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2000-04-25 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING SECOND REGULAR MEETING APRIL 25, 2000 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CRAIG MAC EWAN, CHAIRMAN CATHERINE LA BOMBARD, SECRETARY ROBERT VOLLARO LARRY RINGER ANTHONY METIVIER ROBERT PALING MEMBERS ABSENT ALAN ABBOTT SENIOR PLANNER-MARILYN RYBA PLANNER-LAURA MOORE TOWN COUNSEL-MILLER, MANNIX & PRATT-MARK SCHACHNER STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI OLD BUSINESS: SITE PLAN NO. 62-99 TYPE: UNLISTED NIGRO COMPANIES OWNER: SAME AGENT: JONATHAN LAPPER/FRANK PALUMBO ZONE: HC-1A LOCATION: EAST SIDE BAY RD., SOUTH OF QUAKER RD., NORTH OF HOMER AVENUE APPLICANT PROPOSES CONSTRUCTION OF A 65,000 SQ. FT. RETAIL STORE DEVELOPMENT WITH ASSOCIATED SITE IMPROVEMENTS. NEW USES IN HC ZONES REQUIRE PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE: PZ 6-99 TOWN BOARD: 2/28/00 BEAUTIFICATION COMM.; 3/6/00 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 3/8/00 TAX MAP NO. 107-1-38 THRU 45, 47 THRU 51 LOT SIZE: 9.78 +/- ACRES SECTION: 179-23 JON LAPPER, FRANK PALUMBO, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MRS. LA BOMBARD-And the public hearing on March 21 was tabled, and it’s continued tonight. st MR. MAC EWAN-Can you update us on any new Staff Notes, any new information, please. MRS. MOORE-There’s one set of new information received from the Warren County DPW, in regards to a lane improvement on Bay Road. Do you want me to go through the Staff Notes, or do you want to? MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, if you want to summarize, and also maybe just, if you would summarize the Warren County comment. Staff Notes: Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 62-99, Nigro Companies, Meeting Date: April 25, 2000 “The applicant was tabled at the March 21, 2000 meeting for additional information. Staff met with applicant on April 4, 2000 to discuss building architecture and several site design issues. Those items are identified in the April 4 correspondence to the applicant. April 18 correspondence from Sear th Brown documents their compliance with our request. The applicant has submitted drawings and documentation addressing Staff comments and the Board’s information request. We have reviewed the alternate site plan showing Bay Road as the primary access. There are several negative impacts as a result of the 90 degree shift. They include poorer on site circulation, great traffic impact to Bay Road, and aesthetic impacts among others. We would recommend the Quaker Road alternative. The Board requested Staff provide information on adjacent site traffic impact and the 1988 rezoning. A table summarizing the delay and Level of Service (LOS) for the Quaker and Bay Road intersection is attached for your review. The table presents Lowe’s 1998 data, the Vollmer Associates 1999 data, and Sear Brown/Nigro’s 2000 data allowing a comparison of predicted and actual delay time through the intersection. Traffic mitigation measures constructed as part of the Lowe’s Home Improvement Center include: Upgraded signal controller at Quaker & Bay Signal at Bay and Glenwood Left turning lane entrances to site on Bay Road Transition lanes along east side of Bay Road Right 1 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) in/Right out entrance at Quaker Bike Lane on site in lieu of Bay Road shoulder lane. Staff also verified the 1982 rezoning of Homer Avenue notification by the newspaper was the correct procedure. An April 17 memorandum from Stuart Mesinger of Chazen Companies identifies two (2) minor points for clarification – light fixture type and a landscape design issue. Recommendations: Staff recommends review of architectural details prior to approval.” MRS. MOORE-And under Warren County, I’ll go through that. They just requested that improvements on Bay Road include an extended left or center lane to allow for turning movements into Hanneford and then turning movements into the new proposed shopping center. MR. MAC EWAN-You also have a comment from Warren County Soil Conservation. MRS. MOORE-That was in regards to impact on Halfway Brook, and based on the design criteria, they felt that there would be no impact into Halfway Brook in regards to this project. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else? MRS. MOORE-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Good evening, gentlemen. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. MR. MAC EWAN-Would you identify yourselves for the record, please. MR. LAPPER-For the record, Jon Lapper, Steve Powers, and Frank Palumbo. It’s nice to see everybody. Adjourned last month so that we could get our ducks in a row, if you will, and deal with Warren County, because they have jurisdiction over the two roadways, and we wanted to get their comments, which we did, and besides the architectural, which has been significantly changed at your request. We have made some changes on Bay Road, just recently, to address the comments of the County DPW, and they’ve sent us a letter as recently as this afternoon signing off on our design with these changes. So one thing that we have to show you tonight for the first time is the new Bay Road changes, which Frank will go through, but in general, that just moved our entrance to the south, so it’ll be farther from the Hanneford entrance and allowed us to construct, not just a dedicated left turn lane for this project, but also a dedicated left turn lane for the Hanneford project, which the County thought was better for the whole roadway, and we agree. So we changed our site, as a result of that, and we beefed up the landscaping on the 75 foot buffer that’s there, and added a new right turn lane. Frank will go through it, but it just has the benefit of the separation distance between our driveway and the other main driveway, the Hanneford driveway is now longer, and that was just to meet their comments. We wanted to get their sign off before we came back to you, just to establish that we’d gone through the process with them and that they were comfortable with this. We, frankly, feel at this point, that we’ve made fairly extensive changes from where the project started to address your comments over these past months, and we think that the result is a much better project, certainly a much better looking building, and we hope you agree. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Why don’t you pick up where you left off, or, and fill us in on. MR. VOLLARO-I’d just like to ask one question. Is the Hollywood Video entrance, the entrance and the exit going to be discussed at all? MR. PALUMBO-We will discuss it in the context of where it is. MR. VOLLARO-It’s on the print. It’s on the drawing. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. VOLLARO-And my personal theory is that because there’s a lot more, not a lot, but a significant amount of traffic coming in and out of that, it definitely impacts that corridor. So go ahead and. MR. PALUMBO-Okay. Good evening. As Jon said, what we had done since the last Planning Board meeting is had some interaction with the County DPW about what we had initially proposed, and on the last set of plans that the Town received, we showed some of the off site improvements that we were planning and proposing, that were all spin off from our traffic study, and that was talking, what we had was a dedicated left hand turn lane, and on the previous plan, the entrance way came out right about here, at about the face of the building. The necessary stacking distance, and then the taper length and the striping that was necessary for that dedicated turn lane, when the County went out, they saw what I think some of you folks had commented on previously about, you know, what is going to happen with at least the Hanneford and these driveways across here. What 2 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) they asked us to design and consider was a shared left turn lane that’s a dual movement left, and the design could be accommodated throughout that, if we moved our entrance further to the south. So what you have, from this point here, down to the Hanneford driveway, is a shared left hand turn lane, which provides some stacking for the Hanneford driveway, some stacking for our project, and room in between for, you know, some of the lesser traveled but clearly there. The driveway is on the west side of Bay Road. The impact, down at Hollywood Video, just from a standpoint of anything we’ve designed, does not change from its present state. The left hand turn lane, as it existed for the Bay Road, before we extend anything, and we did a minor extension at this point, was still at the point of the Hollywood Video. Hollywood Video does have it’s location at a point where it’s within the left hand turn lane. So the added traffic may have some impact on that. The County did not raise that as a specific issue, but in a general sense, and I’ll let Jon talk further on it from his point of view, but that that entrance is in a situation that we can’t change with any of our design. So we did allow, we sent this plan back in. It did cause us to change, basically, this side of the project. We previously had parking on both sides of the entrance road. Again, the entrance road came in about here. What we’ve done is segmented out a parking area, provided the separation of a full island, so that we meet the Town standards of no more than 100 spaces in any lot, without the minimum of the five foot median. So as you access the site, you would come in to the site, really have no, you know, there are points at which you could enter this traffic, but previously, we had potentially four intersections there, with the parking lanes from each above the road and below the road. Now you can access these lots and enter here. If you want to come around to the front of the store, your access is this way, here. It does also provide a. MR. VOLLARO-Excuse me, Frank, am I looking at the same drawing you’re looking at? MR. PALUMBO-No. This drawing was just changed, based on, no, I’m sorry, I should have made that clear. This has just changed. We received a comment letter last week, from DPW, asking us to look at that. So this is a new change. This is new information, and we wanted to bring it to your attention. MR. MAC EWAN-How much farther south did that new drive aisle move from the original location? MR. PALUMBO-We are, I’m going to say, I don’t have a scale with me, but I’m going to say approximately 120 feet. It was right at this point here. MR. VOLLARO-Does that mean that the truck exit is gone now? MR. PALUMBO-Yes. The truck exit that we had added, to try to, and that was for what we had tried to do to get the trucks fully directed in that movement, keep them completely separated from the cars. That was an attempt we had made on that last plan, and that is something that we have to pull out in order to achieve this. I guess the trade off is that the County thinks that this is going to be a much better situation overall for that whole section of the road, that the trade off of the truck, the loss of that truck ramp. What we also did down here is left a one way out from the lower part of the site, so as people, and we think what we would like to hope would happen is that people would exit the site down to the lower lane here, and make the quick right out at this point. Therefore, having less of the traffic coming back out at a single point, and this being a more fluid movement, the right hand out at that point. MR. VOLLARO-Frank, is the new exit about the same as the exit that’s shown on the alternate plan, with the building turned 90 degrees? If you go back to your alternate plan, the exit on that plan is about in the same place that this one is now. MR. PALUMBO-No. Actually, the alternate plan I believe we kept the exit pretty much right where it had been, with the previous plan, and I’ve got the last plan, when we came last month, you know, unfortunately I don’t have both of them. I can put either up as it works for you. I’ll put this one up at the moment. For that side of the site, what we had was from the face of the store, we came straight out to Bay Road, and we had parking on both sides of that access road, below and above, and that’s what I was talking about in terms of people that parked here and here would be accessing here. We had had a big, wide sweeping radius. We tried to change that on the plans that we submitted. I don’t have colored ones of the ones that we submitted, but we had brought in a second, a standalone truck exit up at this point, to try to eliminate all that possibility of going through any of the parking areas. So now we still have that, up at this point, but there would be the shared driveway between the trucks exiting here and then the cars exiting at this point. So there is a possibility of the trucks. MR. MAC EWAN-That parking lot divider right there, is that just a striped area on the new plan, that diverts the trucking? MR. PALUMBO-Right there? 3 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-Currently, it’s striped. We could probably generate that into an island. MR. MAC EWAN-And I notice that there’s considerable plantings missing out of this new entrance way. How many plantings were lost? MR. PALUMBO-We’d have no problem getting the plantings back. I know that what we did, I looked at this quickly, once we did the colored rendering, and realized that we can add some here, add some along here. That was one of the comments that Chazen had made. To a degree, these plans are hot off the press, but we can add some back in here. We took a lot of the plantings that we had put in here an tried to get some back in here. I would be able to say that we can, any trees that we took off, we can find the places to put them back on here. MR. MAC EWAN-And the berm that was on Homer Avenue, on the original plan, you’ve now continued that on the new one, that goes down around the house on the corner? MR. PALUMBO-We brought this around here further, which I don’t, you know, we had stopped previously, but we brought that around in order to try to break down even some more of the view issues from this corner lot. MR. VOLLARO-Frank, these are the sitings that you’ve provided from second floor, out 150 feet from the building. Do you remember that? MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. VOLLARO-Does that drawing change this siting plan at all? MR. PALUMBO-No. Because what we did is we based all of that on, the building is in the same location. The berm is in the same location. The views that we had through here were already, that was already a berm. What the Chairman was saying was that we extended it at this point. So we didn’t provide any views in this way. I guess what we’re saying is that by the extension of the berm, we would logically be benefiting the views out of the side of the house that’s here, whereas, previously, the big concern was how we were looking toward the building, but it doesn’t change anything in here. The berm that we had, we had placed a berm between these two parking lots. That was too far to the north, basically, to influence that site view that we had represented previously. MR. VOLLARO-We’re looking through Section AA. That’s the Section we’re looking through. MR. PALUMBO-Actually, I was referring to CC, right here, okay, and we only use that berm, you see it right there, so the rest has really stayed the same. That, I guess on that corner we did, we actually added a little bit more green than we had there, right on this corner. Whereas before we had some parking going, in that representation, we had some parking there. So we do add some green and some trees right in here, up closer to the building. Whether or not, I mean in time, the growth of those trees may have an impact, but right now, I wouldn’t want to say that they’re doing anything to benefit further than what I had on there. I haven’t looked at it close enough to say that, and I’m sure, as your point was, if we had, when our final landscape numbers, if we are any less than what we had projected previously, we will add back in. We do have plenty of room in areas to add some trees in so that we wouldn’t be cramming them in any sense. MR. MAC EWAN-Why did the main entrance from the Quaker Road side change from plan to plan? MR. PALUMBO-From the Quaker Road here? MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-I don’t think we did change it. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m looking at the bottom of it. It looks pretty different to me. MRS. LA BOMBARD-The bottom one has the island. MR. PALUMBO-I’m sorry. I was looking right down here at the roadway. What we had done was we figured that we could reduce the pavement. We did have an island there, but this roadway here was, we determined that we could really come in here, eliminate that, and take the trucks up through there. So it was getting rid of some excess pavement and adding to the green area. 4 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. VOLLARO-Your truck movement is going to be right on the parking lot, though. Your truck movement is clockwise throughout that. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. There will be truck movement through here. What we did was, because we’re coming from this lane into this lane, we put the radius on it, and we were able to move them in here. MR. MAC EWAN-And you think that alternative version right there is easier for trucks to move through that parking facility versus the original? MR. PALUMBO-No, I don’t. I think what we were trying to do was reduce some of the pavement. It only added to the green area totally. We sort of accepted the burden on our site for the truck movement, and really eliminated that much pavement, and in all, this is an easier movement for the trucks, but it is more pavement, and we tried to get rid of some of the pavement, and add to some of the greenery. We were previously, on this plan, at about 46% green space, and I think with some of the elimination and the restructuring, we’ve actually gone higher than. If you prefer this, we could go back to that without any major implications. MR. VOLLARO-I think the upper one. There’s a safety hazard up there, mixing those trucks with cars., and depending upon when the delivery is, that’s another question that’s going to come up, whether Grand Union controls delivery of those trucks as well as you think they do. We’ll get into that as we go on, but. MR. PALUMBO-We would have no problem adding that back in. It would not create any greater impact. We’ve already addressed it from, it doesn’t impact anymore wetlands. It doesn’t impact any more, and the stormwater, because it was already factored in with the additional pavement. So we could add that back in. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. MR. MAC EWAN-What other changes have you got that we haven’t gone over? MR. PALUMBO-One of the things that’s on here, that I should talk about, but Laura might want to add some conversation back in, we met to sort of discuss the architecture of the building and how we might do something additional for the canopy line, and I’ll, let me pass this. The difference here is that we’ve added an additional, to try to give a little bit more breakdown of that canopy, one more cupola, or whatever you would refer to it as, and what we did was we also had a comment about a bus stop on the site. MR. VOLLARO-I couldn’t find it. MR. PALUMBO-You couldn’t find it? MR. VOLLARO-No. I looked. Maybe I don’t know where it is, but I couldn’t find it. MR. PALUMBO-No. We added it from the, because the comment came in after the set of plans. That was a successive comment to our last set of plans, and so we showed that we could add one here, the most logical place, we felt, was to pull the buses off, you know, coming in from this direction, and have them pull off to a separate lane, and so we did show one on this plan. Since that time, Laura had contacted. MRS. MOORE-It’s Glens Falls Transit. MR. PALUMBO-Glens Falls Transit, who has said that they don’t want to come into the site. MRS. MOORE-I’ll just add an additional comment. They’re still, it’s still undecided. Yes, they may want to have a bus stop inside or outside. It’s still in discussion, and I don’t think it’s, I know they’d need one. Where it’s location is, it’s not decided yet. MR. MAC EWAN-Wait a minute. What’s not decided? MRS. MOORE-The location, whether it should be inside at the grocery store, or whether they’d like to have a bus stop similar to Price Chopper. MR. MAC EWAN-Price Chopper doesn’t have one. MRS. MOORE-On Route 9, similar to that, being on either Bay Road or Quaker, and they haven’t come back with a comment yet, and I know they’re willing to work with what Grand Union would like as well. 5 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. LAPPER-We designed it on our site, if they wanted it there. If they don’t want it there, we’ll take it off. MRS. MOORE-Right. MR. MAC EWAN-Just so I’m understanding this, following up on the conversation you and I had last week, is Glens Falls Transit’s definition of a bus stop is just pulling up in front of the sidewalk in the middle of Route 9 in a drive lane? MRS. MOORE-Sometimes. It depends. My understanding is it depends on the route. It depends on how many stops they’re apt to make during that route. This route, there’s two routes that surface in here. There’s a College route and there’s another route encompassed in this area. So it depends on which route they decide that this Grand Union should be on, whether they’d like it inside or outside. MR. MAC EWAN-But what I had asked you about was looking at two possible alternatives, one, whether there would be a bus stop right on the Grand Union parcel near the building, or something like that, or, for lack of a better phrase, like a pull in lane, or a cut in the curb, similar to what’s in Downtown Glens Falls, so that the buses can get out of the drive lane. MRS. MOORE-That’s what I’m getting at is they’re not, it depends on the route that they put this stop on. MR. LAPPER-We’ve designed it on our site. MR. MAC EWAN-Let me ask you this. At what point in the planning process would they make that kind of a decision, or give us that kind of input? MRS. MOORE-They can negotiate that with Grand Union. MR. VOLLARO-That doesn’t help us at this time. MR. MAC EWAN-No, it doesn’t. MR. LAPPER-We would agree to do it either way, whatever they want. We provided for it on our site at the front of the building. MR. MAC EWAN-What’s either way? MR. LAPPER-If it would be on Bay Road, if they want us to put something on Bay Road with a little kiosk, like there is in front of Price Chopper. MR. MAC EWAN-What I’m getting at, and what I talked to Staff about was, if you were going to do something like that along Bay Road, to actually cut in to the curbing, so that the bus can actually get out of the drive lane, because if you watch what happens in front of Price Chopper, up on Upper Glen Street, there is no place for that bus to pull up. They stop in that drive lane, they’re blocking two lines of views of traffic coming out the Price Chopper. They’re creating a line of traffic that has to go out into the second lane to get around the bus that’s stopped. It’s a traffic hazard. MR. LAPPER-We agree, and that’s why we put it on our site, but they have to tell us that that’s what they want. They run the bus system. MR. PALUMBO-And we do have room over here that, if it were to be an alternative, now that would also bring in the DPW, in terms of what they would want to have. MR. MAC EWAN-Can we explore that option? Because I’m not sold, personally, on the option of the bus just pulling up in front of a drive lane in front of a store or something and using that as a place for bus patrons to get on. MR. LAPPER-The problem there, Craig, is that they’re not a review agency on this thing. I mean, they could tell us in six months, or after the project is up, or whenever they decide what their policy is. So if we agree that we would do it the way you want it, if they agree. I mean, we would, as a stipulation, as a condition, we’ll do it either way. We don’t care. We’re happy to do what you want, but they have to agree, because they run the bus system. MR. MAC EWAN-Can we open up some better dialog with the Glens Falls Transit bus department and find out? Tell them what our quandary is here and what we’re trying to accomplish. 6 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MRS. MOORE-I have explained that, and again, it depends on what route they decide to put it on. I can’t get any more specific than that. MR. VOLLARO-Well, then they’re sort of taking the decision out of our hands when you say it’s where they want to put it. I think when we’re reviewing a site plan, I think we’ve got to look at things like safety, and I think Craig brings up a good point, and for us to have to say, well, whenever they want it. I mean, it sounds to me like there’s some dialog that has to go between the Town, us and them, as to how this goes. MRS. MOORE-I’m still in conversation with them. I’m not saying that, but that was what their point was, that it depended on what route they decided to put it on. MR. MAC EWAN-Advise them we’re well into the planning process here. Okay. Anything else? MR. PALUMBO-I think that was the major changes. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MR. LAPPER-We’re open to questions. MR. MAC EWAN-Robert, I’ll start with you. MR. PALING-Okay. The loading dock for the truck is still about 150 or 60 feet long? MR. PALUMBO-Yes, when you go from where the truck backs in all the way out to where. MR. PALING-Yes, within the limits of the space you have. MR. PALUMBO-Right. MR. PALING-How long is the longest semi-trailer? MR. PALUMBO-I believe approximately 65 feet. MR. PALING-130 feet. Can you get two trucks in there at the same time? MR. PALUMBO-For the motions that they would do, yes. The motions that we are intending are for, you know, a rear back up into there. MR. PALING-They’re going to load on both sides of that figure you’re pointing to? MR. PALUMBO-No. This side here, and this side here. Not on this side. MR. PALING-Okay. I thought they were going to go this way. MR. PALUMBO-No. Doors on this side of that dock and this side of that dock. MR. PALING-Does the front of the truck stick out then, if they’re loading that way? MR. PALUMBO-No. There’s actually, on your plan you can probably see what is the equivalent of a retaining wall, because that does dip down, and the dock’s already there, and the end of that wall is the distance that includes the flat part at the bottom and then the ramp up. MR. PALING-Then they can back in there okay. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. PALING-Okay. My questions have changed now, because you’ve changed the plan, and okay, if you say so, I’ll take your word for it. Now, have you clarified the delivery time and the length of stay with Grand Union? MR. LAPPER-We’ve, as a condition to any approval, we have told Grand Union that, somewhere I have it in writing, that Grand Union, that any approval would be conditioned that there wouldn’t be deliveries between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. MR. PALING-All right. That’s the way we discussed it, and that’s a condition that’ll be? MR. LAPPER-Right. 7 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) STEVE POWERS MR. POWERS-If I can just address that. They can certainly control their own trucks, their own dry good trucks and the Coca Cola guy and the bread person and the potato chip people. The only thing, it can never be an absolute that the produce guy wouldn’t show up at 4 o’clock in the morning, but they’re going to use their best efforts to control it during those hours that we’ve agreed upon. MR. PALING-Okay. Then that poses a little problem compared to what we were talking about before. Because we had talked about a total. MR.. POWERS-It’s just that the jobbers that deliver to them, that they can’t control that they come from some other location. They need to be able to say that it was out of their control. They’re certainly going to make sure that the store level understands that they can’t accept deliveries during that period, but perhaps a truck would show up in the middle of the January at 4 o’clock in the morning. We can’t absolutely say that it’s never going to happen. MR. PALING-Okay, but then they could show up and park there then all night long, with their engine running. MR. POWERS-Again, I can’t just say absolutely no one will ever show up. I just want to make sure that that’s clear that, you know, a truck could come from somewhere else and just show up there, and it would be out of Grand Union’s control and out of our control, but they’re going to use their best efforts to limit that to the hours that we discussed. MR. PALING-Okay, but then they’re not in control of the total situation. So it could happen. MR. LAPPER-The vast majority of the trucks would be the big Grand Union trucks, and the other trucks that Steve mentioned, which they can control. He’s just trying to be honest, to say that it may not be 100% because there may be some trucks that are out of their control, but the vast majority are in their control. MR. PALING-All right. On the plantings, are you going to have a maintenance company maintain all the trees and the shrubs and the grass and so on? MR. POWERS-Yes, we will. MR. PALING-Okay. So you will, and that’s got to be part of any motion, that it would be done by a commercial company. MR. LAPPER-Sure. MR. PALING-And it will include watering. MR. POWERS-Yes. Our intent is to have an irrigation system on the islands near the building. MR. PALING-Okay. MR. LAPPER-You can look toward the Glen Square Plaza, in terms of maintenance. It’s the same. MR. PALING-Now, you have two lighting proposals we’re going to look at? I have two in this set of prints. MR. PALUMBO-We included the two for your comparative purposes. The Chazen Group had commented and said that the guidelines that they’re presently working on were to go to 20 foot high. What we did is we supplied you both, just so would see what the difference, in terms of the light spread, would be. So since it was not a defined set, voted upon by the Planning Board or the Town Board yet, those guidelines aren’t enacted, we showed both. I believe that from the last comment letter from Chazen, they stated that they felt that the 20 foot high poles met all of the objectives of their guidelines. We just wanted to clearly show you what it meant in terms of the number of additional poles. We’re more than willing to go with the 20 foot high poles. We don’t have a preference. We just wanted to make sure that you had the ability to see what the difference was. MR. PALING-Okay. One thing about the original lighting plan that I looked at was it seemed to me that the entrances, the entrance lighting was dimmer than the other lighting in the park, and I would think it would be in the parking lot, and I would think it would be the opposite. MR. PALUMBO-We actually responded to one of the comments by Chazen where the original plan, our first lighting plan, did show some spillage out into Bay Road and Quaker, and they commented on that, and thought that that was a negative. My professional opinion on it is that you want some of 8 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) that spillage. It’s not a distraction to the drivers, and it actually aids the people who are looking for that entrance, but we modified that based on the comment. We can go either way on that. MR. PALING-All right. I’d like to make a request of the Board that, I’m not trying to promote spillage, but that the entrance be brightened a bit, so that it is easier to find it when you’re trying to drive in at night. MR. LAPPER-We didn’t understand why Chazen said that, because it seems obvious that there should be spillage at the entrances, but we’re just trying to respond to all the engineering comments. MR. PALING-Okay. Now at the risk of duplicating something we discussed before, how many trees are you saving now from the original? There’s some, there were none, and now there’s some. Are there not trees being saved? MR. PALUMBO-Yes. One of the comments that had come up from the Staff Notes were some clarification on just where some of the trees were being saved, and on the previous set of plans, we had shown a no cut line that, you know, sort of traversed across the site. You may have noticed that, and then we got into some more specifics. There were these trees right here. What we did was we were able to slid the detention basin slightly so that we can save this cluster of trees that was right there, which previously we had not. They’re fairly mature. Some are in better shape than others, but it was a simple move to move that detention basin over. It didn’t change any of the dynamics of the detention basin, but did allow this to be maintained at the same grade at the base of the trees, so that there would be no negative impact. Those were some trees that were concerns of the Staff. There are trees that I’ll point to randomly that are existing trees that we are saving, and those are really ones, the ones that we have on there, are ones of great significance. In fact, these two right here, when we were looking at this driveway location, we probably could have, you know, with the distance that we’ve allowed there, we probably could have come in with a driveway here, but we wanted to save those two nice mature trees. So we did come up a little bit further on it. MR. PALING-Okay. All the other questions I have have to do with the 90 degree rotation of the building. So I think I’ll just, I’ll stop here and put that off until we get to that. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-I agree with, I feel the same way as Bob does about the questions that he wants to ask in a little while, but I think that the trucks going in through the parking lot is really, as far as the new rendering that you have, it’s too bad that if it goes that you would have to take away more permeable land, but it’s dangerous to have. MR. LAPPER-We just don’t get that many trucks a day. I mean, you’re talking about maybe a dozen, and most of them are small panel trucks, like the bread trucks. MRS. LA BOMBARD-But I’m just saying that, I can remember years ago, my daughter was only two, and she got away from me in the parking lot of the grocery store, and a car knocked her down, and I thought, boy, a truck coming up there with little kids going shopping with their mothers, it would be nice to divert the truck elsewhere. MR. LAPPER-Well, we could certainly do that. That’s no problem. MRS. LA BOMBARD-But I don’t have anything right now, anymore. MR. MAC EWAN-Bob? MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I just wanted to add one thing to what Bob talked about in the maintenance area. I had, he talked about maintenance of trees and watering and grass and cutting and things of that nature, but there’s a fairly extensive water, a lot of retention ponding here, a lot of ways for water to get to retention ponds. Now who’s going to be in charge of maintenance of water flow, if you want to call it that, clogged leads, culverts aren’t working, etc., etc.? Somebody’s got to be on top of that on this site. MR. POWERS-That’s a standard practice that we have in all of our centers is every spring at the least you have to go in there and take out the winter debris, and then at least once a week, maybe twice a month, you have to send the maintenance people in there to pick up the bags that fly around, the debris. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So that’s something that Grand Union does, just does it, or do you do it? 9 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. POWERS-I don’t know what Grand Union does at their own facility, but in our facilities, we take care of things like that. That’s part of our maintenance program, the same as cleaning out sumps and catch basins and things like that. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. On the last Sear Brown letter, April 18, 2000, Number Six, I’m sorry, Number Five, “A clearing limit line has been added to the last submission. Additional measures have been undertaken to allow more trees to be maintained. Specifically, the front detention basin has been moved to allow for the preservation or the grouping of trees behind the bagel shop”. Now my print doesn’t show that, but can you? MR. LAPPER-That’s what Frank just pointed out. MR. PALUBO-That’s what I was referring to right here. Let me bring it over closer. MR. LAPPER-Remember the photo rendering that we did? MR. VOLLARO-Yes. MR. LAPPER-Those trees were very visible. MR. PALUMBO-Those are the trees that we were talking about, and this basin was previously over further. MR. VOLLARO-I see it. All right. I didn’t understand. With respect to the traffic impact study, now I know that the Town Board has reviewed this, and so on, but I just want to ask a question, on Page 19 of your, this is in the conclusion of your traffic study, and maybe you’ve already talked about this. Now, I don’t know. This starts to all drift together after a while, but you have a bullet down there that says widen Bay Road to provide 120 foot southbound left turn, at the Bay, that should not be Quaker, but that’s at the Bay Road site driveway I believe. MR. PALUMBO-Yes, that was referring. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Now you’ve already talked about some of that, I think, a little bit. See, I’m trying to incorporate your new information with what I’ve been studying. So it’s kind of interesting. MR. PALUMBO-Right. What we, the 120 foot referred to, in the worst case scenario, having the stacking distance, the 120 feet, you know, between five and six cars. So we were geared toward providing that. When we had initially provided it, where we had the previous driveway, by the time you have your 120 foot, and you take the design speed of the road, that determines your length of your taper, and what it was doing was there is an existing median in Bay Road there, and that existing median is being used presently as a left hand turn lane, down near the Hanneford and the medical building, and so when the County took a look at that and saw that that’s really how it’s operating, we did a quick analysis of the Hanneford numbers that we had already had in here. Realized that their volumes coming in, making left hand turns, were about 50% of what we have going in, because we applied our worst case to make that left hand turn. So we factored in enough room for three cars, 75 feet. We explained that to the County DPW, and then in between that 75 feet and the 120 feet, with moving our driveway up, you have an area that, if you were designing two left hand turn lanes, that would be, the yellow line would basically sort of form the taper between the two. Instead of doing that type of design, in order to accommodate the other, although albeit more minor entrances than say Hanneford or the Grand Union, but I’m sure they’d be concerned about their driveways, it does allow, in that distance, that they can use that turn lane also, and get out of the lane of traffic, and the main difference is that the County had allowed for that median, although it’s double yellow striped on both sides, they basically allowed, as they do in Quaker Road, they allow for the median to service as a left hand turn lane, and so what we’ve done here is just provided as the dual left hand turn lane. Instead of leaving it as a median all the way through, we are designating it with the left hand turn arrows. So that people will have the ability to get over into that lane. Some people, when they approach the median, they’re not sure whether they’re supposed to be going in there. MR. VOLLARO-That whole interrelated scenario, right in that place, with the gas station on the corner, people trying to cross to go south, people coming out of Hanneford having to get over into the right lane or the extreme right lane to make a right, to go east on Quaker. That’s a regular dance at five o’clock, I’ll tell you, right now. MR. LAPPER-Bob, that’s why the County asked us to move the driveway to the south, and we made all these changes on the site, to allow more separation between those two main driveways, and to have more of a dedicated turn way. So that’s really been addressed by the County, and that’s what these changes reflect. 10 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. VOLLARO-I realize that. I’m just trying to visualize a five o’clock move around through all of those exits and entrances and then taking a look at what the Grand Union’s putting out there. That’s going to be one busy street. I’ll tell you. MR. PALUMBO-To concur with Jon there, by moving it down, basically you take our worst case projection, and I think that both Vollmer and the County and Adirondack Glens Falls Transportation Council all did concur that we were using a good conservative number by projecting a worst case scenario, and what you’re doing is if there was a stacking there of five cars, we are moving it that much further down the road, to try to avoid what our, in some sense is the existing problems, and the nature of Hollywood Video. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I’m going to yield the rest of my time to let other Board members here, and I’ll come back, if I need to, at a later time. MR. MAC EWAN-Larry? MR. RINGER-The change in the truck entrance, it seems like such a curve there for the trucks that come in with your new plan there. I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought it out, and that you can get a tractor trailer, a 48 footer, a 60 footer in there. It just looks, on the drawing, like it’s so difficult for them to. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. We run it through a computer program that shows the actual turn movement, and, yes, it is, I don’t deny. It would be more of difficult movement, mostly because the truck is making the full right hand movement and then turning back to the left. We did verify, for ourselves, because we don’t want to put something there that we’re not comfortable with, in terms of a truck encountering a car, let alone somebody that might be standing there. So we did verify for ourselves that the movement can occur without a lane interference, but I do not question the fact that the previous entrance we had was more conducive to the trucks. We made an attempt to try to reduce some of the pavement. We can go back to it. It would not kick us any higher on the green space than we were previously, which was significantly higher than the Town standards. MR. RINGER-The only reason you changed it was to reduce the amount of pavement? MR. PALUMBO-That was the primary reason. I don’t recall this exactly, but I think we might have also had an issue about whether or not the trucks, by virtue of them coming up and it looking like they should almost go right along the front of the store, that to train the trucks to know that to go, you know, rather than going straight across the front of the store, and also I think somebody did reference, I don’t remember. I think somebody referenced that it almost made a cut through for people that were either coming on Bay and might try to cut through the store, if they were going to be making a right at the light, that giving us a straight access line. MR. MAC EWAN-I can’t imagine why anybody would want to try that. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. I’m trying to recall exactly why we did that. I think it was mainly for that, but think that there was something that, it might have been A/GFTC’s, or it might even have been in the Transportation Concepts’ letter that we had gotten the last time, that that kind of movement might encourage people to try to bypass the light. MR. LAPPER-The simplest answer is we can. MR. PALUMBO-We can add it back in. MR. RINGER-If you don’t add it in, there’s no way to take that curve out. I mean, you just couldn’t straighten that out somehow to do that. There’s no. MR. VOLLARO-It’s kind of an S-curve going in. MR. PALUMBO-Straight out back here, this one here? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-We have the parking there, and we need the parking. We’ve already taken these spaces and taken those out and put them on the reserve. So if it’s a conflict between the parking, we could take this lot, this last lot here, and kind of (lost word) a little bit. MR. MAC EWAN-But I don’t understand. If there wasn’t an issue with the drive aisle in the first plan, why was it changed at all? MR. VOLLARO-I think the answer was green space. 11 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. PALUMBO-Mainly paving. MR. LAPPER-It sounds like the Board’s telling us to put it back. That’s the simple answer. MR. MAC EWAN-It should be in no way construed as an approval, though. MR. LAPPER-We never construe it that way. MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else? MR. RINGER-Not right now, but perhaps later. MR. MAC EWAN-Tony? MR. METIVIER-Your Quaker Road entrance is right in and only right out, correct? MR. LAPPER-No. MR. METIVIER-It’s not? MR. LAPPER-And we have the County approval on that, that that’s what they want to see. MR. METIVIER-Will there be a light there? MR. PALUMBO-No, there’s no light. MR. LAPPER-But there will be a break in the median, to designate where the turns are. Tony, the County wanted that to be full movement, to take pressure off of the Bay and Quaker entrance, intersection. MR. METIVIER-I thought I read it just right in and right out, and I couldn’t imagine how you were going to get somebody that comes in there to go all the way around and back out again to get out. MR. LAPPER-That’s pretty much how Quaker works, in every other respects. Any of those other businesses on Quaker, everyone uses the median for left turns. MR. VOLLARO-It looks to me like most people, are you talking about going north on Bay, if a guy, let’s just say he wants to come out of that, and decides he wants to go north, and has to make a right on Bay Road, and go north. MR. METIVIER-Anybody going east on Quaker, nine times out of ten, to get back to where they were going, would have to go west again. MR. VOLLARO-That’s correct. MR. METIVIER-So, if they came on to Quaker, in the Quaker Road entrance, if it was just a right in, right out, they’d have to come the other way, and it would just, it seems like all your overflow is going to be coming on to Bay, but if it is, if it’s both ways, then that makes more sense there. MR. PALUMBO-Again, the conservative approach that we used in the traffic study, the worst case movement, the biggest impact, was on the Bay Road, that left hand turn on Bay to head west on Quaker, and so we attributed more of the cars going out that way to use the light. In some cases, the intersections start to control themselves. The ease of the movement begins to become a controlling factor. If it is difficult to make that left out of Quaker, people will want to go over to Bay and use the light, because it would be an easier movement. MR. METIVIER-Was it clarified if Lowe’s is going to open up on the Quaker Road entrance, a left out there as well? MR. VOLLARO-On Lowe’s? MR. METIVIER-Yes. MR. RINGER-That’s just a left in. MR. METIVIER-Right, but wasn’t it stated that they were going to open that up to come back out again? 12 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Not that I’m aware of. MR. RINGER-No. MR. VOLLARO-I’ve seen a lot of people use that, they’re coming east on Quaker. They watch for the traffic break, make the U and come into Lowe’s that way. I’ve seen them do that. MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else, Tony? MR. METIVIER-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Can we go back and re-visit and refresh my memory, please, with two issues. Your stormwater management plan, and also the test pits that I requested information on. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-The test pits. What did they show you when you did them? MR. PALUMBO-They gave us, I don’t know that I have the specific information here with me, but they did show us, I believe, that the groundwater elevation was fairly consistent down at a point of about 308.5. We did verify, because somebody had the question, and I believe we put it on our last comment letter, that the test pits were done in April, which is a wet month. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m glad you brought that up. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. So it was done at a time. We do have the records, and I think we may have submitted those. I’m not positive, but they were done in April, and they did confirm that the groundwater was fairly consistent, in the range of 308.5. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s an average of three foot depth to groundwater. Is that what you’re saying? MR. PALUMBO-No. The actual, where they took the lot, the boring. MR. MAC EWAN-Can you show us on the map? MR. PALUMBO-Yes. I hope it’s on this plan. MR. RINGER-When I was over there this morning, there was standing water behind the bagel shop. There was standing water there from the rains we’ve had. MR. PALUMBO-The test pits were done here. There was a series done up here, which was over close to the wettest area right here. We had some other test pits done here. Test pits that were done here, and I think we had some information, I’m not seeing it on here, but some information about the water that was in, I think that was in a separate wetlands report talking about some of the elevations. MR. MAC EWAN-And is the stormwater management plan based on a 50 year storm, is that what it was based on? MR. PALUMBO-I believe so. I know it was, I think we had. MR. VOLLARO-Yes, you have a ten year design, but also for a 50 year design. It’s on your Overview, Page 1, second paragraph. MR. PALUMBO-Right. The standard Town aspects of the 10 year I think was for the pipe sizing and the 50 year was for the storage. I’m not positive of that. MR. MAC EWAN-How difficult would it be to ask you to re-do your test pits, and take some new readings? And the reason why I’m asking this is I’ve done a little research on my own, and the average rainfall for this area is 2.98 inches a year, which is in April. April is the heaviest precipitation month, which is usually when you do your test pits. However, April of last year we only had 1.8 inches of water, but April of this year, up until the 17 of this month, we had 2.63 inches of rain, and th that didn’t include the last inch and a quarter we got the last two days. I’d like you to re-do your test pits to be more accurate, because the year that you happened to take them was an abnormally dry April, which was below the average rainfall we get, and this is right off the National Weather Service’s Website. MR. PALUMBO-I’ve got to confirm. I’m not sure that these were done in April of last year. 13 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Your letter said they were done in April. MR. PALUMBO-Did I say last year? I was trying to remember whether or not it was done the year before. What I can do is, the knowledge that when we go to do this building, the structural. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, the magic word is “if”, not “when”, but if. There’s no guarantees here yet. MR. PALUMBO-Sorry. I was a little slow on that. If we get approval to do this building, normally the practice would be that additional borings would be done on a grid pattern, through, for the actual foundation design. So they would be done about a 100 foot grid throughout this building. MR. MAC EWAN-And that’s exactly the reason why I’d like to see them done now, because your letter here says April of last year you did these, and what happens, I’ll just throw some scenarios at you. What happens if this Board approves it, based on the fact that we’ve talked about a 28 foot high building height, based on that berm that’s going to screen the people on Homer Avenue. Now you do your borings, you come back in here and need to have a modification because you need to bring in three feet of fill to make your footings work. It’s now moved that building up even higher, and at that point, do you think that the Planning Board would turn you do for a modification. MR. PALUMBO-Well, why don’t, if we talk about where we’re at now with the building, I think it’s, we’re significantly higher. We are not, you know, with our 317, and a 4 foot drop in this, in the footing, you’re down, I think we’re at 317.5. So we’d be at 313.5, at the bottom of our footing. That’s roughly four to five feet higher than what that ground water elevation that we determined. I would venture to guess that the change in the seasonal groundwater from last April to this April is not going to be that greatly influenced by the change in the rainfall. I mean, we’ve got a four to five foot difference there. If we were really close. If we had our footings down lower and closer to that, I would share your concern. MR. MAC EWAN-You’re not selling me. You’re not selling me at all, because if I’m looking at these numbers, and these numbers are accurate because they’re done by State averages and rainfall averages, you took measurements that were in a season that was abnormally dry. We had more than an inch less rainfall than we normally get in the month of April, and considering the history of this area up there, and the high water tables, and we’ve already heard it through several of the neighbors through the public hearings, how high the water tables are. Why shouldn’t we just take the extra measurement, to be absolutely safe than sorry? MR. LAPPER-Craig, if the Board tells us to take the extra measurement, of course, we will, but remember, for the record, that our measurements were all verified, our report was all verified by Rist- Frost, who signed off on them. We have engineering comments saying that they agree with us. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m willing to bet, if I called Rist-Frost right now, they had no idea we were an inch and a quarter less rainfall last year than what the State average is. MR. LAPPER-Well, when you do those tests, you also look for mottling, to see what the highest groundwater was over the past year. So you’re not just looking at the present year. MR. VOLLARO-One of the things, Jon, is that report from Rist-Frost was done on 3/14, and it was done primarily for the zone change. It is not, it’s not in my packet. I see that as, the Town Board looked at that, when they did the zone change, and the Rist-Frost comments were on their 3/14 letter, and that letter is not part, while it’s part of the resolution that’s been prepared by Staff, it’s not something that I’ve ever reviewed. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Well, that’s in error, and all the information should be before you, certainly. MR. VOLLARO-Because I searched all my stuff for the three, and I even called Laura today, and she said, well, that Rist-Frost letter had to do, primarily, with the zone change application. So I never got to really see that letter. I don’t ever remember. The last letter I saw from Rist-Frost on this topic was we have no further comment. MR. MAC EWAN-Do you remember what the depth was to water table when you did those test pits last year? MR. LAPPER-It depends on where they were. MR. PALUMBO-Yes, it does depend on where they were. In those cases, (Lost words) MR. LAPPER-Whereas our finished floor is 317.5. MR. MAC EWAN-So you’re saying that those things went down. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. LAPPER-Nine feet. MR. MAC EWAN-Nine feet until you hit water? I find that hard to believe. MR. LAPPER-The reason for that, and we’ve put this on the record in the past, is that the areas where it’s wet are these ravines, I mean, where there are low areas on the site, in these channels, and that’s not where our improvements are going. MR. PALUMBO-The existing elevation, at that point, was closer to about 314, 315. We have already placed some fill in there. Okay. So the elevation, the depth of that, is based on the elevation at where you took, where the log was taken, and it was a measurement down from there. So if this was at 314, and it was 308 on the reading, we’d be down six feet, not nine. What we’re saying is the difference between our proposed floor elevation of 317.5, and what was determined as the water, the average water level, groundwater level, that does not necessarily mean that when we went out there in the field we were standing at 317.5 and we measured down nine feet to that. Is that clear? MR. MAC EWAN-No, you’re jumbling numbers all over. MR. PALUMBO-The existing, I’ve got to pull out the existing grading. MR. MAC EWAN-Go back up and answer another question. Why was fill brought in? MR. LAPPER-What he means is we’re talking about the finished floor elevation, which contemplates bringing in fill. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, and the finished floor would be at what elevation are you proposing? MR. PALUMBO-317.5. MR. MAC EWAN-317. MR. VOLLARO-I think, and maybe if you talk below, you know, take a look at the density or the thickness of the concrete, the real measure of this operation is to get down to the bottom of the finished floor and not the finished floor itself. If you’re talking about going down to ground water and taking a look at your logs, you really ought to be talking from the bottom of the concrete, not from the top. Unless you want to take that calculation into consideration. MR. PALUMBO-The four foot difference that I’m talking about between the finished floor elevation, top of that concrete, it’s four feet down to the bottom of our foundation. MR. MAC EWAN-To your footers. MR. PALUMBO-To the footers. MR. VOLLARO-To the footers. It’s four foot below footer. MR. PALUMBO-Below floor. MR. VOLLARO-Below floor, and footer is depth of what? MR. PALUMBO-I’m sorry, the depth of the? MR. VOLLARO-Well, you know, we’re talking about the footings being able to support this load. MR. PALUMBO-Right, 313.5. MR. VOLLARO-This is what this is really all about. MR. PALUMBO-Right, it’s at 313.5. MR. VOLLARO-313.5. Okay. MR. MAC EWAN-Did you follow any of that? MR. VOLLARO-It’s four foot. Okay. MR. MAC EWAN-Mrs. LaBombard just heard the same thing I heard. If the footings are at 308. 15 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. VOLLARO-No, 313.5. MR. MAC EWAN-And the water table is at 308, the footers are in the water. MR. LAPPER-No, the bottom of the footer. MR. VOLLARO-You’re talking that the bottom of the footer is at 313.5. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. VOLLARO-All right. I understand. MR. PALING-That’s five feet. MR. VOLLARO-Five feet. MR. MAC EWAN-Now that we’re all getting really confused, don’t you think it would be a good idea just to go re-do the test pits? MR. PALUMBO-If we re-do them now, I guess the only thing is that we are at the end of, well the end of submission and the end of that April. I mean, I don’t know that we’re going to find that much different. MR. LAPPER-I guess what we would ask is that if you want us to go do some more test pits, we don’t think that this information has to be submitted tomorrow to be on the agenda for next month necessarily. For the reason that this doesn’t have to go to County Planning. This just has to be prepared in advance of the Staff Notes for your next meeting. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m only one person up here. I’d want to have the majority that would ask you to do that, too, you know. MR. LAPPER-Okay. MR. MAC EWAN-But that’s my concern. My concern is that because these test pits were taken in a very abnormally dry season, this year we happen to have a much wetter than normal season. However, that area over there is historically very wet. No matter what side of Quaker Road you’re on, and if you’re going to put footers in there, I, in my mind, want to be absolutely sure that if you got an approval to build this store, that you didn’t come back to the Planning Board and say, whoops, the water table’s higher than what we anticipated. We need to bring in six feet of fill to make this thing work. Which is exactly what Lowe’s did across the street. Yes, they are a little bit lower, but the water table is the water table, and you’re going to hit it. MR. PALUMBO-They are lower. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s why they brought in six feet of fill. MR. PALUMBO-Right, and we are, we’re just not in the same basis. We’re not starting at the same point. MR. MAC EWAN-With all due respect, I would believe that, had I not heard a public hearing, two meetings in a row, from neighbors on Homer Avenue who are running sump pumps 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and they’re not lower. MR. PALUMBO-Right which is, and I think we went through the explanation of that, and the depths of their footings, and where they are. MR. MAC EWAN-I remember one person who said they only had a six foot high cellar. MR. PALUMBO-And the floor elevation was not as high as our 317.5. I think we provided the information to verify why they may have seen a problem, and ours did not. MR. MAC EWAN-Let’s just wrap that portion up and say you know where I’m coming from, at this point. Okay. Any other questions from Board members? Is there anything else that you folks wanted to add? MR. VOLLARO-I want to get where Bob is going, to the alternate proposal. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. That’s where I want to be. Before I move on to that, I want to be sure that we’re over with this thing. Okay. All right. Let’s talk about the alternate proposal. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. LAPPER-The main problem that we think the alternate proposal does is that it faces the building on Bay Road. So it’s just going to be a much more visible building. Where it is now, it is buffered by the wetland area and the trees that are going to remain behind the Quaker Road businesses, and in terms of the neighbors on Homer Ave., they’re going to be looking in the front, the part of the store that’s lighted, parking lot where there’s more activity than the few truck deliveries that happen during the day. So we think that, I mean, besides the fact that we don’t want to do it, because we don’t think the site works as well, we also think that there are negative impact reasons why it’s not better for the Town. You’re going to see more of the store by looking in the front door, more than you will right now. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, Bob, we’ll start with you again. MR. PALING-Well, what I wanted to hear was a good explanation as to what’s wrong with this. I’d rather you elaborate on what you’re telling us, and let me look at a print while you’re saying that. We’re looking at the same print, aren’t we? MR. PALUMBO-The main things that we found to be negatives, one of the reasons that we went this direction was that there was a concern about the truck docks being, you know, so close to this neighbor, and that there was going to be a visual and a noise and a relative impact to that. The main entrance of this store, and you have the main rendering of the front face, that would be right here. That would be, well, that would be the center of activity, cars coming in and out. This is going to be a primary active area, all right. Our opinion was, and also, Bob, you’ve pointed out the cross section aspect, what you saw when you did that cross section, the building is about right here. MR. VOLLARO-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-Okay, and what you’re starting to see is the side of that building. This berm which we really can’t make any higher, than we presently have it, now you’re going to, once you get past that point, you are going to see all of this parking and all the lights of cars backing out of their parking spaces and moving around. So, personally and professionally, I felt that this area of activity was as much if not more of an impact than the relative frequency of the trucks coming there. That’s my opinion. The access has to, because you’re really re-orienting it. This is becoming a Bay Road store. MR. VOLLARO-It’s 360 feet back from Bay, by scale on that drawing. MR. PALUMBO-By right here, yes. MR. VOLLARO-360 feet deep. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. The parking now, instead of where we had it on the other, you know, where it sort of, it channeled out the internal circulation, I think is better than what we end up here. We have a very, you know, we have to start our parking in order to get the number. We can’t go any further back here. So this is the area we have to work with, and we can get amount of parking in there. We start right after the 75 foot setback. What that really leaves us is that cars channeling down here, and it’s, to my opinion, too short of an entrance here, not leaving it, that the stacking that will start to occur here, because you’re going to have more of the cars heading out that entrance, that it will start to interfere with the internal circulation and cause some problems in that manner. MR. VOLLARO-Can you reconfigure that exit a little bit wider? MR. PALUMBO-Reconfigure it how? MR. VOLLARO-Wider. In other words, be able to put enough width to that to get more cars on it, to make maybe a double left and a double right. I don’t know. MR. PALUMBO-It, on an unsignalized intersection, you would not want to have any kind of double lefts or double rights. So you could provide some added storage there, but I don’t believe a significant amount to change some of the problems that are going to occur of circulation. MR. VOLLARO-Let’s get outside the box for a minute. Supposing what we did is did signalize that exit. That would act as a buffer down on the Bay and Quaker a little bit. It would allow traffic to stop up there at the signal, with traffic coming northbound, and take a little impact off the rest of the road. MR. PALUMBO-I know, I can’t say whether or not DPW would allow us to put a signalized intersection there. The distance that we have, the distance from the Hanneford driveway, a signalized intersection, whether it’s here or here, I don’t believe we have the, necessarily the warrant 17 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) for that intersection, because, as I’m saying, this is an internal circulation problem, not necessarily as much of a problem out on Bay. So first criteria we have to pass is that it would be a warranted signal. Then the next step is where, if we could put it as far down as here, is there enough separation, given that you have a fairly good intersection in between here. So I can’t say whether or not that would be allowable. I can’t say whether it would or it wouldn’t. This depth where we had tried, you know, we kept the depth short in front of the building before to try to break down the parking a little bit more. We definitely need a larger field in this area. It will, this will have an appearance of a larger parking lot. MR. PALING-What’s your primary objection to doing it? What’s your Number One? MR. PALUMBO-Well, the reason why we switched it in the first place. First, we didn’t have, it wasn’t a goal of ours. We believe that the store is better situated this way. We addressed it from the standpoint of that, and I think it was your point, that getting the loading dock further away from here might be one of the prime benefits. What I’m saying is that I think that this area is just, if not more of an impact, to this neighboring area. MR. PALING-You’re saying your primary reason is the impact of to the neighbor? MR. PALUMBO-No. I don’t like the circulation for our site here. I think this is problematic. I think to correct this means that we have to significantly lose parking in this area. All right. In order to get a driveway that will function well and not be the funnel point of all this, we would lose a lot of parking in here, and we have a goal, and we’ve stated that before, that we need the 325 spaces, minus the 21 that we’ve already said we would lose. Also I think that this, to some degree, just shifts the impact or the relative impact of this truck dock to residents that also complained about some of that over here. MR. PALING-Yes. I didn’t realize you used the truck dock in the way it’s pictured here now. I thought you were inside. Okay. That’s a reasonable point. I thought you would have some other reasons for objecting to this, though. MR. PALUMBO-Well, we think this is a greater impact to the, we had a lot of comments about Bay Road and trying to maintain the views from Bay Road, maintain the character, as compared to Quaker. I think this opens this up much more to Bay Road. Even though Hanneford is situated similar. They’re set back so much further that this parking lot, you don’t see as much of the impact to Bay Road. I think this would be a character change to Bay Road, much greater than what we had with the other, and I think it also shifts the traffic because I think that this starts to become seen as the primary entrance. MR. PALING-But you only have one truck interfering with noise and site this way. The other way you’ve got two. MR. PALUMBO-Well, I think that this one here, when this building was turned, that’s still pretty far from these residences. MR. PALING-Okay. I guess that’s all the questions I’ve got. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-Nothing. MR. MAC EWAN-Bob? MR. VOLLARO-I do know this, that taking a look at that site plan down below, and this one, that that building is now set about 120 feet north of Homer Ave., and it certainly does protect, I think, those people up there from the probabilities of overnight deliveries. I mean, I just heard at the beginning of this meeting that we can’t totally control those trucks, and I can understand that, but I see that in a positive light with respect to Homer Avenue. I understand your problem with the funnel, using your word, of trying to funnel everything out onto Bay Road. I just think that, somehow or other, working that, maybe where the trucks come up and come out, they’ve got to come out at that same driveway. The way you have it now, that driveway is really the funnel, or the way that sits. MR. PALUMBO-This here? MR. VOLLARO-Yes. That turns out to be, is there any way to move the truck traffic out of that and move it somewhat south, or are those two entrances too close, when you do that? MR. PALUMBO-Move the truck exit? 18 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. VOLLARO-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-What I think then, then what we are doing is we’re crossing all those trucks. MR. VOLLARO-No, go south. MR. PALUMBO-South, sorry, up here. MR. VOLLARO-Going south of that, somewhere between where you have the exit now and the end of the property. Can you bring the trucks out just south of that primary exit? MR. PALUMBO-Well, one of the things is, I’d have to say no, based on what has transpired since we did this, with what we talked about for the County changes that we made, because this entrance would have to move up. It still maintains a funnel, because mainly all of these people are still going to go to there. So, can I move this up to about here and separate the trucks from it? No. So this entrance would have to move here, based on the information that we had from the County, and it still is maintained as a funnel point for all of this, this traffic. I think the distribution really works to the negative of Bay Road. That’s my general opinion. MR. VOLLARO-There’s no question that that does impact Bay Road higher than it does Quaker on the first plan. There’s no question in my mind. I’m just trying to take into account what I’ve heard from a lot of the neighbors on Homer, the problem that we can’t really control this truck traffic like we think we can, and those truck docks are now completely buffered by the distance between that and the properties adjacent to them. MR. LAPPER-Bob, I’d like you to really consider that from the public’s perspective, if we build it this way, it’s going to look a lot more like the Lowe’s, where you have this large field of asphalt with a building in the back, and what we did with the “L” shape parking lot, it really breaks it up and it makes the perspective smaller, and the large part of the building is what you see from Quaker that is buffered by the wetland and the trees that are going to remain. I think that when people drive by on Bay, with the one on top, it’s just going to look like a bigger development. You see the length of the building on the side. That is open to the traveling corridor. So, I mean, you just have to be careful, in terms of, everything is a matter of a choice between positives and negatives, and there are some on both, but I think that this is just going to make it look like a more intensive use of the site by building it this way, and in terms of the residents that you want to protect on the back, and we understand that, the buffer and the berm are significant, and they certainly are more than what anybody else has done in Town, and we think that that’s going to take care of it. MR. MAC EWAN-Larry? MR. RINGER-I do agree that the alternate would have a real negative effect on Bay Road. I certainly do. I can’t imagine looking at that size parking lot coming up Bay Road. So the first plan certainly. I wish there was something we could do about that truck docking. I think that Grand Union can control the deliveries that they’re talking. If they don’t have anybody at the back door to accept deliveries, then no truck’s going to show up. MR. LAPPER-We think they can, too. MR. RINGER-And if there’s regulation that says no overnight parking there, then it’s up to enforcement to get it out of there. MR. POWERS-Certainly, again, I just wanted to be clear before, to say that, you know, there might be some trucker that just shows up that he’s not authorized to deliver at that time of the day, and Grand Union has committed that they won’t accept deliveries, but I just wanted to be clear that a truck may show up some time, and not to sit here and say, absolutely, there will be no trucks between 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock in the morning. It just may happen. I just wanted to be clear with that, that’s all. MR. MAC EWAN-Not to jump in here, but if Grand Union issues purchase orders to different vendors to supply merchandise and produce to the store, as terms and conditions of sales, don’t they have a bunch of things on there that will paid in that 30 days, paying in 60 days, and so on and so forth? Why can’t they just add a term and condition that you deliver between these hours and only these hours? MR. POWERS-They may have to do that. MR. RINGER-Most of the time they do. 19 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. POWERS-The Hanneford across the street is going to accept any time of the day or night. The guy’s got a load of peaches and delivers a load of apples over here. It’s just something that, I can’t absolutely say that no truck will show up between that time of the day, or time of the night, and it’s certainly not an engineering answer. It’s more of a business answer. Quaker Road is the commercial corridor, and the orientation, and it’s been talked about before, the recyclability of the building, if it would ever be necessary, is more marketable facing Quaker Road. MR. MAC EWAN-Tony? MR. METIVIER-It’s a silly question, but you couldn’t move those docks to the side, on the lower? MR. RINGER-On the main plan. MR. METIVIER-On the main plan. MR. PALUMBO-The impact would be, to this area, bumped out here, it pushes it over (lost words) wetland and detention area over here, and if we were to put it on the side and move the whole thing over, that’s moving this closer to Bay Road and to the wetland. MR. PALING-If you use that plan, could you bring the trucks in, open the doors to them the opposite way, in other words, on the left hand side, you wouldn’t come in this way from the right anymore. You’d go over to the left, and you’d come in to that, to the left, to the right. In other words, just reverse that whole thing. It doesn’t matter where they enter so much as that you wouldn’t have a truck sticking out in the most sensitive part of the layout. You’d have your trucks both pointed in the other direction. It would help a little bit with the noise, I think. MR. PALUMBO-The tricky area with that is that we don’t have the ability to get the amount of asphalt turning, full turning area in here, so that they can come in and turn and back in there. If we were to do that, we’d need about another 50 to 60 feet of like a square box here. MR. PALING-You’d have to equal the distance you’ve got on the other end. MR. PALUMBO-Pretty close to that. MR. PALING-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-Yes, and what that does is push it forward, and then that cuts in either to the parking here, because the building, you know, we can’t go back anymore. MR. PALING-It would push it to the east, but it wouldn’t push it north or south I wouldn’t think. MR. PALUMBO-Well, we have, if the trucks were coming in this side instead of this side, is that what you’re saying? MR. PALING-Yes. MR. PALUMBO-So if we’re coming in here and a truck were to come in here, we need to have the maneuverability, and so. MR. PALING-The same as you’ve got on the other end of the drawing. MR. PALUMBO-We’d have this here. That’s the loading dock area. That would be pretty much out to the end of the building. So then what you would need is in this area, a large area for them to turn and back in. MR. PALING-But you wouldn’t need anymore area there then you have on the other end of the drawing. MR. PALUMBO-Then here. MR. PALING-Right. MR. PALUMBO-In the turning movement, yes, because, one, you’re coming, you have to get them up into here, and then back in here. The pass by here is created because we have the room right over here. So they pass by, they back up. All right. This area is still the problem, because this is where we have the detention. This is where we have the wetland, and so if we, anything we do here starts moving this building, and we’re pretty limited in getting the, you know, this concession we had made at a point in time to go with as little of a parking field depth in front had a lot of reasons to it, and we 20 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) think it has a lot of benefits, in terms of what Jon’s already talked about, getting that “L” shape of the parking. Anything we do moving that building has a fairly significant impact on that. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-You know, Frank, I certainly applaud your efforts and your talents, but, you know, it’s like putting a square peg into a round hole. You want that building that size. Could you tell me, again, how many thousand square feet it is? MR. PALUMBO-Sixty-five. MRS. LA BOMBARD-All right. So you’ve got a limited space of land, and it was even rezoned so you could have more land. So we’ve moved it 90 degrees and that doesn’t seem to work because of the Bay Road. Put it back this way, and now we’ve got the Homer Avenue problem for the people over there. Make it smaller, but then if you make it smaller, you can’t call it a Mega Store, and that defeats all your marketing purposes. MR. LAPPER-Cathy, that’s not fair, only because, with all due respect, we’re at 46% green space. So you can’t view this as we’re maxing out the site. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I know. That was my next thing, because I did say I applaud his talents, because he is trying to keep all that green space there, but you’ve got to remember that there were wetlands there to begin with. MR. LAPPER-We’re only talking about maybe 30 to 40 one hundredths of an acre of wetlands that we’re talking about removing. It’s not a significant wetland removal, but in terms of, I mean, what we’ve done with this site, at your insistence, which we’re not complaining about, this is how the process should work, in terms of, if you compare this to Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Lowe’s, Hanneford, the Price Chopper, in terms of, not just the building design, but the site layout, the amount and the size of the trees, breaking up the parking lot. This is, the lighting, meeting the standards that haven’t even been implemented in the Town Code yet, this is just the next level of commercial development, which hasn’t been done by anybody, which is at great expense, but fortunately we have a developer who’s trying to do it right, and trying to make you happy, and to go back now and to say that this is just too much development for the site, I don’t think that’s fair. MR. MAC EWAN-Whoa, whoa, whoa. I’ve been saying that since Day One. Don’t say that anyone on this Board has just thrown it at you tonight. Jonathan, I asked you guys the first night you were in here, show me, personally, me a plan rotated 90 degrees, and a 40,000 square foot store. MR. LAPPER-I’m not complaining about that. That’s legitimate for you to ask us. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, you’re throwing out an innuendo that all of a sudden we’re throwing up these barriers to you. MR. LAPPER-I’m only responding to Cathy saying that she still feels that it’s too much development for the site. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I didn’t say those words. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Then if I misinterpreted, I apologize. MRS. LA BOMBARD-What I am saying is that, all those other places that you’ve just mentioned, Wal-Mart, those places had buildings already there. Lowe’s was, there was stuff already there. What you have here is a beautiful piece of land with beautiful hardwood trees, nestled inside a big commercial area. MR. LAPPER-This’ll be a nice site. If it’s done the way Frank has drawn it, this will be a nice site, something the Board will be proud to have approved, especially compared to the other stuff in Town. It’s just, it’s a different level of design. The Town Code is changing. The public input is changing, and this is designed to respect that. MR. MAC EWAN-Let me just ask a couple of questions here. Let me just address a couple of comments first. When you were talking, Frank, about there was opposition or concern regarding having the store face the Bay Road corridor, as it’s main corridor, and you kind of gave the inference that it was this, people from here or people from the public hearing. As I recall, and I think Mr. Powers hit the nail on the head, you guys don’t want to face it toward Bay Road because you consider Quaker Road the most desirable orientation to have the store. That’s first and foremost. Secondly, if you did rotate the store, in my mind, the only neighbors that you’re impacting with those loading docks is Minogue’s Beverage Center, and I don’t think that would be a problem, but I’ll say it 21 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) again. I’ve asked for it three times, including last month, show me a design that’s 90 degrees rotated and is a 40,000 square foot store, and I’ve yet to see it, and I want to know why aren’t you going to submit a plan to show that to us? It’s not like we’re continually making you jump through hoops. It’s been a request I’ve asked for four times now. MR. PALUMBO-I’ll let Jon add anything to that he wants. I guess the point I have is that we have a proposal, and we’ve had this discussion previously. Our proposal is for a supermarket of 65,000 square feet, and we’re showing the best way we feel we can do this on the site, and, yes, we wouldn’t have come in with a plan that showed it facing Quaker Road if we didn’t feel that was in our interest. Everything we have done is projected from our best design abilities, given our client’s objectives, and one of those objectives is to have it facing Quaker Road. I do not deny that for a second. I do believe that there were comments made during the public hearing that people said they were very concerned about how this would be, how this plan would impact Bay Road, and my comments about the alternative plan was that I feel, and you can disagree with me, but I felt that that plan would impact Bay Road greater. That was the point that I was trying to make. I also felt that it would impact, because of the nature of the activity in the front, the immediate center front of the store, that impact to the corner resident, who has been very vocal about what the impacts of the truck docks were going to be to him, my personal and professional opinion is that turning it that way, the activity in front of that store is going to be more of an impact, because you’re going to have all the cars traveling in and out. The front entrance of that building will be well lit, and that is going to have more of an impact, and a more difficult impact for us to address than the truck dock. The truck dock is a. MR. MAC EWAN-Are you talking a 65,000 square foot store or a 40,000? MR. PALUMBO-That is the 65,000. That is our proposal. We have no interest or tenant that is looking for a 40,000 square foot store. MR. MAC EWAN-All right. Now I’ll tell you where I’m coming from as a member of this Board. We’ve been working on this thing since, what, November, late October, and I just continually see red flag after red flag coming up on this project. I see problems with it that I don’t see us really satisfactorily addressing, in my mind, and I see a lot of things with this. What I really see here as the problem is it’s too big of a project for too small of a parcel of land to be developed adequately, and that’s what I keep seeing. MR. LAPPER-Okay. With all due respect, Craig, and I know we don’t agree on this project, but it’s not fair for you to say that for these reasons. The Planning Staff came out with an analysis, a couple of meetings back, that compared the green space of this project to other commercial projects, and we are far in excess of what the Code requires. All we need is 30% in this zone, and we could come in with a site plan 30%. MR. MAC EWAN-Jon, it’s not just an issue of green space. MR. LAPPER-I agree, but that’s a major issue, in terms of how much development you’re doing on a site, how much you’re going to leave for green space, and we’re far in excess of that. In terms of the other commercial properties, we also have more green space than the vast majority of them. So we’re less intensively developing the site, because you’re asking us to consider doing an even smaller building. MR. MAC EWAN-My guess is if you were in here, several months ago, with a much smaller commercial development, or professional office, you probably would have had approvals two months ago. MR. LAPPER-I understand that, but we have a tenant that wants to build a Grand Union supermarket on this site. They’ve located a site that’s more than sufficient under the Town provisions. The most sensitive issue is that we have a residential neighborhood in the back, and it’s zoned industrial, but it’s residential, and what we’ve done is, we’ve explained this many times, at great expense, close to a million dollars, we’ve got options to purchase all those properties, and that’s going to eliminate the impact on all those people, and we’re using that for a berm. The Town Code addresses the issue of, what happens if you have a commercial site adjacent to residential uses, and the answer is that you have to have a 50 foot buffer, and that 50 foot buffer doesn’t have to be a seven or eight foot high berm with many, many, many, many trees, but that’s what we’ve done, in order to satisfy you, and to satisfy the neighbors, that we’re really trying to mitigate any impact. So we feel that we are more than complying with the Code, which is our responsibility. MR. MAC EWAN-Sometimes you just can’t mitigate everything either. I’m not saying that’s not the case with this project. What I’m saying is I still have a lot of concerns about it. 22 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. LAPPER-I think that your concerns really have been addressed, and that you should be satisfied after we changed the design of the building, and we really beefed up the landscaping on this, and we’ve gone through the review, and we’ve had all of these review agencies, Vollmer Associates, Chazen, the A/GFTC, we have DPW sign off. I mean, we’ve gone and done our homework, and all of these review agencies have said that they’re satisfied, and we comply with the Town Code, and we think we’ve got a very nice site plan at this point, and we understand that we haven’t convinced you, and we’re sorry about that, but we think that we’ve done our homework. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else from Board members? MR. VOLLARO-I just want to ask Frank a question. Frank, I just did a quick calculation, real quick, based on the scale here. It looks like you’ve got approximately 190,000 of usable square footage here. What’s the overall acreage we’re talking about, roughly? What’s the outside limits of the property, the property line? MR. PALUMBO-The total approximately is 9.78 acres. MR. VOLLARO-9.78 acres. Okay. See, the property itself is large. The problem is you’re constrained considerably by the amount of wetlands that you’re trying to mitigate and deal with. So, that situation is cramping you down to about 190,000 square feet. MR. MAC EWAN-Not only that, you’ve got a NiMo right-of-way. MR. LAPPER-But there’s nothing wrong with using wetland as green space. MR. VOLLARO-No, no. I didn’t say that. I agree with that, Jon. It’s just that your usable space, what you’ve been able to eek out as usable space here, tends to be kind of tight for 65,000 square feet. MR. LAPPER-Well, when you say usable space, I mean, we can take out more wetland and replace it off site. It’s an expense, but we are allowed to do that. MR. VOLLARO-I realize that. MR. LAPPER-And if we did that, we would do the calculations the other way and show you that we could probably put up a 90,000 square foot building which would comply with all provisions of the Code on this site. MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but that may not be economical for Grand Union either. MR. LAPPER-No question. We’ve no desire to do that. I’m just telling you that as a theoretical counter to your argument. MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I understand where you are. MRS. LA BOMBARD-If you could just move that building closer to Quaker Road, but with the wetlands down there. MR. LAPPER-Well, there are about five houses across the street, and one of those just got a variance for a commercial use, and of those five houses, one of them’s already a commercial use. So, in terms of the people that you’re trying to protect, that are zoned industrial, if you look to the future, at some point they’re not going to be residential. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Jon, there’s no doubt about it. You certainly make a good argument, and everything you say is true. MR. MAC EWAN-Before we go back to the public hearing, just let me ask Mr. Powers one more question. How does Grand Union’s announcement today play into this project? MR. POWERS-As far as, we’ve been told all along, and there’s obviously a lot of changes happening at the company, but it’s business as usual in the development end of the business, separate from the operational, in the southern part of New York State and New Jersey, they operate as Grand Union store. This is a different division, a different operation operating out of Clifton Park, and they have projects in the pipe line, this being one of them that they hope to build, and business as usual. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. 23 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. VOLLARO-At the corporate level, though, it’s just another box underneath corporate headquarters, really. They’re going to be looking to this as another endeavor, another way to do it, but it’s still Grand Union at the top. MR. POWERS-That’s a good question and a good point. The store that’s going to open in Albany, which will be the first mega save, we’ve been trying to find out, who’s peas are they going to sell? Are they going to be Grand Union peas, or are they going to be mega save peas or someone else’s and that hasn’t been decided yet. So whether this is operated independently as a separate entity, hasn’t been decided, and it’s obviously not part of our decision. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Could I ask you gentlemen to give up the table for a few minutes. We’ll open up the public hearing. Does anyone want to comment on this application? You’re welcome to come up. I’d ask you if you have any questions, you direct them toward the Board and we’ll get them answered for you, and just identify yourself for the record, please. PUBLIC HEARING OPEN BEVERLY KERR MRS. KERR-Beverly Kerr, 47 Garrison Road, Queensbury. I have four points, the first being a letter from Joyce Thompson who could not be here this evening. “To the Queensbury Planning Board: I regret not being able to attend this meeting but still want to voice my opposition to the construction of the 65,000 sq. ft. retail store referred to as a megastore. If this Grand Union store is approved for construction please consider having it face Quaker Road rather than Bay Road. The increased traffic at the corner of Bay and Quaker because of CVS expansion in prescription coverage is a new concern and should be considered by your Board. Do everything you can to spare more traffic and turning lanes on Bay Road. Thank you for your consideration of these requests. Sincerely, Joyce Thompson, Garrison Road resident” MR. MAC EWAN-Does Staff have a copy of that letter? MRS. MOORE-No, I do not. MR. MAC EWAN-Could I ask you to give that to them when you’re done, please? MRS. KERR-Certainly, and my personal points. This evening on the ABC Evening News, they did an editorial on the vanishing landscapes, and the primary focus of the piece was that land once lost cannot be reclaimed. The views of trees and open land are being replaced by views of strip malls and video stores. Your Board is a Planning Board. Your job description is inherent in that title, and I do hope that you will consider that when you make this decision tonight. My second point, Nigro corporation owns Glen Square. The Eckardt store is now gone. The remaining stores are the Dollar Tree and Odds and Ends, probably both of which could be relocated at some cost, but it’s a very large building if it were to be even taken down and rebuilt. The parking already exists there, and I promise not to filibuster, but I have something I’d like to read to you. The hero in this novel is a young man who is taking a course in community development at a local community college, and his professor has cited him to go to Berkley. His name is Conrad, and he has, with great reservation, voiced his opinion in class, and he says, his heart thumping over his temerity, Conrad raised his hand and said, how about Seven Eleven? Seven Eleven, yes, yes said Conrad. He had driven through that whole area, from Vine Hill where he lived, on to East Pittsburg and beyond, and it was now one vast goulash of condominiums and other new cheap housing. The only way that you could tell that you were leaving one community and entering another was when the franchises started repeating and you spotted another Seven Eleven, another Wendy’s, another (lost word), another Home Depot. The new landmarks were not office towers or monuments or city halls or libraries or museums, but Seven Eleven stores. Let’s just substitute markets for Seven Eleven. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. Anyone else? MRS. GREEN MRS. GREEN-I’m Mrs. Green. I live on the north side of Homer Avenue, and you were concerned about the high water table this year. We have a deep cellar, probably one of the deepest on Homer Avenue. We have not had one drop of water in our cellar this year, and our sump pump hasn’t run once. The woman you’re referring to having her sump pump run 24 hours a day has a stream running through her cellar. It was there when they built the house, and they were aware of it. They raised the house to try to avoid it, couldn’t. That’s why her sump pump runs 24 hours a day. MR. MAC EWAN-Can I ask you, whereabouts on Homer are you? MRS. GREEN-I’m Number Two. 24 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Number Two. Are you under contract with Nigro? MRS. GREEN-Yes, we are. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you. MR. PALING-I have a question, too. Ma’am, have you ever had water in your basement? MRS. GREEN-Yes. MR. PALING-Did you have it last year? MRS. GREEN-Yes, we did have it last year. MR. PALING-Thank you. MRS. GREEN-But a small amount, but this year none. MR. MAC EWAN-Anyone else? JOHN RICHARDS MR. MAC EWAN-I will forewarn you. If you’re going to talk about what I think you’re going to talk about, I’m going to cut you off short, because this isn’t the forum to discuss that. With that, you can identify yourself for the record, and I’ll let you take a shot at it. MR. RICHARDS-My name’s John Richards, and I do represent Nigro Development that’s not the applicant, and not related to the applicant. I want to emphasize that my client, which owns the Denny’s and the little parcel, as I’ve mentioned before, right at the edge of the frontage on Quaker Road, next to the Minogue’s parcel, from Day One, when I’ve appeared, we have favored this plan, continue to favor it, and only object to the Quaker Road exit location. We think the plan, whatever it’s merits can be better by moving that exit east, and possibly, I don’t want to represent this, but possibly combining with Minogues. We’re trying to reach them to see if they’re interested in that. Last month I submitted comments from our traffic consultants, Transportation Concepts, that encourage that move. Nothing I’ve heard here tonight, I haven’t seen all the responses mentioned, but nothing I’ve heard here tonight has said that that would not be an improvement. What that would do, of course, would improve the spacing from the Quaker Bay intersection. It’ll reduce the wetlands disturbance that several Board members have commented on, and would also move the driveway away from the power lines. Now, how to approach that. I have had brief conversations with Jon Lapper. These are obviously stalled. MR. MAC EWAN-Let’s cut to the chase. Does it require buying property from the person you represent? MR. RICHARDS-Maybe. I don’t know. Let me finish. I don’t want to get into name calling and letter writing. I did see a copy of a letter that Jon sent the Board. My suggestion, and I think it’s a positive and constructive one, is that you allow us, in a week or two, to get the parties themselves, rather than Jon or I talking. Get the parties a chance to get together with their traffic people, maybe Minogues if they’re interested, maybe the Town Staff, and see if we can work something out. If we can’t, then we come back next month and you make your decision, but if we can, we have a better plan. MR. MAC EWAN-My initial response to you would be that this Board is not family court. Any problems that you have. MR. RICHARDS-I’m not the one who raised these problems. MR. MAC EWAN-No, and I’m fully aware of what’s been transpiring over the last couple of months or so. It actually goes way back to probably when it was the Denny’s application in front of us, and I just don’t think it’s appropriate to have this Board become part of this on going dispute that seems to be going on in the family, and we’ll leave it at that. MR. RICHARDS-Well, if I could only say to the Board, I think the characterization and the name calling is more coming from, not this end. I’d just like an opportunity to get us together and see if we could make this a better plan. MR. MAC EWAN-You have all the opportunity. I mean, if you want to pick up the phone and make a phone call to them, it shouldn’t come from this Board to direct, or anybody else to do that. 25 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. RICHARDS-I’m not trying to use this Board, not asking the Board. We are saying, though, that this should be tabled for a month while we try and get this worked out. MR. MAC EWAN-Now you’re asking this Board. MR. RICHARDS-And that’s where I’m coming in. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you. MR. RICHARDS-Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Anyone else? JOHN STROUGH MR. STROUGH-John Strough, Queensbury. I’ve been keeping track of this, and I’ve been watching Grand Union’s stock, and I see that they were selling at $10 a share in January. In February they were $5 a share, in March they were $4 a share, and today they closed at a $1.87. Time to buy, maybe, or time to realize that, you know, this particular development, with all due respect to Nigro, may not be a mega store or a Grand Union related mega store. Also, on Channel 6 News, they announced that Grand Union was closing six Grand Unions in the Capital Region. That’s today’s news, but I downloaded a company press release from Grand Union, and it announces some of the new stores they opened. Now these are stores that they classify as dramatically different food mart. I don’t know if it’s aligned with the mega store concept or not, but it is Grand Union, and on April 12 they opened their new store. It was 33,242 square feet, and March 11 they opened another new thth food market concept store, and that was 56,000, and on March 22, they announced another new nd store, 55,000. None of which were 65,000, and they’re announcing that they are open from 7 a.m. to midnight, at least these new food market stores, just to keep in mind. As you know, the problem that I have is that I know Warren County has given an approval, supposedly, to the traffic flow on Quaker Road, but I also wonder if we had gone to Warren County with a different approach, maybe the Town had gone to Warren County, and said, listen, keeping in mind the potential build out on Quaker Road, and long range plans, what might you suggest? Would you suggest a full access or would you suggest a possibly right in/right out with turning lanes, and I wonder what they would say, because in my mind, the long range plans for Quaker Road, that a right in/right out from Quaker Road, with turning lanes, seems to make the most sense, and maintaining the integrity, and the future integrity, of Quaker Road. Now, I know that puts an additional burden on Bay Road, but then I think most people here would agree that this project as proposed is less than ideal, and that’s probably an understatement, for this given property. Now I can understand why they want to locate there. It’s in the Quaker Road corridor. Fine and well, but this particular property, there are some unique problems, ground water, wetlands, and it’s in proximity to a residential area. So, I think, I like the idea better of turning it 90 degrees and getting some of the impact, the negative impact away from the residential area. I can also see problems with that, but as Cathy said, there’s problems every which way you look with this particular project as it’s property as it’s proposed for this given parcel, but what also bothers me is that we’ve put an additional burden on our Planning Department to enforce truck deliveries. I don’t think it’s something they want to do. I mean, ideally a plan that we’d like to see is where we don’t have an enforcement problem, because it’s located in a better spot, but this isn’t. So just a few notes. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you very much. Anyone else? BOB SEARS MR. SEARS-My name’s Bob Sears. I’m the realtor involved in putting this project, helping to put the project together. I’ve been doing this kind of work for the last 15 years in Queensbury and other areas, and, Craig, I want to direct most of my comments to you, and then to the Board secondary. First of all, you guys have put an unbelievable amount of time into this. I’m sure you stay awake a lot of nights. You have a big responsibility, and everyone in Queensbury should appreciate that. Saying that, Craig, we talked about the residential area that this project is impacting. It’s five homes, put between a commercial base, the biggest artery in the Town of Queensbury, and also Duke Concrete. We’re talking about a residential area that has five homes and they’re zoned Light Industrial. I understand there’s an impact there. That’s obviously an issue, but let’s not overemphasize the fact that we’re dealing with five homes. Also, we have mitigated eight properties, five houses. So, in other words, in my mind, that area on Homer is being improved immensely as a result. I’ll take that back, not immensely. There is an improvement as a result of this Grand Union development. Also, the developer is putting in a berm. He doesn’t have to do this. Because of your efforts and their efforts, the developer, they’re doing this. So they’re trying to mitigate the impact on five residences. The last issue regarding that is these five residences probably will be able to, most of the square footage of these five residences is less than 1800 square feet. The value of these homes, yes, there is 26 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) a discussion as there is a question whether or not the value will go up or down, but I submit to you that it is a question. We’re not talking about $150,000 values here. The assessment on most of these homes are in the 70’s and under 100. So, you know, it’s questionable what percentage of value is a negative or a positive. Is it 10%? Maybe, but that’s probably about it, because the value is constant as a result of the overall price based upon the square footage. So I guess to wrap it up, when we think about impact on a residential area, we’re talking five homes, and we’re talking the developer’s trying to jump through hoops to mitigate the impact on these five homes. I appreciate your time, and good luck with your decision. MR. MAC EWAN-Can I ask you just one quick question? MR. SEARS-Absolutely. MR. MAC EWAN-Should the impact of five homes, if they’re a moderate home, a value of less than $100,000, be taken of less consideration if it was a home, as opposed to a quarter of a million dollars? MR. SEARS-No. That’s not what I’m saying. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s what I gathered from what you were saying. MR. SEARS-Okay. The square footage of these five homes are basically probably between 12 and 1500 square feet, and what I’m trying to say is that because of that, their value is in a tighter bracket than it would be if they were 2,000 square feet or more. You have a tighter bracket to deal with, as far as whether or not it will impact it negatively or positively. That’s what I’m trying to say. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MR. SEARS-I appreciate your question. MRS. LA BOMBARD-And I understand where you’re coming from there, and that makes sense, but what about what Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Kerr have been talking about over the past few meetings? MR. SEARS-That’s a very interesting. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Where they’re worried about the traffic going through Webster and Fort Amherst and Garrison, and using those streets as a thoroughfare, instead of, you know, right now they’re mainly residential. So you put another big place, big establishment like this where people can go to shop they’re going to start taking all routes to get there. I mean, so it isn’t impacting just those homes, Bob. MR. SEARS-I go and use that short cut five times a day. All my work is done within the Queensbury corridor. Every time I’ve ever used it, I’ve never witnessed more than two cars coming either one way or the other, and I’ve done it at various times. Now I say two. It might be three, but it’s negligible compared to, I mean, they live on a City street in Glens Falls. Every street in Glens Falls, you have traffic, and to say that this so called big box is going to have a real impact, a measurable impact on their neighborhood, their bottom line is they’re saying, and this is a concern that I think has been voiced, but the real impact is they’re saying they just don’t want another big box in the area. That’s the real concern. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Wait a minute. Is that such a bad concern? MR. SEARS-No. MRS. LA BOMBARD-To not want another big box in the area. Because when you take a look at those stock prices, what happens if you put a big box up and ten years from now it’s a big empty box? MR. SEARS-Okay. Good, Cath. Let me go back to traffic count on that area, and let me go back to big box. 65,000 square feet, in my mind, is not that big of a box. There’s a lot of retailers out there that can use 65,000 square feet. A big box in my mind is like a Lowe’s or a Wal-Mart or a K-Mart, where they’re 120,000 square feet. This here prototype fits fairly well into that mid-sized retailer. Okay. Let’s say if Grand Union folded in 10 years, any company could fold in 10 years or in 2 years, but let’s say Grand Union did. That prototype would probably fit very well for any number of uses, other than just the grocery store, because it is a general use application, as opposed to what a real big box is, which is 120,000 square feet. Now, one other issue, and I want to go back to you. I sell commercial property. I look in the handbook of the Town of Queensbury. The Town of Queensbury gives me a guidance system to go by. They say basically the rule of thumb is a third, a third, a third. A third for parking, a third for green space, and a third for the building. Okay. That’s my rule of thumb. I go to the Planning Board and they give me guidance as to what can be basically 27 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) put on a piece of property. You’re telling me, or you’ve told these people here, this developer, that you want to see a 40,000 square foot building put on this piece of land. That’s what you said is the use application. That is what you say will make you decide that you can approve it. Well, based upon the reg’s, they are definitely allowed 65,000 square feet. MR. MAC EWAN-My response to that is no where in that book does it say that you’re guaranteed an approval on any application you put in front of this Planning Board. That’s my response, because it’s just not a black and white, Mr. Sears. There’s all sorts of information and all sorts of criteria we take into consideration in site plan review, from traffic to aesthetics, to impacts on groundwater, to stormwater to a whole number of things, and it’s just not that easy. MR. SEARS-Believe me, I understand that. I understand that’s the general criteria. MR. MAC EWAN-The key word here being “general”. MR. SEARS-Yes, and I always predicate everything I do with clients saying there’s no guarantees about anything. You have to dot your I’s and cross your T’s, and the Board will be responsible based upon the site plan. That’s the way I handle it, but the bottom line is, you have a guidance system here, and when you tell me, personally, I want to see a 40,000 square foot building on that site, I’m wondering, what’s going on here? MR. MAC EWAN-No. What I’ve asked four times here is show me a site plan, rotated 90 degrees, with a 40,000 square foot store, so I can make a comparison. MR. SEARS-That’s not the issue. The issue is, we don’t have a 40,000 square foot store. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s fine. I mean, that’s the prerogative of the applicant, but unfortunately, as a planner, I’m sitting up here and trying to do what’s best in my mind, and also for the community’s mind when I cast a vote for this project, or any other project for that matter. MR. SEARS-And the developer has taken, in my mind, the developer is trying to address those issues, and I think they’ve done a very good job. MR. MAC EWAN-And I agree with you. I believe the developer is trying to address those issues. The question remains, did he satisfactorily address those issues. MR. SEARS-That’s up to you. I appreciate your time. MR. MAC EWAN-You’re welcome. MR. SEARS-And good luck with your decision. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MR. SEARS-And I know one thing. I’m going to sleep better tonight than I did last night. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. Anyone else? No? Okay. We’ll leave the public hearing open for the time being. I guess I’d like to hear some dialogue from Board members, what we want to do. MR. LAPPER-Could we address those comments briefly? MR. MAC EWAN-Sure. MR. LAPPER-Joyce Thompson’s letter, without her being here to hear our presentation, acknowledged that she feels that it would be more of an impact visually and traffic if it faces Bay Road. It’s your decision as to what you think the best site plan is, but we respectfully ask you to agree with us that this is the best site plan. The comments on vanishing landscape, commercial corridor, Glen Square Plaza vacancy, the way Queensbury is laid out, this is the commercial corridor. Route 9, Quaker Road, Aviation Road, the rest of the Town is residential, with a smattering of industrial. There’s also Exit 18 commercial, but for the most part, this is the commercial corridor. So this is the right place to put this kind of a development. Glen Square Plaza vacancies, what I would point out, which is already on the record, Nigro Companies is a quality owner. They maintain and pay taxes on their properties, if a tenant leaves the site, and I would just point to the re- development of the Toys R’ Us, which they did a very nice job on. If that happened, that’s what would happen here if the company goes away, and, truthfully, the fact that we have a so much more attractive building than where we started, is better for them as landlord, because it’s going to be a lot easier to re-develop this building than it would the building that the tenant had first presented. So we thank you for that exercise. I don’t think I have any comments on the Denny’s. I think you covered that, and John Strough’s comments that it may not be a Grand Union, I’ve really responded 28 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) to that. He’s right. We expect that they will stay there, but if they don’t, Nigro Companies would deal with it. The traffic, the full access on Quaker Road, I’d mentioned this before also. Frank and I went, in our first meeting, before we submitted the site plan application, we met with DPW and said to them, do you want this to be a full movement access on Quaker Road? And they said yes, because it reduces the impact on the Quaker/Bay intersection, and that’s why they’ve approved the plans as we’ve submitted them. So they did, John may not be aware of that, but they did look at the whole thing and decide that they think that that’s best for the Town and for the site. The groundwater wetlands and the proximity of residential, the groundwater, the Town engineers have signed off on our stormwater report. The wetlands, we’re talking about a 30 to 40 one hundredths of an acre impact. It’s just not a big impact, and the proximity to residential property, again, the Town Code addresses how that has to be buffered, and we’ve done it. We’ve more than exceeded what the Code requires. I’m sorry that you don’t agree with us, but we think that this is a site plan that ought to be approved, that’s ready to be approved, but we are also willing go back and do more tests, if that’s what the Board tells us to do. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Tony, we’ll start with you. What do you want to do? MR. METIVIER-Personally, I like the way it’s designed here. I don’t think that turning it onto Bay is going to prove anything. It’s going to be, have much more of a negative impact if we were to do that. As far as the size, I mean, obviously, there’s really no question that they want to keep it at 65. So I won’t even go there, but I don’t know. I don’t know what else to say. I, personally, think that this design here would be acceptable to me. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Larry? MR. RINGER-When this first came before us as a zoning request, I was not in favor of it, for the reasons that I thought Homer was a residential area. However, since the Town Board has decided that it should be rezoned, I have to look at it from a different perspective, and I think what the applicant has done here has been a great job, and I like their offering. I don’t like the alternate plan because I think it’s too much of an impact on to Bay Road. I think the traffic study, the stormwater management report and everything we have communicates that the area can handle it. So, I really feel that they’ve done a great job in trying to compensate for all the problems there are with the land and I feel that I would support the project. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Bob? MR. VOLLARO-Well, fundamentally, I think it’s a hard site. I think that’s one of the problems we’re having here. The site is not yielding, in a sense, and that’s a big problem in my mind. Taking a look at the fact that, you know, we’re sitting on a roughly 210,000 square foot site, and using 190 of it and winding up with taking 65,000 square feet out of that, you’re winding up with 125,000 square feet of green space. There’s not, in my mind, it’s a hard, hard site to work. That’s been my problem all along. Now, John came up with something that’s very interesting, and I thought that 65,000 was cast in stone, some place at corporate headquarters it says none of our stores get to be any smaller than 65,000 square feet. Well, that doesn’t seem to be the case from what I hear. There is some wiggle room there from 65,000 down to something else, whatever that may be, but the smaller that store becomes, even if it’s 55,000, that site works better. That’s, even though it may not be a big box, as you say, it’s a big store. I mean, I view it as the size of Hanneford’s, and Hanneford’s a fairly big store, and I think that that site just doesn’t support it, and I’m not going to say whether I’ll support this or not. I would have a very hard time saying yes to this particular one, without looking to see what could be done to mitigate that site with a smaller building. I certainly don’t like the approach on the top. I think that getting trucks in there is just, that doesn’t work at all for me. The bottom one would obviously be more palatable. MR. LAPPER-We’ll do that. MR. VOLLARO-The way the trucks run around. MR. RINGER-Well, I made my. I thought that the bottom was the choice, not the top. MR. LAPPER-Yes, we heard you, and we’ll do that. MR. VOLLARO-So, Craig, that’s all I have. I mean, we could, you know, talk about this until tomorrow morning, but that’s about where I am. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, at the beginning of all this, I initially voted for the rezoning because I thought it was going to come down to this, and I just felt that, when push came to shove, that it would be a more viable project if we had that extra land in there, but I’ve been thinking about this 29 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) and I’ve been sleeping on it before I made any rash judgements, and I haven’t, I really can’t tell you exactly how I will vote when the final time comes, but I keep going through Section 179-38 in the zoning book , and, you know, I do believe that the project could have an adverse impact upon the natural, scenic, and aesthetic and ecological wildlife and everything. When you walk through that property, it is absolutely beautiful, level, green property with hardwoods in there, and it’s a little respite in between all the hub of the commercial part of Town, and it’s like Mrs. Kerr said, once it’s gone, it’s gone forever, and that’s the problem that I keep having, and it has nothing to do with the quality of how you’ve laid the site out. You’ve done a great job. I just don’t know if I can, with a righteous conscience, let that property go, and that’s the way I feel right now. MR. LAPPER-We understand that, but it’s commercial property in a commercial zone. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I know that, Jon. MR. LAPPER-And we’re sort of penalized because it’s still trees. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I know that. MR. MAC EWAN-Bob? MR. PALING-I’ve got to disagree, I guess, with a couple of members of the Board, in so far as the impact on the land is concerned. If you’re going to compare it to Aldi’s, K-Mart, Hanneford, Price Chopper, and I think that’s a reasonable comparison, then their impact on the land is perhaps less than that we’re talking about from these other large stores, and I think they’re making a very good use of the lot, and of all the things we’ve been over, I’ve checked off my list mostly, and I come down to aesthetics and traffic. Is where I’m thinking, and I think the job they’ve done along Homer is very good, and it seemed to satisfy most of the people in the neighborhood, in so far as mitigating noise and the site, and the aesthetics of it. Traffic, if we can go by the studies, we’re still okay. So at this point in time, I’m tending to favor it, with the re-done driveway that we see up there. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. So what I’m hearing from any Board members, no one is really looking for any additional information? You think you have enough to go on here? MR. RINGER-You felt quite strongly that they should do some more test bores. I mean, if you feel very strongly about that, then I could support that. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I could support that. MR. MAC EWAN-It can’t be just me. It’s got to come from members of the Board. MR. RINGER-If you feel that way, I could support that. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m only going by the information that they’ve submitted, based on what history shows, what we know that site to be, and we know what the rainfall was for last year, versus this year. That’s what I’m basing it on. MR. RINGER-Well, if you feel that, I could support that we could go and have them go get additional test bores. If you’re looking for some support from the rest of the Board, if you feel strong enough, I could support that. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I think we should go through with that, have them go through with that, at least a few more. Maybe you don’t have to do all the extensive testing like you did before, put maybe three in some strategic spots. MR. RINGER-How much of a job would it be if we did ask you to do that? MR. LAPPER-We can do that. MR. PALUMBO-As I said earlier, that is something we would do so that the structural engineer designing the final, you know, bearing capacities of those footings, they would want those strategically placed in the building, so we would do that after a site plan approval, before the building permit were requested. So it’s getting the information now, rather than later. That’s not a problem. MR. MAC EWAN-Could we ask you when you do these test pits, when you supply us with the information, depth to groundwater, depth to proposed footers and depth to finished grade, or not depth, to where finished grade would be? Supply us with that information so we can make a comparison. MR. PALUMBO-Yes, we can do a diagram that will show levels. 30 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Also, reflect your changes. It seems to be the consensus of the Board they’d like you to go back to the configuration for the truck deliveries that was shown in the original site plan. MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. PALING-And we need a new set of prints. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MR. PALING-Yes, we don’t have an up to date set now. MR. MAC EWAN-And the only other thing that I see that I remember in discussion tonight was the re-establishing of the plantings that were lost because of the new drive aisle off Bay Road. You’re going to put those back in. Okay. Anything else from Board members? Would someone like to introduce a motion to table, please? MR. PALING-I’ll make a motion to table site plan 62-99 for Nigro Companies, until, I think we need a date. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, I think we can be somewhat flexible and give them some time. How long will it take you to do these testings, if you can get your information together? MR. PALUMBO-There’d be not a problem having that information so that you have it in advance of the next month’s meeting, probably even sooner than that. MR. MAC EWAN-Our deadline is tomorrow. Our first meeting in May is the 16. Our second th meeting is the 23, and then we’ll have one on the 23, the 30. rdrdth MR. PALUMBO-Absolutely not a problem getting the revised sets of plans to you for tomorrow. MR. MAC EWAN-Just to give you some leeway here, if we tabled this to the May 23 meeting. rd MRS. MOORE-I’m going to interrupt you, because we’re not, May 23 is Grievance Day. So the rd dates for May have been changed to May 16, May 18, or May 25. ththth MR. MAC EWAN-See, I didn’t read by e-Mail today. MRS. MOORE-All right. MR. PALING-16, 18, and what was the other one, Laura? thth MRS. MOORE-The 18 or the 25, depending on how much is on our agenda. thth MR. MAC EWAN-How about we table this to the 18, okay, and we give you until May the 5 to thth get your information in? MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-That would give you enough time to do the test pits and do the. MR. LAPPER-We’ll actually submit the site plans tomorrow, with revisions, and we’ll just submit the boring results by, what did you say? MR. MAC EWAN-May 5. Is that enough time? That’s a week and a half. The 12? thth MR. PALUMBO-The 12 would certainly be great. th MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We’ll give you until the 12 to submit the boring. th MR. PALING-One more. Which of the profiles are we dealing with? The one with the? MR. LAPPER-The third. MR. PALING-The peak roof? MR. PALUMBO-Yes, the one that has the. MR. PALING-The three of them. 31 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. PALUMBO-Yes. MR. LAPPER-Thanks for the additional time for submission. MR. VOLLARO-Before we get a second on this, I would like to ask a question whether or not, is the 65,000 square feet cast in stone? I guess it is. I mean, there’s just no question about that? MR. POWERS-All the direction we’ve received so far to date from the Grand Union company and the MegaSave people is MegaSave and 65,000. The one in Albany that will open shortly is 65,000. Poughkeepsie is 65,000. There’s several in Connecticut that are 65,000 square feet. Grand Union, as you can see, when they open 18,000 square foot stores and 80,000 square foot stores, like in Kingston, that division is very flexible in their size, and it depends on the market, and they really believe that the Queensbury market supports a 65,000 square foot store. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. MR. PALING-All right, then just to complete the motion that it’s tabled until the Planning Board meeting on May 18. th MR. MAC EWAN-And we have a second? MR. RINGER-I’ll second it. MR. MAC EWAN-Did you get in that, the motion, too, that they have until May the 12 to submit th their boring results? MR. PALING-Okay, put it in. MRS. MOORE-Can I just go through your list of things that you tabled for, and I drafted a list? MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. MRS. MOORE-You have information regarding additional test pits, restore number of plantings from the submission of March 29 plans, for the submission to address the April 25 and April 18 ththth letter of Sear Brown, the new profile as submitted tonight with the additional feature on the architectural style, and that the submission for the borings or test pits are to be submitted by May 12. The submission deadline for other information is due on May 5. Now it’s been changed to thth May 12. Okay. All information is due on May 12. thth MR. VOLLARO-Correct. MRS. MOORE-And you tabled him to the May 18 meeting. th MR. MAC EWAN-That’s correct. MR. MAC EWAN-What he’s submitting tomorrow, though, is the site plans that show that they’re going to reconfigure, back to the original drive, and they’re going to put back the plantings. So that takes care of most of the problems. MR. LAPPER-Laura didn’t mention the trucks in her list. MRS. MOORE-No, I did not mention, and that would be restoring the entrance on Quaker Road, as submitted in the March 29 submission. th MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 62-99 NIGRO COMPANIES, Introduced by Robert Paling who moved for its adoption, seconded by Larry Ringer: Tabled for information regarding additional test pits, restore number of plantings from the submission of March 29 plans, for the submission to address the April 25 and April 18 letter of ththth Sear Brown, the new profile as submitted tonight with the additional feature on the architectural style, and that the submission for the borings or test pits are to be submitted by May 12, all th information is to be submitted by May 12, and tabled until the May 18 meeting, and restoring the thth entrance on Quaker Road, as submitted in the March 29 submission. th 32 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2000, by the following vote: th AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. MacEwan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Abbott MR. LAPPER-Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you, you guys. SUBDIVISION NO. 11-1999 PRELIMINARY STAGE FINAL STAGE TYPE: UNLISTED GARRY & SHIRLEY NELSON OWNER: SAME ZONE: LC-10A LOCATION: WEST OF THUNDERBIRD DRIVE APPLICANT PROPOSES TO SUBDIVIDE A 25.65 +/- ACRE PARCEL INTO TWO LOTS OF 15.16 AC. AND 10.39 ACRES. TAX MAP NO. 85-1-24.1 LOT SIZE: 25.65 +/- ACRES SECTION: SUBDIVISION REGULATIONS GARY NELSON, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT STAFF INPUT Notes from Subdivision No. 11-1999, Preliminary Stage Final Stage, Garry & Shirley Nelson, Meeting Date: April 25, 2000 “Staff Notes: The applicant proposes a two lot subdivision of 25.55 acres into lots of 10.39 acres and 15.16 acres. The 10.39 acre lot will be retained by the owner and a house, septic, well and access from Thunderbird Drive are shown on the plat. The 15.16 acre lot is to be sold and will be utilized for construction of a home. The applicant has complied with the review requirements for preliminary and final subdivision. There are steep slopes on the site and the drive access from Thunderbird Lane is on a steep grade. The grade of the proposed driveway is to be shown via contours so that an easement can be made concerning emergency access to the proposed home site. The proposed access has been reviewed by the Highway Department and found to be acceptable as portrayed on the subdivision plans. Recommendations: Staff recommends approval of the subdivision for preliminary and final with the following conditions: 1. A note is to be added to the final plan submitted such that, “The contractor shall comply with the New York State Guidelines for Urban Erosion and Sediment Control as published by the Empire State Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society,” 2. The final plans should have a note indicating that the owner of lot 1 will have deeded access across the driveway of lot 2, and 3. The driveway grade is to be shown so that a determination can be made concerning emergency vehicle access.” MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else? MRS. MOORE-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Mr. Nelson. MR. NELSON-Gary Nelson, Queensbury. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m sorry for the long wait. MR. NELSON-I’ve got to tell you, when I came here, I thought I’d rather be on your side, but after the last two hours plus, I’d rather be on this side, what you guys have to put up with. This is easy. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Do you have a drawing with you or something we can put up on the Board? Can you tell us a little bit about your proposed subdivision? MR. NELSON-Yes. I’m just selling a portion of my property to a friend, so that he can build a home, and we have gone through the sketch plans, and we’ve submitted the preliminary and the final, and we have already started to comply with on the recommendations number two. I’ve had the attorney, assuming that we’re going to be able to move forward, I’ve had the attorney include, according to the drawing, the driveway access will be in the deed. It will be deeded. It will not be just an access road. MR. MAC EWAN-I think the only other outstanding thing that was tied to this was the Highway Department, they wanted to make sure that you were going to put a 15 inch culvert. MR. NELSON-Yes, absolutely. That’s not a problem. 33 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else? Cathy, we’ll start with you, any questions? MRS. LA BOMBARD-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Bob? MR. VOLLARO-No, I don’t have any questions, not on this one. MR. MAC EWAN-Larry? MR. RINGER-No, except that’s one long driveway. It’s just an unbelievable driveway. MR. NELSON-I warned him. I said, when you get to be 65, you’re going to wish you were closer to the road, but this is the only way we could subdivide the property and stay within the criteria of the Town, maintaining an average of 400 foot, or whatever the width criteria was for this zoning. When we bought the property, it was zoned at three acres, and when it went to 10 acres, I didn’t object, because I felt it was good for the Town, but it did, that’s the only way we could break it up and maintain us on 10 acres plus, and then we just had to sell the balance of it. MR. RINGER-And Staff has made a recommendation that the grade should be shown on the driveway. MR. NELSON-Now that would be, I need a little guidance on that. That would be on another plan, with a topographic layout of where the, of the grade of the driveway? MR. RINGER-What do you want, Laura? MR. MAC EWAN-Why couldn’t he just put the detail on this? MRS. MOORE-You can put the detail on this. What we request as part of final, if it’s approved during final, is that the final plans that are submitted, that the surveyor can add another detail to the mylar, in regards to the driveway grade. MR. NELSON-Okay. MR. PALING-Yes, that it’s acceptable to an emergency vehicle access. MRS. MOORE-Right. Right now our only criteria is to have a 40 foot access, and that’s what’s provided. A driveway detail would assist in showing, providing information about how emergency access (lost word) to the hill, and provide additional detail for the Highway Department. MR. VOLLARO-So the Highway is probably just looking for access? MR. SCHACHNER-So you’re proposing to talk about some sort of conditional approval, relative to acceptability for emergency vehicular access? Is that correct or not? I’m not understanding that. MRS. MOORE-I was going to say. I’d prefer to at least have the detail available. Whether it’s accessible to emergency access, it would have to be reviewed by someone that can determine that’s acceptable for emergency access. MRS. RYBA-If I could make a couple of comments, because I’m the one who made that recommendation, and in reviewing the past history, there was a sketch plan review, and the comment was made to show the grade, because the drive is over 10% grade, and that was never done. So it went back and said why was that 10% grade asked. Part of the reason is because you’re looking for your erosion control, when you do your site plan review. So that’s addressed by putting a comment down about erosion control. However, because of the length of the driveway, and the fact that there are grades over 10%, we have no idea, in reviewing this, is it really adequate for emergency access, and I just think that’s a question to ask the applicant. I couldn’t really get a sense, and part of it, too, is because there is an intermittent stream under where this driveway is going to go, and I think erosion control measures, if they’re followed, should address that, but I really have no idea where the grade goes, and how, you know, can an ambulance, can a regular passenger vehicle drive it, and I think that’s the key. MR. NELSON-Can I answer that? MR. MAC EWAN-Sure. MR. NELSON-Okay. The rectangular piece that we sold off years ago, back in ’85 or ’86, on the bottom, that’s a chunk taken out, was five acres sold to the Hartmans. That’s the reason I have to be 34 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) here, because I did sell one piece before. Their driveway is quite a bit steeper than what this one will be, and they have no problem. This one is actually kind of a gentle grade, just, it’s an old farm road that goes right exactly where they’ve surveyed up through, and the house will be just over the boundary line as you come into it. Maybe I can show it better. As they would leave Thunderbird Drive, this is an uphill grade, and this is just a gradual grade. It’s an old farm road, comes right straight up through with stone walls on both sides, and the only pitch that amounts to anything is just before he would pull in to where he’s going to be building his home, which would be 100 foot in from any boundary line to meet Town criteria. It’s just a gentle grade. It’s not much, but I can provide a topographic, which I’ve got. Actually, I think I thought I gave you one, a topographic sketch of the property. MRS. MOORE-Yes. We have that. MR. NELSON-It’s not a significant grade, but whatever you need. MR. VOLLARO-Did you say it’s in excess of 10%, Marilyn? MRS. RYBA-Well, that was what was in the original sketch plan review, was that the applicant said it was in excess of 10%, and how much in excess of 10%, I didn’t know. He just was saying right now it’s about 100 feet. MR. MAC EWAN-The requirement of subdivision is that emergency access has got to be adequately accessible to the site? MRS. RYBA-That’s not particularly listed. I think, though, that when you’re looking at subdivisions in general, that’s a question to ask. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m just kind of quickly going through here, and I’m not seeing anything jump out at me. That’s why I was asking the question. MR. SCHACHNER-You mean in terms of the 10% threshold? MR. MAC EWAN-No, I’m talking about emergency access. MR. VOLLARO-I don’t think the 10% threshold is in there, either. MR. SCHACHNER-No. I don’t either, but it’s certainly not inappropriate for the Board to consider emergency vehicular access, in the context of a residential subdivision. MR. MAC EWAN-No, I understand that. MRS. RYBA-Actually, the 10% is in there, and that’s, not for emergency, but in reference to erosion control. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else, Larry? MR. RINGER-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Tony? MR. METIVIER-Nothing. MR. MAC EWAN-Bob? MR. PALING-What did we decide we’re going to do about knowing whether we have emergency vehicle access or not? Are we just going to leave it, or are we asking the question? MR. MAC EWAN-The question we’re asking is that Staff wants to see a cross section of grade of that road, and I guess we would have to wrestle, in our minds, would be adequate enough for emergency access. MR. PALING-That’s what we’re asking. MR. MAC EWAN-We haven’t really asked yet, but I guess that’s where we’re headed, in that general direction. MR. PALING-I think I’d like to ask that. I’d like to have that question asked. Yes. That’s all I have. 35 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any other questions, comments? We’ll open up the public hearing then. Does anyone want to comment on this application? PUBLIC HEARING OPENED NO COMMENT PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED MR. MAC EWAN-We need to do a SEQRA. MR. VOLLARO-We got a Long Form with this. That’s what I got. MRS. RYBA-You got a Long Form. MR. VOLLARO-Yes, we did. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE RESOLUTION NO. 11-1999, Introduced by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption, seconded by Robert Vollaro: WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for: GARRY & SHIRLEY NELSON, and WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED: 1. No Federal agency appears to be involved. 2. The following agencies are involved: NONE 3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury. 4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant. 5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by law. Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2000, by the following vote: th AYES: Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. MacEwan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Abbott MR. MAC EWAN-So, Mr. Nelson, this length of this road we’re basically looking at is about 150 foot rise in elevation from Thunderbird Drive up to basically the lot line? MR. NELSON-That sounds about it, over the distance. It’s quite a driveway. MR. MAC EWAN-And the length of that driveway was roughly, what, about 6, 700 feet? 36 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. NELSON-Yes, and it will be accessible by, I can’t imagine anybody building a home and having a driveway put in that they would, it would not be accessible by emergency vehicles. He’s planning in just driving a regular car up there. I mean, there’s no. MR. MAC EWAN-I must say that in all the years I’ve been on the Planning Board, this hasn’t come up very often. In fact this is the first time it’s ever come up. MRS. RYBA-Maybe just because I’ve experienced it other places. MR. MAC EWAN-It’s a good point. So what would be our protocol? Would we refer this, when he supplies his information, we pitch it off the to local, or actually the Fire Marshal, I guess. MR. SCHACHNER-That actually has been done, occasionally, in the past, for real steep driveway access issues. MRS. RYBA-I think my main concern was, yes, it does make sense, normally, and someone’s not going to build a driveway if it can’t be accessed by a regular two wheel drive vehicle, but with four wheel drive, etc., you know, I don’t know if ambulances have four wheel drive, but the thing is that we just need to hear from the applicant, okay, there is a steep grade, well, how much was steep, and it’s just a question to ask, and if in your mind you think it’s adequate, that’s fine. Otherwise, you can get a sign off from the Fire Marshal. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. I’ve got some question. Is there some sort of criteria that the Fire Marshal would use to determine whether a pumper truck could make that kind of? MR. RINGER-He’d look at the width to make sure it was wide enough for them to get through, and turn ratios, if there were anywhere they could turn around. MR. MAC EWAN-Steepness is not an issue with the fire department? MR. RINGER-Well, generally we can make it. The problem is if it’s plowed and stuff like that, but we generally get the trucks up there. Ambulances sometimes, we’ve had cases where we haven’t been able to get ambulances up and we’ve had to bring a person down. Steve Borgos’ daughter, one time, we couldn’t get an ambulance up to his house. We took her down in a station wagon. MR. NELSON-His driveway is steep. This is nothing like that. This is nothing like that. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. What do you want to do? MR. PALING-Well, I think we should go ahead, if some how or other we could answer this access, emergency vehicle. MR. MAC EWAN-Maybe what we could do is do preliminary approval tonight and have him do the cross section, and maybe one other thing you could add for us, not necessarily put it on this map, but tell us how far the nearest hydrant is to this driveway. MR. RINGER-This would be a tanker operation here. MR. MAC EWAN-Would it be? MR. RINGER-Yes. MR. NELSON-I’m just trying to think. There’s one on Thunderbird Drive. MR. RINGER-We’d run a long ways. We’d hit it with a tank. We’d hook up to the hydrant, but it would be a long, long run. MR. NELSON-Yes, it’s a long drive. MR. MAC EWAN-All right. MR. RINGER-The initial attack would be with a tanker. MR. MAC EWAN-Does someone want to introduce a motion, then? MOTION TO APPROVE PRELIMINARY STAGE SUBDIVISION NO. 11-1999 GARRY & SHIRLEY NELSON, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption, seconded by Larry Ringer: 37 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) Thunderbird Drive. WHEREAS, the Town Planning Board is in receipt of Subdivision No. 11-1999 Garry & Shirley Nelson to subdivide a 25.65 +/- acre parcel into two lots of 15.16 acres and 10.39 acres, and; WHEREAS, the application received 3/13/00 consists of the following: 1. Application w/three drawings and map dated 1/31/00 WHEREAS, the above is supported with the following documentation: 1. 4/25/00 - Staff Notes 2. 4/05/00 - Meeting Notice 3. 4/14/00 - PB from M. Travis - Dep. Highway Superintendent 4. 7/20/99 - PB minutes from Sketch Plan review 5. Undated - Drawing showing house, septic and well location WHEREAS, public hearing was held on 4/25/00 concerning the above project (certified mail receipts received); and WHEREAS, the Planning Board has determined that the proposal complies with the Subdivision requirements of the Code of the Town of Queensbury (Zoning); and WHEREAS, if applicable, the plans submitted are prepared in accordance with Chapter 136 (Sewers & Sewage Disposal) of the Town Ordinance and the New York State Department of Health; and WHEREAS, the Planning Board has considered the environmental factors found in the Code of the Town of Queensbury (Zoning); and WHEREAS, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered, and the Planning Board has adopted a SEQRA negative declaration; and/or if the application is a modification, the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act have been considered; and the proposed modification(s) do not result in any new or significantly different environmental impacts, and, therefore, no further SEQRA review is necessary; and NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, The applicant is subject to the following conditions: 1. Approved in accordance with the resolution prepared by Staff for preliminary plat approval with the following conditions: a. A note be added to the final plat submitted such that, “The contractor shall comply with the New York State Guidelines for Urban Erosion and Sediment Control as published by the Empire State Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society”; b. That the plan should have the note indicating the lot owner (of lot 1) will have a deeded Access across the driveway of lot 2. c. The driveway grade cross section will be shown on the final plat, and be submitted to the Fire Marshal for review for emergency access. Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2000, by the following vote: th MRS. MOORE-In regards to number three, the driveway grade. MR. MAC EWAN-Cross section. MR. VOLLARO-The only way you can show that is by putting contours on it. MRS. MOORE-Do you want us to determine, the applicant or do you want Staff to determine if it’s accessible by emergency vehicles? You can have the driveway grade shown, but there’s a step further that I think this is asking for in regards to emergency access, and I want to make sure that those two steps are followed through. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, maybe you could just revise that and say the driveway grade cross section will be shown on the final plat, and be submitted to the Fire Marshal for review for emergency access. 38 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MRS. MOORE-Okay. Thank you. AYES: Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. MacEwan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Abbott MR. MAC EWAN-You’re all set. MR. NELSON-Can I ask a question? If number three, if this access and emergency vehicle business is not in the Town rules, why all of a sudden is this happening? I see neighbors who have much steeper driveways than what this fellow’s going to be putting in. That’s why I ask that question. If it’s not a normal Town Code to demand that of people, why is it in this particular case? Is it the length? MR. MAC EWAN-My first response would be, this is for me, is that it’s part of good planning. We’d be shorting ourselves if we didn’t look at it, and, secondly, in regards to any neighboring properties that may have steeper grades, if they were in front of me, as a Planning Board member, with an application, I’d ask the same of them, if they were. That’s my opinion. Does anybody else want to throw anything out there? MR. SCHACHNER-I can add to that, if you’d like. MR. MAC EWAN-Go ahead. MR. SCHACHNER-The only thing I would add to it is that I don’t want the applicant to misunderstand the statement, not in the Town Code. What’s not in the Town Code is a very specific, the Town Code does not contain a very specific restriction or requirement that says, emergency access requires no grade greater than X percent. The Town Code does, however, have a number of provisions in it regarding this Board’s authority under site plan review to look at safe access to the property, ingress and egress, and I don’t think it’s a stretch for the Board to consider emergency vehicular access as a component of safety of ingress and egress. So I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. It’s not totally not in the Town Code. MR. NELSON-Okay. I don’t have a problem with it, because I know what the grade is, and I know how steep it is up there, and how steep it isn’t. So I just need to know exactly what you need me to do now, just follow these three steps? MRS. MOORE-Yes, and for your final, I know you need to do something with the Final. MR. MAC EWAN-What do we need to do with the Final? MRS. MOORE-Because it’s also on for Final Stage. MR. MAC EWAN-That doesn’t mean anything. MRS. MOORE-Okay, but you’re also addressing under preliminary the deadline for information generally has been tomorrow. You’ve extended some courtesy to Nigro. Are you going to do the same for this applicant? MR. MAC EWAN-How quickly do you think that your surveyor, or whoever’s doing this for you, can put that cross section on there? MR. NELSON-The cross section’s no problem. I mean, I have a topo of that area, and I thought there was one in the packet, but I’ve got one here which can be blown up and put on here, but I’m not a surveyor. MR. MAC EWAN-Bear in mind, don’t you do it. MR. NELSON-See, I’m not a surveyor. I could call him. He’s preparing the deed information, so that there would be a deed on that access. MR. MAC EWAN-I didn’t even notice. Who’s doing this for you? MR. NELSON-It’s Wayne Raymond, and sometimes he tends to be a little hard to get a hold of, and hard to act. It would probably take me. 39 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Well, actually, all three of these items pertain specifically to your plat. So I would, if he submits it by tomorrow, fine. If not, then we’re looking at probably June for him to be on. Are you under some gun to get this thing? MR. NELSON-The fellow’s anxious to get started, that’s all, and I’ve got an attorney drawing up the legal documents as far as the final end of it, and I’ve got Wayne Raymond doing the deed part of it to satisfy number two. MR. MAC EWAN-If you could submit the information that’s required by the 12, which is that th same Friday, and put him on the last meeting of May, which will either be the 18 or the 25. thth MR. SCHACHNER-I think you just picked the 18, because you tabled Nigro to the 18. thth MR. MAC EWAN-I just picked the 18? th MR. SCHACHNER-Right. I think Staff was not suggesting, correct me if I’m wrong, Laura, but I don’t think was Staff was saying anything about having three meetings. MRS. MOORE-That’s correct. MR. SCHACHNER-Staff was saying that the first meeting in May is going to be on the 16, and the th second meeting, this is what I understood Staff to say, is that the second meeting will be on either Thursday the 18 or Thursday the 25, and I think you’ve already selected Thursday the 18. So just ththth so you know, that’s fine. Your last meeting in May, as I understand it, will be Thursday, May 18. th MR. MAC EWAN-That’s fine. May 18, that’s fine. My understanding was that there was going to th be three meetings this month. MR. RINGER-Yes. I thought I heard you say there was going to be three meetings. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s what my little e-Mail said. MR. SCHACHNER-Maybe I’m wrong. MRS. MOORE-It depends on what comes in. MR. MAC EWAN-The 18. th MR. PALING-What are the two meeting dates, the 16 and the 18? thth MRS. MOORE-Currently. MR. PALING-There’s no 25 yet? th MRS. MOORE-Correct. Not yet. MR. PALING-Okay, but we do have a 16 and an 18. All right. thth MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We’re all set. MR. NELSON-Thank you. NEW BUSINESS: SITE PLAN NO. 25-2000 TYPE II WILLIAM WALKER OWNER: SAME AGENT: GABE ARMANDO ZONE: WR-1A, CEA APA LOCATION: 1157 PILOT KNOB ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES ADDITION OF A SECOND STORY TO A PORTION OF AN EXISTING RESIDENCE CONSISTING OF A BEDROOM, BATHROOM AND A SINGLE STORY ADDITION TO THE EXISTING KITCHEN. EXPANSION OF A NON-CONFORMING USE IN A CEA REQUIRES BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. CROSS REFERENCE: AV 23-2000 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 4/12/00 TAX MAP NO. 18-1-21.2 LOT SIZE: 0.37 ACRES SECTION: 179-16 MR. MAC EWAN-Quickly tell us why Walker is off. MRS. MOORE-I don’t have a reason why. MR. MAC EWAN-You don’t have a reason why? They just withdrew it. 40 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MRS. MOORE-Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. SITE PLAN NO. 26-2000 TYPE: UNLISTED MICHAEL & MARY GIELLA OWNER: CHARLES & ELLEN KENNY AGENT: HOWARD KRANTZ ZONE: HC-1A LOCATION: RT. 9 BETWEEN DEXTER SHOES & DOLL HOUSE APPLICANT PROPOSES AN 18 HOLE MINIATURE GOLF COURSE WITH PARKING AND FACILITIES BUILDING. MINIATURE GOLF COURSE IS A TYPE II SITE PLAN REVIEW USE IN THE HC ZONE. BEAUTIFICATION COMM.: 4/10/00 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 4/12/00 CROSS REFERENCE: AV 31-2000 TAX MAP NO. 34-1-9 LOT SIZE: 2 +/- ACRES SECTION: 179-23 HOWARD KRANTZ & DENNIS DICKINSON, REPRESENTING APPLICANTS, PRESENT MRS. MOORE-If you’d like the applicant to go through some of that brief review, we can, Marilyn can offer a summary of the Staff Notes if you want to go through that. MR. MAC EWAN-Howard, are you representing these folks tonight? MR. KRANTZ-Yes, thank you. Howard Krantz from Lake George, as Counsel to Mr. and Mrs. Giella. Also with me is John Guldi from North Country Engineering who designed the lighting plan, and Dennis Dickinson, the general engineer for the project. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. I think what we want to do, because there are so many unresolved engineering comments and Staff comments, that what we’d like to do is briefly talk about this application tonight, table it, and give the applicants an opportunity to respond. You don’t think you’re going to get an approval here tonight, do you? MR. KRANTZ-No, but we really would like to address these comments. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m telling you right now, they’re going to end up going back to the engineering firm for their review when you address these comments. It’s just standard procedure. MR. KRANTZ-Right, but if you could at least perhaps hear our comments very briefly, to keep things moving along. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s what I said. With that, I’ll let you have the floor. MR. KRANTZ-Okay. Very briefly, I know it’s late and you want to get principally to the comments from Staff and Engineering. Mike and Mary Giella plan a miniature golf course. The closest thing I could compare it to is the Pirate’s Cove, further down Route 9. There’s one important exception, and that is the overall appearance is going to be much more low key. If any of you are familiar with the Pirate’s Cove, this is going to be much more low key. This is not a themed miniature golf course. This is like the farthest thing from Gooney Golf that you would have. There’s only, one of the Staff Notes were, what are the structures, what are the heights going to be of the structures. The only structure on the course, other than the club house where you get your putters and your golf balls, is going to be a natural rock, eight foot waterfall, halfway back on the course, about 175 feet back from the road. That’s it. There’s no pirate ship. There’s no lumber jack. The theme is going to be Adirondack. It’s going to be waterfall, ponds, trees, shrubbery, that’s it. There’s no themed creatures or rotating windmills. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not what this is, and with that, we’d be glad to just go down very quickly down the list. MR. MAC EWAN-Where do you want to start? Do you want to start with Staff Notes first or engineering comments? MR. KRANTZ-Well, I thought maybe the engineering, because that’s the longer list, if we could. If I just may start, and I’ll identify each one quickly, and then have John Guldi or Dennis Dickinson review it. The first comment from engineering was the lighting plan, and concerned about light spillage onto Route 9, and wanted to know what was going to be done and had questions about pole heights. I’d turn that over to John Guldi from North Country Engineering. MR. GULDI-Good evening. What we’ve attempted to do with the lighting design for this site is to minimize the spillage to the adjacent properties. We have a long and narrow piece of property, in accordance with the accepted standards, the Lumination Engineering Society standards for miniature golf courses, maintaining a 10 foot candle on the course. We’ve attempted to design a lighting system that will maintain 10 foot candles on the course, and minimize the spillage. In order to do that, we’ve used high cut off fixtures, shoebox type fixtures, like we have in the parking lot. We’ve used an a-symmetrical distribution, which throws the light along the property line and not out 41 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) forward. With as narrow a site as we have, we don’t want to throw the light forward or we’ll end up going off the property on the opposite direction. We’ve also included halside shields on these fixtures which try to block the light spilling back toward the pole and toward the, off the property. We were able to maintain minimal lighting on the property to the north, and there’s a little bit more spillage to the south, onto the Dexter property and that property, at least at the one end, is a parking lot with a light fixture, overhead type light fixture in that corner, or that side of the lot as it is. There is some spillage out onto Route 9. One of the comments that was made, I believe the comment was intended to say that if we turn the fixture so that, we turned it 90 degrees so that we had the halside shield blocking light from going out onto the street. That would minimize spillage out onto the street. It would do that, but it would also, because of the distribution that we have, throw more light to the sides, to the two adjacent properties. MR. MAC EWAN-Now the two lights that you have in the most easterly portion of the site closest to the driveway entrance is what’s causing the high lumination right out near Route 9, those two lights? MR. GULDI-Yes. We have, it’s resulting in one foot candle out in Route 9 or less than one foot candle on Route 9. What we’ve done, in an attempt to, I understand that the Town is developing standards, and I did talk to Stu Mesinger at Chazen, to find out what the standards are. The lighting, or the miniature golf consultant recommended 30 foot poles. After talking with Stu, we have proposed 20 foot mounting heights. I think the 21 foot poles in the bottom of the fixture ends up being a 20 foot mounting height above grade. So we have tried to accommodate the standards, the new standards that, at least from what Stu was saying, the direction that the Town is going. MR. KRANTZ-If I might add also here on the lighting design, this is different than the Pirate’s Cove. The Pirate’s Cove, if you’ve been there, are approximately 25 foot tall floods that just blast the light down. That’s not what these are. These are more defined lighting. Now no light comes down, as a specific beam and just stops at the property line, but this is far less spillage than those type of lights, and these type of lights, and this type of system is, frankly, a lot more expensive than doing what was done down the road, but the Giellas want to be good neighbors, and therefore gave John the free reign to design the one that is, would be an ideal type of approach, five foot shorter from the top of the poles, and a much different fixture itself. MR. GULDI-One of the things we looked at, and I’ve got a good dozen runs at attempting to minimize the light spillage off the site, and one of the things we looked at was using a fixture with a tilt, to try to throw the light forward, and not allow it to go behind the pole and spill off the property. With the configuration, actually the narrow width of the property, we ended up adding more light going off the other side of the property, if we tilted those, the fixtures to a point where they would do any good, behind the pole. To the north, I believe alongside the property line of the residents, there will be a short fence, or there will be a fence put in. MR. KRANTZ-Yes. We can address that later on, but there’s a, that was one of the comments. There’s going to be a four foot wood stockade fence along the northerly boundary of the property, and John can speak to what effect that will have on lighting. MR. VOLLARO-Well, the site lighting plan is giving us the spill off, and that will remain, whether he, in other words, this spill had to consider the fencing, when you did the spillage, didn’t you? I mean, you have a lighting plan that gives us the off site spillage now. MR. GULDI-Yes. I believe the fence was, that was added last week, was it, or, I wasn’t aware of the fence. So the fence is not, the program that was used to develop these lighting levels has some limitations, and we were not able to put obstructions in. We were not able to put the four foot fence in. MR. VOLLARO-Well, with a 20 foot pole, it depends on how much is deflected down and how much moves off toward the fence. I mean, you’re going to get some light bounce and the fence may protect some of the off site spillage. MR. GULDI-What the fence will effectively do is increase the angle that, off of a beam that’s straight down from the light. These type of fixtures with the high cut off, most of the light is directed down. As you increase that angle, you get, first of all, you get less light emitted from the fixture, and secondly, you’re increasing the distance that you have to go, and the amount of light. MR. VOLLARO-You also increase the grazing angle, which allows the light to deflect a little bit. So the fence might help that situation some, as you tilt the grazing angle gets, so it’ll bounce a lot easier. It doesn’t bounce well when it’s deflected straight down. It sort of disperses up, but as soon as you start to deflect that light, you get a grazing angle where the light wants to reflect off the surface and go, and the fence may help that, and I don’t know whether that’s reflected in these numbers or not. 42 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. GULDI-It’s as well as the designer of the software has done, and most of these lighting programs are pretty sophisticated, but this is really giving you the horizontal foot candles at grade. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else to do with lighting? MR. GULDI-One of the things I would point out, it was in the engineer’s report, a concern of the lighting spill over onto Route 9, and I would just ask the Board, if that is a problem, I know there was some talk about, one of the previous applicants, where that might be a desirable feature to have. MR. VOLLARO-I don’t think it’s desirable on the main artery. That’s been my problem, in looking at that kind of light spillage on 9. I don’t know whether it’s disruptive to the driver, and besides we’ve got to look at the kind of site distances we have. I’ve been up to the site. Larry and I spent quite a bit of time on the site looking at that, and coming out onto Route 9 is going to be pretty tricky from the left hand side. I mean, the site distance is not all that great there. MR. MAC EWAN-I think the new Town standards, although they haven’t been adopted yet, are heading in the direction of trying to decrease light spillage onto adjacent properties. So whatever we can do to minimize that, that’s what we’d be striving to do, even at this point. We have been working on a couple of applications already in that general direction. So I would think that we’re going to be looking to minimize the spillage out near Route 9. MR. PALING-How about the foot candle? We’re talking one foot candle or less, if I read this print right. MR. GULDI-Yes. MR. PALING-Is that a problem, that kind of spillage onto Route 9? MR. MAC EWAN-Actually I was looking right near the shoulder of the road. I mean, how much distance are we talking where it goes from one foot to eight point nine? What’s the distance there? MR. PALING-Well, let’s talk spillage onto 9. That’s onto property. We’re talking foot candle level on Route 9 at a maximum of one foot candle, and that doesn’t seem like a lot of light to me. MR. VOLLARO-Well, if you remember going back to a couple of our other applications like Stewart’s, for example. If you looked at Stewart’s, we were trying to mitigate Stewart’s to zero foot candles around the perimeter. If you remember that discussion we were having, the same thing with Getty, when Getty was going in. One foot candle is not a small amount of light. I mean, it’s defined. MR. MAC EWAN-But I think you’ve got a good point. In my mind I’d like to know what’s the distance between the 8.9 foot candles to that 1 foot candle. What’s that distance we’re talking there? MR. PALING-The scale is one inch is twenty feet. MR. MAC EWAN-One inch equals twenty feet. So it’s probably 40 feet. MR. VOLLARO-Forty feet. It’s forty. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else regarding lighting? MR. PALING-Well, how are we leaving this now? Is he going to try to answer the engineer or what are you going to do about that item? MR. MAC EWAN-These all have to be, they’re responding to them right now, to us, but they’re also going to have to submit them back so that C.T. Male can review them. MR. PALING-Okay. So what are we telling them about the foot candle level on the road? MR. VOLLARO-Without getting into specifics, what we’re trying to do is minimize that spillage. Now if the lighting that they’re showing us here, which is 8.953 and so on, if that has to be maintained, then the computer software is going to spit out these other items and tell you that’s what it is. Now, if that’s not acceptable, then we’ve got to do something about the lighting that’s just a little up further, the 8.9 and 23.6 and so on. I think C.T. Male has to take a look at that and determine what impact one foot candle has out on the road. MR. PALING-A maximum of one, yes, but this is the print that C.T. Male looked at when they wrote this letter. MR. GULDI-Yes. 43 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. PALING-So they’re commenting to this print. So somebody’s got to comment back to them. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s correct, and it should be noted that, you know, what we’re looking at is this road on here where it says New York State Route 9. To me, is that the northbound lane on Route 9? And then the next lane over is the southbound lane? MR. KRANTZ-I think that’s the paved portion. MR. VOLLARO-I think we’re looking at a piece of right-of-way, and I think we’re looking at one lane. That’s how I viewed this print. MR. MAC EWAN-How wide’s the drive lane? I think that’s the southbound lane, because that’s showing a double. Okay. MR. KRANTZ-John believes that that first strip that you see is the shoulder, and the, what you see as New York State Route 9 is the southbound lane. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Let’s see if we can move it along here a little bit. I mean, there’s not a lot that I think we can really comment to regarding lighting. I’d like to hear the comments when they come back from C.T. Male, where they stand on it. I agree with where you’re coming from. If it’s at one foot candle at the road edge, I don’t think that’s a big issue in my mind, but if it’s more than that. MR. PALING-Not that, it might be an issue somewhere else, but if you go along Route 9, there’s not much light spillage from established businesses. I don’t think one foot candle, in this case, it’s going to make any difference. MR. MAC EWAN-No, that’s true, but on the other side of the coin, that’s why the Town’s working toward adopting new standards. MR. VOLLARO-See, if it wasn’t a comment, if it wasn’t a problem in the lighting engineer’s mind, and I assume the guy that did this had some lighting engineering background, he said light spillage is also shown on Route 9. Now he doesn’t say that it’s bad or it’s good, but he makes it a point that he wants to talk to somebody about that. Otherwise he wouldn’t have put it in there. See, he goes on, the lighting plan needs to be evaluated to minimize light spillage. He’s talking to exactly that subject. MR. PALING-Then he should tell us, or tell the applicant, what foot candle he’s looking at. MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I think the applicant has to sit down and discuss that with C.T. Male. MR. PALING-If there’s a standard, a highway standard or something. MR. GULDI-Is there a contact at C.T. Male that I should address this to? MR. MAC EWAN-I would address all your concerns, actually, through Staff and let them, because that’s the channel to go through. MRS. RYBA-Excuse me. I’d like to make a comment. The gentleman mentioned that they’re following IESNA Standards. What are the standards for foot candles at the property boundary, do you know that, for this use? MR. GULDI-I don’t believe that there’s a standard in IES for light at the property boundary. I think the proper design is to minimize the light spillage. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. I think what I’d like to do, in the interest of time. This is what I didn’t want to have happen tonight. I didn’t want to get bogged down into a lot of deep discussions regarding engineering things. I mean, we’re, as lay people up here, ill equipped to sit here and discuss in-depth differences of opinion in what lighting goes for. So I want this to go back through C.T. Male and if we could just progress through the rest of these notes, and I think that’s where we are. Because we’re just going to be spinning our wheels for the rest of the night, and it’s getting too late in the evening to do that. MR. KRANTZ-You don’t need John any further? That was the one lighting comment? MR. MAC EWAN-You’re dismissed, but we’ll hold you over for a future witness. MR. GULDI-Thank you very much. 44 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. KRANTZ-Proceeding at a pace as quickly as we can, the second comment was the site entrance road is 18 feet wide, and the request is made that it be increased to 24 feet wide. Dennis? MR. DICKINSON-My name’s Dennis Dickinson. I’m the surveyor and engineer involved with this project. In the essence of time, if you’d like me to, I can breeze through these pretty quickly. There are 20 comments. I’ve got about 18 to cover. They’re all very minor except for probably three or four of them. If you have a list, I’ll go right down in order. The entrance road is here. Originally, the existing drive is 17 feet wide, and then it’s splayed out to 20 some feet wide. I have contacted DOT in Albany. They’ve sent me their drive specifications. The driveway that you see on this drawing has been updated from yours. This is a DOT drive. Probably from where you’re sitting it looks like what you have is a little different. They have definite parameters on radiuses of curvature and widths. We’ve taken those into account. There’s no problem with the driveway. The 18 foot aisle width in the parking lot is referring to this distance here on the parking lot. MR. VOLLARO-Do we have a copy of that drawing? MR. DICKINSON-I have one if you’d like one. MR. VOLLARO-No, no. I’m just wondering if it’s. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, you do. MR. DICKINSON-No, it’s been revised. MR. VOLLARO-It’s been revised. So we don’t have something here we can look at that you’re talking to. MR. DICKINSON-I have some with me if you’d like to look at them while I’m talking. MR. VOLLARO-No, that’s okay. I just was wanting to know where my database was here. MR. DICKINSON-You don’t have it. You have some of it. MR. MAC EWAN-So your position is you’re sticking with the 18 foot wide drive? MR. DICKINSON-He’s talking about this aisle here on our parking lot, and what we’ve done is. MR. MAC EWAN-Item Two. Item Two says it’s 18 feet wide, 17 on another plan, and the Town Code minimum is 24, and you’re saying you talked with DOT and their standards are different. MR. DICKINSON-No, we’ve gone by that one, Craig. MR. MAC EWAN-I know. That’s what I’m trying to understand. Are you going to change it to 24 feet? MR. DICKINSON-It is 24. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. That’s all I wanted to know. Thanks. MR. DICKINSON-Okay. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s okay. It’s not your fault. MR. DICKINSON-Item Three, 18 foot aisle in the parking lot, and what we’ve done is we have a one way drive parking lot. He’s going to come in, drive, and come through the parking lot and loop around and come back out. With the one way parking, the one way driving in the parking lot, we eliminate the necessity for a 22 foot wide aisle. MR. RINGER-That’s going to be paved and arrowed? MR. DICKINSON-Yes. Yes, to both. MR. PALING-You pull into these parking spaces, head in, and then back out? MR. DICKINSON-Yes. That width is a standard width. He’s not talking about that. That’s this width here. MR. PALING-Okay. 45 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. DICKINSON-Yes. No, that’s a standard width for a parking lot. That’s right according to Hoyle. It was this end one he was concerned about, and with two way traffic it’s a little tight, but we want to go with one way traffic. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Item Four? MR. DICKINSON-Item Four is unloading zone for the handicapped. He’s talking about these cross hatched areas on your drawing. One of them scales about seven and the other scales about six. They’re supposed to be eight. So I’ve re-drafted them and made sure they’re eight. Item Five, proposed grades for the parking lot are not shown. The proposed grades were shown. Only when I was looking them over, they weren’t quite right. So I revised them anyway, but they are on your drawing. If you look in the corners of the parking lots, you will have like your unrevised drawing will say 148.0. I’ve simply upgraded. What this does is drain the parking lot, it’s tipped from the far corner to the center like this. So that the water is directed generally in all parts of the parking lot towards the outlet, towards the retention basin. Again, the elevations were on there, but I’ve revised them anyway. Six, Seven, and Eight are all DOT questions. Now we’ve discussed these. I’ve discussed these with the Town’s engineer and I’ve discussed them with the DOT engineer. I didn’t get any answers from the DOT engineer. I guess we have to send it down before he’s going to respond to any of these. So that’s where we are with the DOT, and I hope today’s telephone tag with them isn’t an indication of how quick that’s going to be. I don’t see any serious problem with any of these things, but I don’t really know that until he gets back to me. They’re pretty straightforward questions. Number Nine, septic system. The flow was originally based on the parking area size for the septic system, trying to put a handle on the flow. I’ve had some difficulty trying to get a number for bathroom usage from a golf course. It’s not a high use item. It’s a necessity, but not high use. I should have some, I have some information, and I should have more information shortly and I can make a final determination. What I’ve determined is that the system I have designed is in line with the design for Brand X miniature golf course down the road that came through here not too long ago. Right from the engineer. So we’re in the ballpark with the design size. He is correct. It’s improper to tie it to the number of cars. You need to tie it to the number of people, and then get some determination on how many times those people are going to use the bathroom, but we’re zero. We’re in the right ballpark. Here’s the septic system shown here. Item Ten, he asks for a 50% reserve area on septic systems. Most review agencies are getting away from the 50% reserve area. It has very little practical basis in practical application. Most people will either replace, in kind, in place, or do something totally different. I don’t have any objection. The only thing is, I have an odd sized field, in that it’s five lines. Fifty percent is two and a half lines. You have to do whole lines. So it’s either two or three. Two I can get in real easily. They represent 42% reserve area. Three I have a little difficulty getting in. We’re getting in to the side of this bank here. As you can see on your drawing, it rises up pretty good there. I don’t want to get too far into that bank. That’s an issue I’m sure that C.T. Male and I can straighten out. Number Eleven, it appears the septic system location, no, it isn’t. I probably didn’t have enough detail for him on there to really see how the septic system was placed. Basically, we’ve graded this area off behind, the support building is flat. We have plenty of room and elevation to do this system, and still not infringe on the water table. We have a little problem here with groundwater. We have two fairly decent test holes up here. Three or four feet separation to high groundwater, and then we have a poorer one back her, but this is wet back here. There’s no issue there. We have, we’ll probably be doing some more testing. MR. VOLLARO-Could I just ask a question? The way you’ve got the parking lot sheeting off to the south, is that going to sheet right into a culvert? Is that culvert that goes into the stream, is that heading over toward Dexter’s? MR. DICKINSON-No, okay. We’re in two drainage basins, if you can believe it, on this little piece of property. All the water on this side goes down toward Route 9. All the water on this side goes toward the Northway, and there’s a concrete culvert under the Northway. MR. VOLLARO-And that’s where you’ve directed the sheeting from that lot, parking lot? MR. DICKINSON-That’s where we’re going. There’s sheet flow across the parking lot. This is our detention basin D, it’s not a retention basin because there’s high ground water, and I’m not going to be able to disperse the ground water. So we’re going to detain it, 50 year, 24 hour duration storm, and then this little culvert device down here is supposed to meter it out so that we don’t disrupt the peak high flow and. MR. VOLLARO-It’s a buffer system, essentially, is what it turns out to be. MR. DICKINSON-Exactly. MR. VOLLARO-A capacitor. 46 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. DICKINSON-Exactly. The rest of the stormwater system is based on retention. We’re going to retain and put some of it back into the groundwater. MR. MAC EWAN-Twelve and Thirteen? MR. DICKINSON-Twelve, the retaining wall has a height on it. It’s 149.1. Basically all it is the terrain on this side, which is not ours, undulates a little. We’re going to grade this off relatively flat, we’re up against our property line pretty close quarters, so we put a retaining wall in so that we can flatten this and not disrupt the neighboring property. It’s very low. It’s a foot and a half high at the most exposed. The low privacy fence, we’re putting in a four foot high wooden fence. The intent of the fence is to block headlight sweep, mostly. It will block a little of the light. It will deflect a little of the noise, but it’s basically for headlights, and the privacy fence starts just in front of the residence. I comes all the way up the property line to the corner and across the back parking lot. We’ve extended it part way down this property line, but I’ll tell you right now, there’s no development over here. This ground rises up over here. It’s undeveloped, and I’m not sure we really need that portion of it, but it is in there, and again, it’s to keep the headlights from sweeping the neighboring property. Fourteen, drainage plan includes some dry wells. I do have three dry wells, but they’re not in the poorer, in the high groundwater area. They’re in an area where I have a good test pit. I’ve got about four feet of separation distance. So they will function, and they’re not in the groundwater. Okay. MR. VOLLARO-Did you do a perc test in there to see what that looks like? MR. DICKINSON-Yes, 14 minutes, 20 seconds. I’m not sure what’s going on with 15 here. We have done this. I didn’t give the engineer the calculations, is what he’s asked me for them. I don’t understand the uncontrolled. MR. MAC EWAN-Did they not get a copy of your stormwater management plan? MR. DICKINSON-Yes, they did. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MR. DICKINSON-Only I didn’t give them that information. It wasn’t in the plan, Craig. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Make sure that they get it, when you submit it. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. I’ve spoken to the engineer, C.T. Male, and indicated I’d get them right down to him, along with these revisions. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. So it basically falls into two, 16 and 17, as well. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. Seventeen’s pretty straightforward. What I neglected to do was give them some spot elevations. I simply put an elevation on the outlet flow and indicated that it was graded across the bottom. It does have a positive drainage, 1.5% across the bottom. So it will completely drain out after a period of time, and it wasn’t on this drawing. Number Eighteen. What I did here is, he’s talking about this area on the neighboring property. Right now, there is a drainage swale between the two properties, running right down the property line. We are not going to interfere with that. We want to maintain that, and I’ve left it off the plans when I submitted them to C.T. Male. So, he said, hey, the water’s coming over there. What are you doing with it? Well, want to maintain this existing drainage swale. This water that’s generated across sites now, the drain is on our property but it’s not our water. Nineteen is a good point. I’ve looked at it and decided he’s probably right. I bumped the four inch up to six inch. These six inch pipes are my control devices on my drop inlets to flood my basins, and the elevation of the inlet, of the drop inlet, controls the elevation of the basin, so they don’t overflow. By the time I get the cover on, get the grade on, and with these shallow drainage things, I don’t have a lot of room left to pipe them. So I called for a six inch pipe. I’ve got enough room to put them in without squeezing everything. They’re not very long. I’ve got access to both ends. So drainage requires maintenance. That’s the law in engineering. These will have to be maintained. They’re big enough so they can be maintained. I’ve got good access. I’d like to stick to the six inch, and I think I can convince the C.T. Male that they’ll work. Number Twenty was a good point. One of the problems that we’ve had with this project is, as you can see, we have a number of different professionals working on it. What happened is we both started on the same basin. One of us ran for third, and the other went for first. I did the road and the general site plan of the building, the septic and the drainage. The golf course people did the golf course, and when the two plans showed up in my office, they’re weren’t sewn together at the interface here. What I did is, this drainage basin came out into this golf course a little bit, these two. So I simply revised them and reshaped them. So now they do fit, and that’s the essence of what 20 was about. He looked at it and said, hey, look, you’ve got your drainage thing over on the golf course. So we’ve got that all taken care of and got it back in shape. I have not done, and I didn’t notice it in the list, I haven’t taken a site distance determination yet. Somebody on the Board mentioned, Robert, I believe, 47 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) mentioned that the site distance to the north is a little short. You’re coming around a wide squeaking curve here. It’s fairly well wooded. It is short. I don’t know how long it is. I will find out. It is necessary for my application to the DOT. We will probably do it tomorrow. Site distance in the opposite direction is almost to Glens Falls, I think. MR. VOLLARO-It’s to the left, to north the site distance is tight. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. Definitely. MR. VOLLARO-Just a quick question, because I know my Chairman wants to move this thing along. So I won’t dwell on this, but looking at the calculations here on the type of basin, your retention basin, when you talk about volumes per cubic feet, I noticed that the pre, of 816, and then what you’re showing as volume at 825, you’re getting, I mean, it seems to me it calculates pretty close. What kind of safety factor did you use in there? MR. DICKINSON-What I did in the stormwater design, your zoning regulations are very good about drainage. They spell out how you should do all the design and what you should use. They give you three options. They give you a 10 year, 24 hour storm, a 20 year, 24 hour storm, and a 50 year, 24 storm. MR. VOLLARO-The 50 is what we want here. MR. DICKINSON-Well, it depends on what you’re designing. What I did in my design is I eliminated the 10 and the 20. Everything that I’ve designed that you’re looking at is 50. Because it’s not that significant. A 10 year storm is 4.2 inches. A 50 year storm is like 4.6 or 8. MR. VOLLARO-You designed for the worst case. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. We’ve got some room. We’ve got some fairly decent soils, and we don’t want any problem with stormwater. So everything on here, it’s a 50 year storm we are, that we’re capturing. We have room to do more. It was a little tight here, and that’s why I used these seepage pits, up around the building and the parking area and everything where it’s coming together. That’s why I used the pits as opposed to the open stormwater management. I prefer the open. It’s easier to take care of, but it’ll work. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Bob, any questions? MR. PALING-Well, just a comment first. I’m having a hard time following this job, and I think you’ve helped explain it. You’ve got three different companies and three different prints. They don’t lock in. MR. DICKINSON-No. One of the comments we’ve had, Bob, and one of the things I’ve found difficult is exactly where you’re going. We have prints of every size and shape, and every scale you can imagine. One of the things we are going to do, post haste, is get them together and get them run in a consistent size, so that you will have a consistent set, so you’ll be able to thumb through them. MR. PALING-And I can tell one title from another. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. Well, I don’t know about that. Everybody wants to get their name up front. MR. VOLLARO-I took a look at this block, the title block of the drawing, it said Lumberjack Pass Miniature Golf Course, North Veil, New Jersey. I said, well, they must have the wrong print. MR. PALING-You’ve got Harris, and you’ve got. MR. DICKINSON-Harris Golf is in New Jersey. MR. PALING-And what’s the other one, Harris, North Country and Lumberjack, and they don’t use the same format. MR. DICKINSON-No, none of the three, the Golf Course Company nor the North Country Engineering, which did the lighting, nor my office have any similarity whatsoever. MR. PALING-And I hope a lot of the comments you made tonight, you ended it by saying you didn’t show them on the print, that you’re going to document that stuff. MR. DICKINSON-I have ten prints with me that I was more than happy to hand out to you. 48 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. PALING-You’re giving me more prints, by which Company? MR. DICKINSON-I have revised prints of the prints I submitted, and all these comments that I covered are on those prints, and they will be submitted. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else, Bob? MR. PALING-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-No. MR. VOLLARO-Go right by me, Craig, the answer is no. MR. MAC EWAN-Larry? MR. RINGER-No. I would like to have them do some traffic counts and stuff about courses and what they expect. MR. DICKINSON-We have some traffic information. We have quite a bit of traffic information. We don’t have it in any kind of report form yet. We’ve just collected it, but, yes, we have some hard and fast numbers. MR. RINGER-When you come back, I’d like to see some of that. MR. DICKINSON-Yes. We’ll give you some hourly traffic counts and some highs and lows. MR. PALING-Can we just dump these prints and you’re going to replace them with a complete set, is that the idea? MR. MAC EWAN-I wouldn’t dump them right yet. Wait until Staff delivers new, then just sift through what you don’t think you need, at that point. MR. DICKINSON-Your comment’s well taken, Bob. When we resubmit, I will get them in some kind of order so you can follow them one way or another. They’ve just all kind of come together, and putting them together like you did, I realized that they weren’t working that well. I will try to take care of that. MR. MAC EWAN-Tony, did you have anything? MR. METIVIER-Nothing. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else you wanted to add? MR. DICKINSON-No. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We have a public hearing scheduled. I’ll open up the public hearing. I can tell you we’ll leave the public hearing open. If anyone wants to comment on this application, you’re welcome to come up. PUBLIC HEARING OPENED DAVID EADES MR. EADES-I’m David Eades. I’m the Regional Manager for Dexter Shoe. I live in Albany, New York. Our concerns for this piece of property, and this is the first chance we’ve had to see it, are several. One, in water management, we want to make sure that the water outflow from the front part of the property is addressed. We understand how they’re treating the water in the back end of the property, but the drain off from the front end of the property down onto Route 9 is an issue for us. The second is everyone in the Miracle Mile there, the Million Dollar Mile, every merchant, every property owner, every developer has been through the mill and has had to apply to the standards that the Town Board has laid out, with traffic, with lighting, with pubic access, and with amenities, if you will, and we hope that you will hold this applicant to those same standards. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-You’re welcome. MR. DICKINSON-Do you want me to respond? 49 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t really think it’s necessary that you respond. We know that you’ve got a whole bunch of issues to address here. MR. DICKINSON-They’ve all been addressed. MR. RINGER-They’ve got to go to C.T. Male. MR. VOLLARO-What you’ve done is done the preamble with us, but you’ve got to go to C.T. Male now and resolve. What we’ve given you is an opportunity to think about the problem with C.T. Male. MR. DICKINSON-There is one other thing I’d like to point out. By the way, we’ve taken care of the water in the front part. I know you remember that. Somebody asked, I think it was in the, your support’s request. We do have a sidewalk shown in the front here on the road. I’m a little confused about who’s doing what with this thing. We think it’s a great idea, but who’s sidewalk is it going to be, and should it be on the State road or should it be on our property? MR. MAC EWAN-That’s not a Planning Board issue. I would direct you more than happily to go see the Town Board, on it’s first and third Monday’s of each month. MR. DICKINSON-Would it be easier to take it off? MR. MAC EWAN-I’ll refer back to the answer I just gave you a minute ago. Okay. I come up with a list of five items. I don’t know what anybody else has got. They’re going to submit revised drawings reflecting the changes to the site that they’ve talked about tonight, two, that they need to respond to Staff Notes that we have tonight. Three, they’re going to respond to the C.T. Male letter of April 21. You also have New York State Department of Transportation comments you’re st waiting for, and, five, that you’re going to do some traffic counts. Is there anything else anybody else wants? MR. VOLLARO-I think what Bob referred to before is a set of drawings that tend to talk to one another. MR. MAC EWAN-That falls under the revised drawings. MR. VOLLARO-It does? Okay. Because they could revise each one of these drawings that don’t lock together, and, you know, it’s up to yourself, Mr. Chairman. MR. MAC EWAN-It’s not up to myself. That’s why there’s seven members on the Board with six present. MR. VOLLARO-From my point of view, I would like to see these drawings revised so that they reflect one another, and we can read them. MR. PALING-You don’t intend to have any kind of plantings in front of the property on Route 9? You’re just going to leave that to an open view, as I understand it? MR. KRANTZ-There’s an extensive landscaping plan. While Dennis is rolling this out, going back to the. MR. MAC EWAN-Wait a minute. Do we have that in our packets? We do. MR. PALING-I have a planting plan. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s the one. Has that planting plan changed since this planting plan that was submitted? MR. KRANTZ-No. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s fine. MR. KRANTZ-I think there was a very small change. When they went to Beautification, they liked very much the plan. They just wanted certain trees, certain areas to have a wider diameter. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, larger caliper trees. MR. KRANTZ-Right. MR. PALING-I withdraw that. 50 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MR. KRANTZ-But I have a question, just very quickly, on, we talked about the traffic. What I think Mike and Mary Giella can generate is information regarding how much usage of the course essentially for how many cars are going to be coming in and going out. MR. MAC EWAN-He said that he was going to do some counts, so we could see what they were. Is that what you wanted, Larry? MR. KRANTZ-Use of the, what’s anticipated high and low use of the miniature golf course. MR. RINGER-Right, and how that would tie in with, well, they’d have to do a traffic study to tie in with the peak period out there in the summer. MR. MAC EWAN-I think that there’s probably some resources available, from the corridor study that was done, what, how long ago was that done? Three years ago, roughly, that they can garnish some information out of that. MR. RINGER-And maybe tie the two together. MR. MAC EWAN-And tie the two together. MR. RINGER-And see what you’re traffic, what you anticipate is. MR. DICKINSON-Were they looking at you, Laura? MR. MAC EWAN-We’re looking at both parties. We’re looking at her, because we need to verify the traffic analysis that I’m thinking about was done two to three years ago, and we’re looking at you saying, can you correlate information out of that traffic study with what the traffic generated by a miniature golf course would be. Put those together. MR. DICKINSON-I can give you the miniature golf course information. If you have other information, I could marry the two together. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s why we’re saying, look in that direction. Okay. MR. DICKINSON-All right. That’s what I wanted to know. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. So I had those five items. We’re going to revise the drawings. We’re going to respond to Staff Notes dated April 25, respond to C.T. Male’s letter of April 21, wait for thst your DOT comment, New York State DOT comments regarding the driveway cut, and the traffic analysis and counts as compared to the Route 9 corridor and typical miniature golf course attractions. Do we have a second on that? MR. PALING-Second. MOTION TO TABLE SITE PLAN NO. 26-2000 MICHAEL & MARY GIELLA, Introduced by Craig MacEwan who moved for its adoption, seconded by Robert Paling: To revise the drawings, to respond to Staff Notes dated April 25, respond to C.T. Male’s letter of th April 21, wait for the New York State DOT comments regarding the driveway cut, and the traffic st analysis and counts as compared to the Route 9 corridor and typical miniature golf course attractions. Duly adopted this 25 day of April, 2000, by the following vote: th AYES: Mr. Paling, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. MacEwan NOES: NONE ABSENT: Mr. Abbott MR. KRANTZ-One other small point, if I may. I have, I can leave with Staff or with you, the people in New Jersey who just design golf courses and (lost word) actual constructed golf courses, not design drawings. Just to give you one quick example of the difference of opinion in appearance of, Dennis referred to Brand X down the road, where they have various rocks, or what appears to be rocks, that’s the colored gunnite type of cement. What you’ll see here is they just use natural stone, and it’s not painted cement. So you might want to, if you get a chance, take a look at. 51 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 4/25/00) MR. MAC EWAN-If you want to, leave that with Staff. MR. KRANTZ-Sure. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any other business in front of the Board tonight? A motion to adjourn. On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Craig MacEwan, Chairman 52