, 10,000 square feet more, but this particular project has a total of 626 spaces. MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t understand the comment that you just made, I guess. If I follow what Staff is asking, they’re asking, is there a possibility that a certain percentage of the parking area can be left as green space, for future development should that be needed, and you’re suggesting that, in the winter time, there would be parking on that space right off the bat. I think what Staff is saying is don’t do anything with it. Leave it as green space, go with 10% less. MR. NEWMAN-Well, that’s what I’m saying. You’re saying go 10% less than what’s shown or whatever the number is. What I’m saying is the tenant, we are at the minimum with the tenant. If we came back to the tenant and said, we can only accommodate 500 spaces on this site or 580 or 5, we are at the minimum. If we went to them and said that, this deal would be shot down. I mean, I’m confident in telling you that, because I’ve been through a number of parking issues with this particular chain. They need to have so much parking, and they want it in black top. They don’t want it in grass. They don’t want it in reserved area. They need to have the parking for this particular site. MR. LAPPER-Craig, you’ll remember when we submitted in July, we had 75 more spaces shown, and after we met with the Board the first time, we revised the plan and we eliminated 75 spaces. So we feel that we’ve already gotten rid of a significant percentage. MR. MAC EWAN-I think what Staff is probably concerned with, and correct me if I’m wrong, is they’re probably thinking of K-Mart, where it’s way over developed, and they’ll never use that many spaces. MR. LAPPER-I think we heard that they have 1200 or some odd. MR. NEWMAN-The problem with K-Mart, and K-Mart was notorious for doing this around the Country, as well as Wal-Mart used to do it, and as well as Lowe’s. They had a ratio requirement of, and you’d have to go back, there was seven cars per thousand. Now, if we were talking seven 26 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) cars per thousand, on a facility this big, you know, you would be potentially talking about 840 parking spaces. The ratio is close to five cars per thousand, which is a standard retail requirement is typically between five and five and a half cars per thousand. So, this particular site has been designed in such a way where it will function at Lowe’s, it will function at the minimum standard that Lowe’s will allow in a parking ratio. They typically like to see something between five and a half and six cars per thousand, and they come off of where they use to be, which is more of a larger seven car per ratio, but the K-Mart situation has a lot of excess parking, due to the ratio percentage to the building size. BOB SEARS MR. SEARS-Marc, that building size is (lost words) 160,000 feet, which is 30,000 more feet than on this site. So that makes it even larger, figuring that seven car ratio. MR. NEWMAN-Okay. Staff would recommend that the Planning Board suggest an alternative layout plan of the building and parking be considered, for example placing the parking in the back of the building. Try to understand this. This would be taking the building, moving it up here, and having the parking back here. Where would the front of the building be, if it was here? The front would be here? And this would be the rear of the building facing Quaker Road? MR. GORALSKI-Well, right now you’ve got loading docks facing Bay Road. So I’m not sure that it makes a difference. MR. NEWMAN-No, I’m asking the question. MR. GORALSKI-I’m not designing the site for you. We’re asking if alternatives were looked at, and, I mean, that’s basically the question. MR. NEWMAN-Okay. Again, the answer to the question is the retailer, well, a couple of things. First of all, let me say this to you. Besides the retailer which would turn the site down in a blink of an eye, because it’s not standard for them. They would not do it. This is not an urban area. They just wouldn’t do it, but besides that, there’s problems associated with it. One, we have a right-of- way that we are limited to with Niagara Mohawk. If we were to move this building down in this area, the access to the site would become extremely difficult, and it would not be supported by one access. That’s one problem with doing that. The other problem is, we’ve created this out parcel due to the cost of acquisition for the site, and also due to the nature of the difficulty of the site. With respect to the site work, this out parcel is helping us afford the development and the economics to make this happen. Lowe’s is not a big rent payer. So we would lose the out parcel. We would not be in a position where we could move the bridge, because we’re into wetlands, we’re out of the right-of-way. We’d have to go re-negotiate it with Niagara Mohawk. Additionally, we couldn’t take the bridge and move it any closer because then we’d have the traffic problem with the stacking situation. The Home Improvement Center, with any site they’re located on a national level from coast to coast, they want a site where they’re located where they’re parking’s in front, as any typical retailer in suburban USA wants to do, have the parking field in front with the main road in front and on the side of the site. So that would be a real problem, and a real issue with respect to this tenant. For us to go to them and change the site plan, we probably wouldn’t be able to come back here again, because the project would be shot down, which would be a tragedy in my opinion. MR. LAPPER-But Marc, to answer the question, we did look at putting the building on a couple of other places on the site. MR. NEWMAN-Yes. I mean, we did look around at playing with the building and moving it and turning it, and, you know, there was wetland infringement and other problems that we had. There was, I’m trying to remember one of the scenarios. Yes, we had too much, we tried to take the building, at one point, and put it in this area, or actually what we were trying to do is trying to get more uses on the site by, you know, turning the building, see if we could get another use there. There was a grocery chain that was interested in occupying the site as well. We tried to take advantage of this land, and then finally we realized we just didn’t have the room to fit into the site, for larger than what we have on the site, or substantially larger in that case. Okay. Placing the Garden Center on the east side instead of the west. This would hide a 16 foot tall chain link storage area and loading dock that currently faces Bay Road. Originally, when we laid out the site for Lowe’s, selfishly, we put the Garden Center on this site, if you remember, Ed. The reason we did it was there was less fill required on the site. Is that an accurate statement? We didn’t want to 27 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) go to the expense of all the extra fill needed, and if you could, just for a minute, if you could explain why that was. MR. GARRIGAN-Well, the loading dock is a recessed loading dock. So as we talked about before, we need to get the site up in order to get positive drainage. So by putting the loading dock over here, and recessing it, we need to raise the base elevation more to accomplish that positive drainage, but Marc’s correct. The initial layout that we had had the Garden Center on the other side. It didn’t function as well as it does now. MR. NEWMAN-Even more so than the function, again, we have certain perameters that, and believe me, I’m not trying to come across like, forget what the Town thinks, Lowe’s is God, and what they say goes. Unfortunately, there’s a little give and take, but there’s not a lot of giving. I mean, I was on the phone today with Lowe’s construction department, because obviously looked at this and I wanted to talk about it. When this went to Committee, there was another site that Lowe’s was seriously taking a look at outside of this community, for that first store in the Capital Region, so to speak. As I said, the President and the CFO actually made a trip to the community to analyze which would be their first site in the area, and one of the reasons they like, one of the factors going into them liking the site so much was they liked Quaker Road. They liked Bay Road. They liked the fact that they have visibility for their Garden Center. Garden Center is a huge selling mechanism for the Home Improvement chain, and it carries a tremendous amount of sales volume during the spring and summer months. They want the visibility for the Garden Center. Now I called down, today, to the Director of Construction for Lowe’s and I said that the Town has a concern with respect to the chain link fence, and one of the suggestions that I would have that I’d like the Town to take a look at is if we were to vinyl coat, including the columns, vinyl coat the entire fence so it wouldn’t be chain link. That’s one option that we’re throwing out as a possibility. MR. LAPPER-That’s more of a site plan issue. MR. PALING-You mean vinyl coat the chain link fence? MR. NEWMAN-Vinyl coat the chain, correct. MR. PALING-Yes. MR. LAPPER-And we could add some more landscaping along that detention basin as well. MR. NEWMAN-Yes, we could do that, and I guess we can also, Ed, take a look, with respect to orientate the retail space so the dumpster and masonry walls are not seen from Quaker. I mean, we could take a look at that and see what we could do to create sort of a buffer zone. Maybe there’s something that can be done there as well. MR. PALING-How many dumpsters are you going to have? MR. NEWMAN-I don’t really know, to be honest with you. I can call over to the Lowe’s in Vestal and find out how many they have. MR. PALING-It would be good to see them concealed as possible, but we can visit that later. MR. LAPPER-Marc, Ed thinks it’s one. MR. NEWMAN-Yes. I think everything’s a compactor, and Ed believes it’s one, but I’ll verify that. MR. PALING-You only show one. MR. GARRIGAN-So I’m pretty certain it’s one, but like I say, I think it’s a compactor as opposed to a dumpster, where people throw things in, and it becomes a mess. It is a compactor. MR. NEWMAN-I think that’s all the questions. MR. PALING-Yes. I think so. Okay. Laura, John, are you okay? MR. GORALSKI-Well, we’d like to see each question specifically addressed in the FEIS. MR. PALING-Yes, that is still to come, right. 28 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. MAC EWAN-Can we back up a couple of questions. Going back to the question Staff had regarding pollutants and particulates around the wetlands and the Brook, and there was some mention made to deicing. Does DEC or ENCON, anybody like that, have any kind of regulations for using deicing materials near a protected Brook or a protected wetlands? MR. NEWMAN-One other thing, too, I just want to throw in there, does the County use salting materials on the current roadways around that, for deicing, Don, if you know that. MR. COOGAN-Sure. It’s going to be, I assume, the same material, salt that would be placed on the parking, and I don’t know, specifically, if they do, if the DEC has a regulation for calcium chloride or sodium chloride to go, you know, what their standard is. MR. LAPPER-We’ll research that. MR. NEWMAN-We can find that out. MR. PALING-Yes. MR. COOGAN-I will say one thing, though. When you do use salts, of course they’re soluble. They’re typically introduced into the system early in the spring, when you normally have high volumes of water. So there is a high dilution factor, and this area has a huge drainage basin. So you’re going to have a wicked, wicked flushing rate, and a very high dilution factor. MS. NOWICKI-I have another question in regard to pollutants and particulates, that wetland. I’m not sure you understood my question. I’m concerned that you’re putting something into it and it can only hold so much. So, for particulates or pollutants, they can only hold so much calcium. It can only hold so much magnesium. We don’t know what it’s current level is at, and I know it’s not met under SPDES Permit. I understand that. MR. COOGAN-Okay. That’s something I wouldn’t be able to determine for you, unless there was specific water sample tests for whatever particulates and compounds you’d like to see. MR. LAPPER-Ed, what do you suggest? MR. GARRIGAN-Well, if you want to know a comparison, we would have to test the wetlands now, in order to come up with a base line. Okay. MR. GORALSKI-Here’s the point, and you can address this any way you’d like, but the point is, you’re purporting that the wetland is going to be used to filter out pollutants and particulates before they get to Halfway Brook. That wetland has a certain capacity to filter out those pollutants and particulates. We’re just wondering, is there a base line that you can tell us, this is what exists today, and therefore, there is capacity there, and that this wetland is actually going to function to filter out the pollutants and particulates before they get to Halfway Brook. MR. COOGAN-Yes. I think that that was a generic statement, a generic function of wetlands. We don’t have baseline information, and I really don’t know if you could ever obtain that. MR. MAC EWAN-Then how would you know it would work? MR. COOGAN-Like I said, it’s a generic basic function of wetlands is to remove pollutants. MR. GORALSKI-So what you’re saying, then, is you’re not relying on the wetland to filter the water that’s being discharged from the detention basin into the Brook? MR. COOGAN-You have the sediment control pond that’s going to take care of that. It’s a third line of defense. You’ve got the sediment control pond, the first defense. You have a grass swale, the second. You have a wetland the third, before it gets to the creek. The object is to keep the water in that Double A T Stream as clean as we can. That wetland already provides that function because all over here is highly developed area. MR. GARRIGAN-Also the other, right now the site is draining directly into the stream, so by it going that way, it has a longer path to travel and a lot of those pollutants will wash out, and as Don indicated, dissolve and go into the holding ponds. 29 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. COOGAN-From our discussions with DEC, their main interest was not to allow additional particulates in during the construction period, and that’s when you have to have a sound erosion and sediment control plan and stormwater management plan thereafter. They know the problem with the shifting sands and this wetland and thermal stress. They also know that there’s probably no way to quantify what type of pollution is in there and what the source is, because you have so many sources upstream. I don’t think it’s really polluted, per se. I think it’s a fine quality stream and wetland, but I’m sure it does receive some pollutants from upstream sources, and the site as it exists. MR. PALING-I hear the answer. How do you feel? MR. GORALSKI-I stated the question, and I think they’ve thrown out a bunch of things. I think it needs to be addressed in the FEIS. MR. LAPPER-And it will be. MR. GORALSKI-I think they understand what the question is, and it needs to be addressed. MR. STARK-John and Laura, I think you’re asking questions that these guys can’t answer. I’ve never heard these questions asked before on any other projects, and right now there’s nothing going on at the site. Everything goes right into the stream. They’re doing their best to put it in the back. They didn’t say that the wetlands would catch any particulates. They said all it is is to relieve the thermal stress coming in. I mean, the sediment ponds will be collecting the particulates. MR. GORALSKI-What we are doing is we are raising issues and comments. It is their job to address those issues and comments. It’s your job to decide if they’re adequately addressed. MR. PALING-Okay. It’s going to be addressed. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. STARK-Some of these are way out, John. That’s my opinion. MR. PALING-Okay. I think I’ll open the public hearing on this matter, and Dr. Welch, you’re first. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED MR. PALING-And then I’d like to, John, if we could do the letters next. DAVE WELCH DR, WELCH-Again, Dave Welch. I’m Chairing the Environmental Committee. The informational topic that I wanted to raise is that the project proposer in this has agreed to meet with us at our Environmental Committee meeting next Monday night, which I believe is the third or fourth of November, at seven o’clock in the basement. We will address some of these issues with them. I would also say that we’ve looked at some updated plans, from the original discussion we had earlier this month, and they’ve addressed a lot of the questions we’ve had, in particular with reference to the particulates and the deicers. We have asked them specifically, in our previous questioning, to address snow removal. The indication that we’ve received back so far is that the snow removal will all be done away from the stream and pushed toward the large sediment basin at the northeast corner. Again, compared to what exists now, this is all a far better process than the way it is now. It may not be the best solution in the world, but it certainly is a far upgrade from what’s happening at the site at the moment. MR. PALING-Will you also be issuing a report on this? DR. WELCH-We will issue another report as part of the public input following our meeting next Monday. So anybody that has questions, from an environmental aspect, is invited to come. If it’s going to be huge, we may move it over to here, but we normally meet in the basement of the Town Hall. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. STARK-When you have this meeting next Monday, will you be getting into the fact that the wetland is collecting the sediment, as opposed to settling in the sediment ponds, as the wetlands not filtering out the sediment? DR. WELCH-Within our Committee, we have several people that are wetlands experts, and we will be counting on their expertise as well to ask the pertinent questions and to give their input from our perspective. I’m not the expert on that. We have people on the Committee who are. MR. STARK-You’ll bring it up? DR. WELCH-We will bring it up as part of the Committee meeting. We will address it based on the comments raised tonight, and I’m sure John will have somebody from Staff at that meeting, as well. So all of these questions will be raised, and as they’re raised, they presumably will have to have some kind of an answer in the Final Impact Statement. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. John, why don’t you do the letters. MR. GORALSKI-Well, one letter is from the Queensbury Environmental Advisory Committee, so I won’t bother reading that since Dr. Welch has addressed that. The other letter is from James M. Weller, “Dear John: Please let it be clear that I am not opposed to the proposed development at the referenced location. However, the proposed project may cause me and others a relatively serious problem, which should be addressed. My property, the location of Trustco Bank, is located immediately upstream on Half-Way Brook. My building is currently approximately one foot above the 100 year flood plane elevation. Any development immediately downstream that is within the flood plane has the potential to raise the theoretical flood plane upstream, especially immediately upstream. If FEMA raises the theoretical 100 year flood plane elevation at my properties it will place my building within the flood zone and force me to purchase flood insurance. I seek assurances from FEMA that the proposed development will not raise the flood plane on my properties, both now and in the future. Sincerely, James M. Weller” MR. PALING-Okay. I’d ask that question be addressed later, okay. MR. GORALSKI-Right, and that’s the only letter we’ve received. MR. PALING-Okay. The public hearing is open. Who cares to speak on this matter, pro or con? JOHN DAVIS MR. DAVIS-Good evening. My name’s John Davis. I’m Secretary of the Environmental Advisory Committee and I want to just offer a few comments. I’d like to congratulate the Newman Corporation. I think they’ve done an excellent job in preparing the DEIS, and as Dave Welch said, we’ll be meeting with the developer this next Monday evening. I have a couple of comments, one that I thought should go in the record. First, Dave, in all his modesty, didn’t mention the minutes, th had comments and actually went to John. In addition to the September 18 letter that was sent to th John, there were comments that went to John and the Planning Board dated October 6 which I would like to be sure are part of the record, even though Dave, as I said, in his modesty didn’t mention those. I think those contain some excellent comments that should be considered. I was interested, I’m a civil engineer, professional engineer, although I haven’t worked, I started the State Flood Plane Management Program and the Flood Insurance Program, but then progressed into air pollution, in most of my career, but I have some familiarity with back water analysis and that type of thing, and I’m just curious if the developer could tell me what their analysis consisted of. Did they look at something beyond the 100 year flood, the 500 year flood and what effect did that have on the levels, and looking at the DEIS, I couldn’t determine, from the various lines in and the cross sections, what those lines meant in terms of prior to the development, after the development, that type of thing. Could someone elaborate? MR. PALING-No. Please state your questions or your comments, and then we’ll get to the questions in order, but address your questions or comments to us. They’ll be answered. MR. DAVIS-Okay. So the question is, did they look at the 500 year flood level, and what impact did that have in terms of the back water upstream from the proposed bridge site. MR. PALING-Okay. 31 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. DAVIS-The other question I have is that it was proposed that construction or fill placement might occur as early as December 1997, yet there was no mention of when the bridge widening might take place. So there is the potential for, if the bridge widening didn’t take place, and the full fill placement were to take place prior to the spring runoff, there might be some increased flood potential this spring, for instance, if the bridge was constructed in 1998, creating an upstream back water situation. So my question is, what is the plan for the placement of the fill. If fill, obviously, were placed up near the building site, it probably wouldn’t have any impact on the flood plane, but if it was placed down in the flood way it could. So that’s another question. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. DAVIS-Thank you. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. Who’s next? Who’d care to speak? LUTHER BARCOMB MR. BARCOMB-Good evening. My name is Luther Barcomb. I’m President of the Homes of Westwood Homeowners Association. This is Ted Young. He’s Vice President of the Association. First of all, I’d like to say we are not against the proposed project, but one of the big concerns we have is the additional traffic flow that’s going to be going right past the entrance to our complex, namely Glenwood Avenue. We have seen, over the last years, a tremendous increase in the traffic. When I first moved here, it was just a small country bypass road, and it has now become a short cut from many people now who are coming in from Country Club Road and from other areas going into, trying to bypass Quaker Road, and using Glenwood as a short cut to feed into Bay Road. The situation has gotten progressively worse, and as most people know, over the years, the accident rate at the intersection of Glenwood and Bay Road has increased quite dramatically. There seems to be fender benders there all the time. We have now a situation, the Glenwood, the situation at Glenwood Avenue has reached a point where we have more developments. We have real estate offices. We have doctors, dentists, eye doctors. We have the Ship Shape package company. We have the Nautilus. We have the court house there. We have next to that a building used by the County, and now we have the new Center for Independent Living coming up, and that’s going to generate even more traffic. With the situation with the store, Lowe’s, we are really concerned about how much traffic can Glenwood Avenue absorb? Besides Glenwood Avenue also is the path that people use, the joggers use it. The roller bladers use it. Bicyclists use it. The walkers use it to get to the bike trail that goes to Lake George. What’s going to happen to them? The path for them is only about two feet wide, and there is more traffic, and the traffic is driving faster, and we are very much concerned. We live in an island. We have only one way to get in and out, and that’s on Glenwood Avenue, and sometimes, I leave there a couple of times a day, and I have to stand there and wait until I can actually feed into Glenwood Avenue. Now we are concerned. What’s going to be done about this? We pay taxes, and we like it there, but it’s getting more difficult. We have many older people living there also, and they are very worried. They have to be thought about also, and we also have thought about water table rising. We don’t exactly live on a flood plane, but if you go three feet into the ground, we hit water. If there should be something backing up from the eastern end of Halfway Brook, what’s going to effect the bank could also effect us, because we’re just about one foot, or possibly two feet, above the level of the water in Halfway Brook. So we need your help. TED YOUNG MR. YOUNG-I would just like to add, if I may, I don’t know when they did the traffic survey, but since that time, they have probably opened up Aldi’s, and now we have another complex with the drugstore opening up on the corner of Quaker and Bay, on the southwest corner. They indicated, I don’t remember the numbers, something they did a survey of the number and was there something like 1300 cars an hour going through the intersection of Bay and Quaker? I’m not sure if that’s correct or not, but the parking, they’re talking about 626 cars. Now they’re not going to show up in the morning and stay there all day. I mean, there’s flow in and out of this unit, and they have essentially one major entrance and exit. The one on Quaker would only be for westbound traffic, if I understand it correctly, which will enter, and also only westbound exit on Quaker. On Bay Road, which has a pretty heavy volume, and they mentioned the intersection. I’d be curious as to how much of that traffic passing through the intersection is passing north and south on Bay, and this additional traffic that is going to be generated, how much flow do they have in and out of their parking lot during the day. I mean, if we’re talking about, just assume that in an hour’s time around five o’clock, half of this parking lot, say 300 cars come out, I mean, that’s throwing 300 cars onto Bay Road essentially, and not to mention Glenwood Avenue. I mean, that’s only a two 32 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) lane road. At the moment, it’s very difficult to make a left turn onto Bay, and consequently, the people block the traffic so you can’t even make the right out of there. So I just think that I would like to hear a little more explanation of the traffic flows, and the proposed solutions from the traffic expert. Thank you. MR. PALING-Thank you. Who else would care to speak? JOHN SALVADOR MR. SALVADOR- My name is John Salvador. I attended a Parks and Recreation Committee meeting at Warren County today, wherein they talked about an extension of the Warren County Bikeway. This extension will take the Bikeway down into Glens Falls, and the concept is for a bridge to cross Quaker Road, and the traffic from, the bike traffic, from this bridge will come down onto Glenwood Avenue, and be forced to cross Glenwood Avenue at grade. So, although this is not the developer’s problem, I believe somebody, as these two gentlemen mentioned, somebody’s got to start to take a serious look at Glenwood Avenue. Thank you. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Okay. Then the public hearing for the environmental concerns is now closed. PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. PALING-Okay. Now are there any questions or comments? We don’t have to decide anything tonight. This is an informational. MR. MAC EWAN-There’s a couple of things. Maybe we should just make the point, there are some people here that are attending that aren’t aware of how the whole system works, to let them know, how long do they have for a comment period, John, if they choose to want to put something in writing, to get it to Staff so it would be part of the comment period? How many more days? MR. PALING-That’s 10 days from tonight. MR. MAC EWAN-Ten days from tonight. MR. PALING-You have that, yes. th MR. GORALSKI-I think we actually put it until November 12, which is that Monday. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. GORALSKI-I don’t remember specifically what it was. MR. MAC EWAN-So people understand if they want to still comment, there’s some time to do that. MR. GORALSKI-Right. We will receive written comments. I forget what the actual resolution is. There is a date. MR. SCHACHNER-There’s a date circled. MR. PALING-Okay. Well, it is at least 10 days from tonight. MR. GORALSKI-At least. MR. SCHACHNER-It must be by law. MR. PALING-Right. Now I’ve listed six questions. Do you care to comment on them later on, or could you answer tonight? MR. LAPPER-Well, we will be giving detailed questions, some of the issues that were raised we’re going to have to look into, and we will be providing detailed written comments in the FEIS and with respect to the environmental comments, we’ll be prepared to meet with the Environmental Committee next week to get into details. You’re talking about questions of the Board or the questions that were just raised? 33 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) MR. PALING-No. I’m talking about the questions that were just raised. MR. NEWMAN-We’ll answer those in the FEIS. MR. PALING-All right. You’ve got the one about the flood plane, and then we have the bridge widening, the concern there, the fill and so on, the effect of it. Then Westwood Homes is concerned with traffic on Glenwood and the water table. MRS. LABOMBARD-But is that the developer’s? MR. PALING-No. The questions have been raised. They may say it’s not their bailiwick, and then there’s the situation with the bike trail, which I think you’ve addressed already, but those were the questions that were asked, that I recorded. MR. LAPPER-We will be getting a transcript of the questions from the Planning Department. We’ve written notes down, but we will research what we haven’t already researched and we’ll have detailed answers in the FEIS. MR. PALING-Okay. All right. Does Staff have anything else? MR. GORALSKI-That’s what I was going to say. MR. PALING-Okay. Larry, are you satisfied? MR. RINGER-Yes. MR. PALING-Okay. Craig? MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MR. PALING-George? MR. STARK-Nothing. MR. PALING-Cathy? MRS. LABOMBARD-Fine. MR. PALING-Okay. I am, too. As I said, there’s no motions. We don’t decide anything tonight, but I think we’ve relayed the questions from ourselves, Staff and the public, and then we will see you now with a Final EIS and the document that goes with it to help us out and guide us through this whole thing. th MR. STARK-Bob, when would that be, the 15? MR. PALING-Well, I don’t know. thth MR. LAPPER-You have two meetings in November. One is the 18 and I think one is the 25? MR. PALING-Yes. MR. LAPPER-We will be back at one of those meetings, depending upon whether we can get responses to all the questions we have now. So we’re just waiting to see if anything comes in at the end. We may make the first meeting. I know you’ll need some time to review it. So we’ll work that out with the Planning Staff. MR. PALING-The first one sounds awful tight. MR. GORALSKI-It’s going to be a little tight for the first one. th MR. LAPPER-We’re expecting the 25. That’s the most realistic. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. MR. NEWMAN-Thank you very much. 34 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 10/28/97) Phillip & Susan Morse MR. PALING-Okay. We’re going to re-visit the . You’re on. MR. O’CONNOR-Only engineers can talk to engineers. I don’t say that sarcastically. I would say, go ahead and table if you think that’s appropriate. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. O’CONNOR-From what I understand, what he’s looking for, we will have it probably to him Friday. MR. PALING-Well, is the first meeting in November adequate for your client’s needs? MR. O’CONNOR-Let me ask if it’s significantly different. I think we can live with it. I don’t know, truthfully. As I sit here, I don’t know. MR. PALING-Well, lets table it until then. th MR. STARK-Until the 18. MR. O’CONNOR-Basically, we’re going to show the elevations of the trenches. Are they level or are they a pitch. Right? We’ve satisfied Mr. Levandowski, but that’s what we’re showing, just for your information. MR. PALING-Okay. Well, he’s the one that’s going to sign off on this, if you will. MR. O’CONNOR-Yes, but they don’t build trenches that aren’t level. MR. PALING-Okay. We’ll entertain a motion to table. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 41-97 PHILLIP H. MORSE & SUSAN K. MORSE , Introduced by George Stark who moved for its adoption, seconded by Catherine LaBombard: th Until the first meeting of November 18. th Duly adopted this 28 day of October, 1997, by the following vote: MR. O’CONNOR-Could I respectfully ask, is there anything else that anybody else has? MR. MAC EWAN-Just a stamp of approval from Rist-Frost. MR. O’CONNOR-That’s my point. That’s it? I understand it. Okay. Thank you very much. MR. PALING-Okay. Thank you. AYES: Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Ringer, Mr. MacEwan, Mr. Stark, Mr. Paling NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Brewer, Mr. Ruel On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Robert Paling, Chairman 35