1994-11-09 SP
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QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
SPECIAL MEETING
NOVEMBER 9, 1994
INDEX
Discussion of Access Management with Joanna Brunso,
Glens Falls Transportation Council
1.
THESE ARE NOT OFFICIALLY ADOPTED MINUTES AND ARE SUBJECT TO BOARD
AND STAFF REVISIONS. REVISIONS WILL APPEAR ON THE FOLLOWING
MONTHS MINUTES (IF ANY) AND WILL STATE SUCH APPROVAL OF SAID
MINUTES.
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QU ENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
SPECIAL MEETING
NOJEMBER 9, 1994
7 ; 00 P. ~1 .
MEI'1BERS PRESENT
TIMOTHY BREWER, CHAIRMAN
GORGE STARK, SECRETARY
r:ç¡ BERT PALINC¡
C AIG MACEWAN
MBERS ABSENT
GER RUEL
THERINE LABOMBARD
MES OBERM(Ù'ER
ECUTIVE DIRECTOR-JAMES MARTIN
ANNER-SCOTT HARLICKER
ANNA BRUNSO
M". BRUNSO-Okay. Well, you've met me before. I'm Joanna Brunso,
aid I apologize. The last time I was here, I had such a sinus
h"adache, that I really couldn't stay through your entire
meting. I just had to get home. Now, Don Robertson is from
R gion One, DOT. He's the guy who will review all of your
a plications for developments along State highways, for SECRA
i lPact, transportation SECRA impacts, and Steve Munson is from
t e Central Office, now. Last year it was the Main Office.
MARTIN-And I just want to break in, Joanna, because I think
to distinguish between DOT. It's just not DOT and
t lat's it. DOT has, essentially, two divisions, as L have seen.
have the Regional Offices, and the employees that work for
t Ie ReRional Offices, and then you have the Central Office.
M~. STARK-What's that, Building Seven, down on the Campus?
M<. HARLICKER-Seven, Five, Four.
MARTIN-How many Regions are there in the State? Eleven
R~gions. We're in Region One, a~d Don works for Region One, but
S¡ll is from Centr-ª-.t.
STARK-Where's Region One located?
M3. BRUNSO-It's right across from the V.A. Hospital down the
street, down the street from the Albany Medical Center.
STARK-Okay. That's Region One Office?
BRUNSO-That's the Region One Office.
MARTUj-So
s rne sort of
W'3.nt to.
it'~3 not
chain of
just DOT, when you refer to DOT. There is
command, or break down, or whatever yOU
MS. BRUNSO-Region One goes from, essentially, Lake
t~ the center of the Kattskills, and
S-henectady/Montgomery County line, all the way
Massachusetts/Vermont border. That includes eight
Placid,
from
over to
Counties.
down
the
the
M,. STARK-That's a pretty good region.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. That's Essex, Warren, Washington, Saratoga,
Rensselaer, Albany, and Greene Counties.
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MR. STARK-By yourself you revie~J every application? You've got
more than one person reviewing the applications, don't you?
DOl\! ROBERTSON
MR. ROBERTSON-In some respects, yes, I mean, but everything
having to do with SEQRA comes across my desk.
MR. STARK-Oka).'.
MS. BRUNSO-Well, it used to be, we, in 1990, when L came to
Region One, there were two people, Ken Carlson, whom you may
remember before, in dealing with this area, and there was myself,
and then I took the job as the Staff Director for the Glens Falls
MPO, the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is Washington
and Warren County, and the Town of Moreau, and all of
municipalities, 43 municipalities in total, in that area.
MR. PALING-If SEQRA isn't your primary responsibility, how do you
get involved in it at all?
MR. ROBERTSON-It is my P'" ima,-y responsibi 1 i ty .
MR. PALING-SEQRA by itself, or just as it applies to what?
MR. ROBERTSON-Mostly as it applies to developments by others.
Like DOT has, when we do a project, we have SEORA
responsibilities, but they rest in another office, and our review
is if a development is coming in, generally along the State
highway system, or near the state highway system, then I work
with the planning, as far as coordinating the review, and there's
a gentleman, Mark Kennedy, in Traffic and Safety, who will be
reviewing it from the impacts for Highway Work permits and
whatever.
MR. PALING-But you wouldn't get involved in SEQRA unless there
was a road or something involved, is what I'm getting at?
MR. ROBERTSON-It doesn't have to be directly on the road. It
could impact a State highway. The State Ç,ßJl be invol\ied. You're
generally correct, though, yes.
MR. PALING-SEORA has to be reviewed by others, too?
MR. ROBERTSON-Right.
MR. PALING-Okay. That's what
It is a little limited in your
I guess
area.
I'm
trying to establish.
MR. ROBERTSON-Right. We're limited as to what you can do, but
there's still, with eight Counties, and there's plenty.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. Well, as Don Robertson just said, within Region
One, there's two steps in the Planning process, or rather in the
review process. There's a Planning review, and there's a Permit
review, and that's what I explained to you the other day. The
Planning review can go through and look at a development on a
State highway, and the MPO can do it for the rest of the roads,
and sometimes on the State Highway, depending upon how busy Don
is, and recommend certain actions to the Planning Board. Now
it's up to the Planning Board to act on those recommendations,
because when you've approved a development, and you send it back
to DOT for a Highway Work Permit, the permit process can only,
the gUY in charge of the permit process can only do what he's
legally entitled to do, and because there is a lack or, or if you
want to say that we don't have any enabling legislation to deal
with this growth management and access management, that we're
empowered to do and told to do by the Federal government, it now
rests in the hands of the growing local Planning Boards in growth
areas to actually make these very hard decisions about whether or
not somebody can or cannot somebody can or cannot have an access
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I [\'a,)"o)- ì-oads l"n tl aYBa ThBrp'~ a whole higherarchy of
onto t le, _ Ile 1.-. ".-,~ ""
roads. There are the State arterials, and the State limited
access highways, and it goes down all the way to the very local
roads, and the local roads are thought of as those roads that
provide all kinds of access to all the properties along the line,
a d YOU get up into the arterials that go through a city. You
wEnt' a balance there between access, and between capacity on the
r ad to move quickly, and then you get to the limited access
fìeeways which have really limited access, and that's what the
n me implies, such as the Northway. Then we've got the roads in
between, which are roads like Route 9, where we've had a
d·scussion in the past, which have to serve as, US Route 9 is a
U ited states road, and US Route, and it should have less access
t. an it does, but it has to have some access to it from the
a~utting properties, and I think the basic premise here is that
t~xpayers have built and paid for the roads, and new developers
slould not be allowed to come into an area and take advantage of
t ,is public good that this area has provided without doing its
b. st to, without making conditions worse, and if local
9 vernments want growth, then they should plan for it, and they
sllould l'3arn how t.o make developers accommodate to it"
M'. BREWER-Where does that fine line start and end, when we see
W' lmart coming on Route 9, okay. We made them do certain things.
U, the road, Guido Passarelli's got a shopping center. How do
y u know what to make him do? You don't really know what he's
9 ing to generate. How do you know what to make him do?
M. BRUNSQ-Well, that's one of the reasons why the MPO is, the
G ens Falls Transportation Council is an MPO. We have a Staff of
t o. I hope by May we'll have a Staff of three, and we should go
i , and we should at least be giving guidelines to Jim and to
S,;ott, and to Sue, and fo,- the State highway:::;, VJe ha\/e Don who
c. n give us some guidelines, and then we tell you what we think
you ought to do. Now, obviously, (¡~e can't make you do it, and
o ce you pass it back to Mark Kennedy, or to the County, if it's
o a County road, they can only do what they're legally entitled
t do.
M.'\ . P{-iLING--You do, however, have a 1 ever age in the fu nds, if I
u derstand.
BRUNSO-Yes.
M~. PALING-If you make a recommendation, and we don't follow it,
t,en you can withhold funds?
M~. BRUNSO-Well, what I was saying is, it's not a question of
f nds. What we're saying is that we're not going to go in and
m~ke any capacity improvements to your roads. If we don't see a
od faith effort on the local Planning Boards to actually, I
nt to say "we", because the GFTC has representatives from
shington County, Warren County, Town of Queensbury, the Town of
F rt Edward, Village of South Glens Falls, etc., the City of
Glens Falls, that we make recommendations on how to spend the
m>ney, but DOT goes in and actually implements the spending of
t at money, actually constructs those improvements, and DOT is
s ying, we've got limited funds. If there's a Town Planning
Bard that is not willing to really address the issue of access
m'nagement, why should we go in and try to build capacity on a
r)ad that's only going to be overrun as soon as we add the
capacity improvements?
MACEWAN-Who passes judgement as to whether the Planning Board
made a good effort and to practice that management?
ROBERTSON-I don't know the answer to that question.
M. MACEWAN-I'm hearing tonight, and I heard the last time you
s~oke to us, that, I'm hearing innuendos that maybe we aren't
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doing our jobs as Planners, and manipulating, or putting into
action, I should say, the access management plans that yOU have
made recommendations to and some of the documents that we've
gotten. What yOU need to ,-ealize is that what you',-e seeing is
an end result. You aren't seeing the negotiations that take
place to get to that end result. You don't see what we start out
with at the beginning of a project and what we end up with as a
final resolution.
MS. BRUNSO-Well,
to, which was the
one, with Carvel.
the two particular sites that I made reference
Glen Square application, the Guido Passarelli
MR. MACEWAN-See, we got concessions out of them.
curb cuts cut away.
We got some
MS. BRUNSO-No, you didn't. You tried to, but yoU didn't, and,
you see, let me just tell yOU this.
MR. MACEWAN-I take that back, because what we ended up getting
was them to change some entrance and exits.
MR. PALING-They limited.
MR. MACEWAN-Limited ingress/egress on there.
MS. BRUNSO-I wrote a long letter. I passed it to Don and I gave
it to Mark Kennedy who does the permits. I think we even had
Dick Carlson reviewing what we had done. So those there was,
those two particular applications had a really high profile in
Region One DOT, and when you, in effect, as far as we're
concenled, did absolutely nothing, even though you say you had a
long discussion and tried to make some concessions there, it
looks to \:Lê., particularly since we've spent so much time
reviewing those two applications, that you really didn't do much.
MR. MACEWAN-So then you are the folks who judge whether we do or
don't do our jobs?
MS. BRUNSO-Well, it's more like Don, Don and Mark Kennedy.
MR. MACEWAN-Okay. I mean, the thing to realize here is that we
are a Board of seven individuals, like any other Planning Board,
and we all have our own different way of thinking about things
and what we feel is acceptable or not. Personally, in my
opinion, I wanted to see Guido have one curb cut on this. I
didn't feel he needed two, and I pushed for it, but I didn't have
enough clout to get the rest of the Board to think my way, and I
voted no for that.
MR. BREWER-You weren't there that night.
MS. BRUNSO-I don't remember your face.
MR. BREWER-You weren't there that night, Craig.
MR. MACEWAN-Okay. Maybe I wasn't there that night. I mean, like
the thing with Leo's Lobster.
MR. BREWER-That was four to two. Bob and I voted no. Everybody
else voted yes, but that's water over the dam. What I would like
to see is, if we could, is give us some kind of guidelines saying
that maybe a certain amount of square footage of retail area
should be limited to a number of curb cuts.
MR. MACEWAN-I mean, you're burdened with the amount of things
that yOU have to review. I mean, it wouldn't make sense for us
to send our packets of applications to you guys.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes, it does. They do it all the time.
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MR. BREWER-Yes, it does. They're an involved agency.
MR. MACEWAN-You have that kind of time that you can afford to do
that?
MS. 8RUNSO-We make the time, and if nothing else, I can type up a
q memo and fax it up to Jim, and you've got it in front of
y
M MACEWAN-Well, I guess maybe a question why haven't we been
d\ ing that?
M~. BRUNSO-You have to some extent, and in all cases, you've
o\erridden the recommendations we've made.
Mf STARK·-fÜ 1 cases, or two cases?
M. 8RUNSO-Two cases.
M PALING-Well, I agree with Tim. I'd like to see you give us
s me guidelines, some education in this regard.
M . 8RUNSO-AIl right. That's why, you asked me to come back
teday, and I've come back, with Steve Munson, who's going to talk
a out access management, what it means, and then you also asked
te review the recommendations that were made by the 9 and 254
C rridor, and we have those all mounted over there, which we've,
b t let Steve Munson talk first, because he's gone to some time,
a.: to provide us IrJith some.
M,. BREWER-I guess what I'm saying is
s'.one, the guidelines. I mean, if he
d\ n't say he can only have one cUì-b cut.
not necessarily cast in
has 60,000 square feet,
M.. STARK-Well, there's different types of retail operations. If
i"'s a furniture store, he could have 60,000 square feet, and you
d n't have five customers 90 percent of the time.
BREWER-That's exactly what I'm saying.
M,. STARK-You know, you get a Stewarts store that has 5,000
s Uaì"e feet, and you've got 50 custome,-s all the time.
MO. BRUNSO-There's also the point that you people on the Planning
8 ard should not just be reacting to developments as they come.
Y u should also be planning for growth.
MACEWAN-A lot of times I feel that's what, we do react,
b~cause I feel that in a lot of cases, we're under so much
p assure, and there's seems to be this misconception that when an
a plicant comes in, you give him everything he wants, or close to
elerything he wants, and I feel, a lot of times, under the gun.
S EVE MUNSON
M MUNSON-I don't doubt it, and you are, because of your
inmediate position here in the community, it's not Just that
you're responsible within the Planning Board, but you've got your
f"iends and neighbors out there, and developers who've got a
s_ake in your decisions, and they live right next door. So you
a"e under the, you ª-1:.Q. ,"eact.ionary, and you ª-1:.Q. under the gun. I
t,ink a lot of the Department feels that it's under the gun in
t e same sense, because the Department is principally
r~actionary. We react to (lost word). I mean, basically, our
jJb is to solve problems. You don't see many new roads being
bJilt. We're not in a 50's, 60's, 70's mode. We're basically
p tching up roads now, making them a little wider, a little
bigger, to solve problems like you have down here at the
intersection of 9 and 254. We're a little bit, indirectly, under
the same kind of gun you are, because, in a sense, you're our
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clientele. Actually, we have clientele allover, and it's trying
to judge the, you know, who's going to give us the heftiest kick
at any time, that kind of moves us around, but we're all
reactionary, and one of the things that's come out of this are
concepts of corridor preservation, access management, and things
like that, where we're trying to move away f,-om being under the
gun, and say, we can avoid some problems in the future, if we
take a little longer look and take some actions now. Of course,
that doesn't help you right away.
MR. MACEWAN-I mean some things pending, I can see this thing with
Dave Kenny could end up being a problem for us.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. Well, it is a problem for, it's a problem for
the MPO, too, because we have the MPO, that is our Planning
Committee, where we have Fred Austin, and we have Ken Wheeler,
and we have Jim Martin sitting there, and Joe Sullivan from the
City of Glens Falls, and they're looking at this area, and they
say, well, the big problem we have up there is Exit 20, and we
have all the traffic that wants to get to 149, and we're going to
have a meeting here on January 12th, a big public meeting, on
Route 149. How are we going to get, how are we going to right
that intersection there? How are we going to get the trucks,
that really don't want to get, they don't want to be bothered
with all of these businesses along this side, over to 149?
Apparently, neither do the people who live along there. They
don't want to be bothered with the trucks. They just want to go
in and do their shopping, and right behind the Million Dollar
Half Mile is a ravine, and it's very difficult to build a road
back there, if not impossible. It's very expensive. So how are
we going to do this in an economical fashion? I don't know.
MR. STARK-Have the trucks get off at Fort Edward and go up that
way.
MR. MACEWAN-A lot of them do.
MS. BRUNSO-A lot of them do.
MR. STARK'-A lot of them don't knolrJ that area, and it's much
faster, and even coming back down.
MR. BREWER-But what you've got, as a problem though, that is a
main route. A guy gets in a truck, and he looks at a map, and he
sees 1-87, then he sees 9, then he sees 149, and that's the way
he goes. He doesn't see going through, getting off at 17N and
cutting over 196, or whatever it is, and then coming up through.
MS. BRUNSO-And what about the trucks that come south and want to
get around the Lake George/Lake Champlain area? They really,
they're coming south on the Northway, do they really want to cut
off of Route 74 into Ticonderoga, take 22 down and around? No.
They come down the Northway, because it's in the best condition,
and then they try to get over to Rutland or to Whitehall, or
wherever the heck they have to go, and they have to get to this
area. So you've got a problem. I want to help you solve that
problem, but I don't know how to do it yet, but let Steve tell
'lOU.
MR. MUNSON-All right. I think that I've probably brought some
stuff that's, perhaps, too basic, since you're struggling with
these problems all the time, and really what I came to talk about
is access management. Generally, if you want to talk about what
I wrote about 9 and 254, I'd be happy to do it, but a lot of the
ideas stem from this, and this is kind of an outline of, and I'm
just going to follow it. I have to apologize. My various bosses
tell me that my sense of humor is going to get me in trouble. It
does. The first page kind of describes what happens to experts
when they go into the Department. This is my organizational
chart, from the top of the Organization, to me, that's me down at
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th bottom. Actually, lots of decisions get made down at the
bottom. Up here, they just say yes or no, and give you the
money. All right. When we talk about access management, there
are all kinds of definitions. I've seen one that says, access
management is just limiting the number of driveways. We don't
c nsider it that. At least L don't consider it that. It's a way
of planning which integrates local planning, local land use and
m nagement capabilities with transportation planning and
e gineering and management, and they've got to fit together
s mehow, because we're basically planning how to use a roadway
e ficiently and safely. I work for the Department. So I'm
r-quired to figure out what's in it for the Department, when we
tElk about access management, and the statistics are
s raightforward. Access management increases safety. There's no
d ubt about it. More than half of the accidents in the country
r late to access management, and the statistics show, and I've
9 t a couple of pages of statistics, that good access management
d creases accidents by more than 50 percent. There's just
thing that, we haven't found any statistics that say it
creases accidents at all. It increases the affect of capacity
o the roadway, and there's a page that shows that, by about a
tl ird, a figure that sho~s that, and it increases, or improves,
s rvice, and there's a little chart that shows the affect of
seed on poorly managed, or regular arterials, and highly managed
a'terials, and the basic thing is, there's improvement about 50
p rcent in safety, effect of capacity, and speed or level of
s rvice, if you go from poorly managed, poorly accessed managed
r adways, to highly managed aCC(3SS roadways. In ~ pe,-spective,
tie benefits extend well beyond the transportation benefits, and
i .'s one of the reasons why we think there's a lot in it for
1 )cal gove,-nments, and why they '"eally ought to do it.
C'>rtainly, it improves the environmental quality. Okay. One of
t e basic improvements that we tal,e into account is air quality,
i ling time and stop time. All of those decrease air quality.
I dramatically reduces, both State and local, the infrastructure
c sts in the long term. Poor access management is probably
r .asonably inexpensive in the short term. You build a road.
E erybody gets to build on it, fine, but when you go back and
h ve to add a lane or two, in the future, you're going to chew up
b sinesses and residences. You're going to have to replace
d'iveways. You're going to have to put sidewalks in.
BREWER-Just like Quaker Road. Right?
BRUNSO-And you have to find more parking.
MUNSON-You have to find more parking. I mean, the cost of
ing in the second time around is really hefty. That's one of
e reasons why this project that you're looking at here is so
inful, I expect, because the cost is going to be high. It
proves the quality of life, higher safety, better service, less
ngestion, increased environmental quality, your citizens are
gtting places easier, noise is less. It also increases the long
t~rm economic development in a town. Now that's a little harder
tJ show, and there's not that much evidence, but the fact is that
i" it's well done, you wind up chewing, you don't wind up chewing
u small businesses.
me ask you a question. You probably don't ever
g_t asked this, but why does a guy, I guess I'm trying to look at
ssarelli's property. Why does a guy want two entrances and
its, rather than just one? I don't understand? I mean, even
fore the subdivision item, even before we did that, why
w uldn't he want one central entrance?
MACEWAN-Liability standpoint, I would think.
BRUNSO-Well, he says so, but when you.
BREWER-Why the liability?
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MR. MACEWAN-Liability, it's a shared driveway.
MS. BRUNSO-He thinks that it's much more attractive. His lot is
much more attractive if it has its own access, but, if you figure
on, actually, every developer who comes in wants to have his own
access and his own traffic light.
MR. BREWER-But it cost them more money. I mean, what's the
benefit of it? I don't understand what the benefit with (lost
word) is on that. You've got to build to driveways, two roads,
to get in and out.
MR. STARK-Yes, but I mean, if it had the ~ entrance, you'd have
to go over and pave all the way up to the other one, then.
Right?
MR. PALING-That's going to be paved, anyway, in this case, isn't
it?
I'1R. BREWER-Yes.
MR. MUNSON-I suspect it probably depends on the use of the lot
and the design of the lot. If you've got relatively little
clearance, setback from the road, and it's a busy road, you don't
want to back out onto it. So you need two cuts.
MR. PALING-Well, they wouldn't have to back out onto it.
MR. MUNSON-He might have to, if he didn't have turn around space.
MR. STARK-In this case, that wasn't a consideration.
MR. MUNSON-I don't know the specific instance you're talking
about.
MR. PALING-That access he's got there now is awful narrow. I was
in and out of that thing today.
MR. STARK-Wait'll he goes to plow it. It's not straight.
MS. BRUNSO-Those two lots that Passarelli, say he subdivided one
into two lots, sold one to a vision care place or a hearing care
place, dentist, all right, but the other one is up for future
development. What we recommended was that the Board, between the
two, we have one wide entrance with a road going to either side.
There was also the opportunity of having an entrance on the back,
onto the local road, where access is }lot a problem, and that's
what we recommended.
MR. PALING-Well, I guess the thing that still bothers me is, I'd
like to see you put, divide that board in two, and put the Guido
Passarelli thing up there, A and B. A, he's got two curb cuts.
8, he's got one curb cut, okay. I want you to list the specific
safety differences between the two.
MR. MUNSON-You don't look, when you talk about access management,
you don't look at one driveway.
MR. PALING-Yes we do. With the Guido Passarelli place, we looked
at one versus two. We ended up with two, and what I'm saying is,
I'm using some terms here I don't feel comfortable with, because
I don't know the background.
MR. MUNSON-Okay.
MR. PALING-What are the safety differences, specifically, between
the two approaches to that particular property? Justify your one
wide curb cut, as against two on a safety thing, specifically.
MR. MUNSON-How much space is there between, I mean, how much
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sp ce is there between the roadways?
MR. PALING-Between the two accesses?
MR. STARK-Three hundred feet.
MR. PALING-Maybe a little less.
MR. MUNSON-How many other driveways are there along a half mile
of the road, up and down?
MR. BREWER-You have to look at, you can't just look at his. You
h-ve to look at both sides.
M~. BRUNSO-I remember it was 240 feet here, and it was 300, no,
i was 490 over here, and he divided it. This is Route 9, and
t is is Round Pond Road over here. This is Route 9, and divided
i right here, and our recommendation that you have one here,
w:th a driveway in here, and another driveway over here, and a
b ck entrance here.
M . PALING-Okay, and what happened was, we ended up with
N w what are the, because this is what we're hit with, and
s'ying that it's safer to go to the one wide one. So, what
i safer? What are the specific reasons?
tl.>Jo.
we're
makes
M. BRUNSO-Because a car coming along
d1 iveway, or to turn left, has to slow
t e cars behind it have to slow down.
t ¡ere's much more accidents, potential
c r to rear end the car in front of it,
L ke this.
to turn right into a
down, and that means all
If they're not looking,
for both back end, for a
or to come in at an angle
M,. MUNSON-You've
h re. All right.
pints.
got tl.>JO
You've
acceleration and deceleration zones,
got four, rather than two conflict
M.. PALING-Okay. You're saying, okay, accelerate, decelerate;
a ;celerate, decelerate. You've got two of each, potential on
t lose. I'm not trying to be wise, but let me make a case where
y u wouldn't have to do that, if you had two of them. If there
cars out there waiting to get in one, you're better off
cars waiting to get off two. They'd be off the road
q icker. I don't believe that. I'm just talking about that as
al0bjection. I want to see how you justify it.
. MUNSON-Well, personally, I don't have to justify it, because
ery situation is in respect to the specific road conditions
u're dealing with. I don't know this area. I don't know what
t-avel along this road is like.
. BREWER-Fifty-five miles an hour.
MUNSON-Fifty-five miles an hour?
STARK-No, the speed limit's 40.
PALING-How are we supposed to answer the objections, then, if
s mebody says, it's safer to go with one big one.
M,. MUNSON-Well, if you have specific questions you ask, I
s spect that we could probably provide you, or we could certainly
ovide you with any kind of publication. First, you've got four
nflict points, here, here, here, here, and two acceleration,
o deceleration points, rather than two and two, okay. So
u've got more conflict and a greater potential for conflict
with two driveways than yoU do with one driveway. Is this two
1 nes along here, or four lanes?
MR. STARK-One north and one south.
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MR. HARLICKER-One going each way.
MR. STARK-And a middle turning lane.
MR. MUNSON-And you've got, you say, 300 feet between one driveway
and the other?
MR. PALING-Something like that. Yes.
MR. MUNSON-I'm trying to remember, what's the affect of
deceleration distance of 40, 50 miles an hour? Well, it's
certainly more than 150 feet if you're doing 50. Okay. So you
have people somehow speeding up to 50, and between here, so they
can merge into traffic and then trying to slow down, in case
someone's turning here.
MR. STARK-Okay. I could see that point. That's a valid point.
MR. MUNSON-But the point that I'm talking to is a little
different than an individual lot case, and in the case of an
individual lot, it's not going to help you very much. When I say
50 percent of all accidents, 50 percent of capacity, and 50
percent of the level of service, kind of improvements. All
right. We're not talking about one lot. We're talking about
corridor. We're talking about a mile. All right.
MR. BREWER-The whole purpose of it, Bob, is to plan for the whole
thing.
MR. MUNSON-All right. Here you go. If you look at, maybe the
fifth page, it's the first accident page, the one before that, I
believe. All right. The top table, 30 driveways a mile, if you
go from 30 driveways a mile to 60 driveways a mile, you've
doubled the number of accidents, regardless of what the road is,
what volume the road is operating at. All right.
MR. STARK-Okay. Let me get my point in, okay. I agree with
this, okay, but, so we go up to the site and we look at the site,
and the engineer for Guido says he wants to put an access road on
Round Pond Road. Okay. Right here, there's a 30 foot drop off.
Okay. You can't come down the hill straight. We had trouble
going \,!,£the hill, remember, o,"iginally, and that ground is even
higher than that now, where you wanted to put it in the back.
It'8 probably 40 foot back here. That'8 what ~..¡e looked at also.
Okay.
MR. MACEWAN-On the other side of the coin, the reason why he
needed the two access points on that particular parcel was
because the contour of the land made it prohibitive for him to
put only one cut and service the two, and what did he do, after
we approved it, he flattened the whole thing.
MR. STARK-Well, it's still 40 feet over there.
MR. MACEWAN-My point is, if he could do it there, he could do it
there.
MR. STARK-Well, that would be an awful wicked grade, down grade.
MS. BRUNSO-I've looked at it, too.
MR. BREWER-It's completely flat. I mean, even you were
flabbergasted, George. You have to admit.
MR. STARK-Yes. No question, but I mean, I'm still looking at the
real steep ridge over there.
MR. BREWER-Well, maybe that wouldn't have been feasible to do it,
but in the front, it certainly would be feasible.
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MR. STARK-I mean, you just said, throw an access road over there,
g,- at.
MS. BRUNSO-You didn't provide me
kinds of maps that you accept
rOJgher than the stuff that we,
in to our Planning Board in my
and v.Jithout.
with a map of contours. The
on this Planning Board are far
we will not allow anybody to come
town without contour lines on it
MR. STARK-We've got a rule, two foot topography map.
MC. BRUNSO-All right, but I didn't get that.
M STARK-Two foot, not five foot, two foot topography. We can
wive it to five or ten, but it's two foot.
M·. BRUNSO-But how do you know what a developer can do or what he
c' n't do? We're constantly getting things in front of us. The
9 y wants to take five acres off of a 75 acre parcel and put up
1 lots, and he has absolutely no intention of developing the
r st.
BREWER-We've heard that a thousand times.
M. . BRUNSO-Fourteen months later. he comes back in for a forty-
ve lot subdivision on the back end, and that's another point
at I'd like to address after we get to this access management
s uff. It comes in time and time again. We see the same faces
rching in front of us, and they're never going to do anything
destroy the environment. They're not going to do anything to
crease capacity. They wouldn't do that in our town, and, yet,
ey come right back.
M MUNSON-Let me get back to this. You ask a question that
y u've got to struggle with, as being part of a Planning Board
a ¡d reacting. If you have to deal with this lot, by itself,
i dependent of anything else that's happening in the Town or
a ong that roadway, there are all kinds of national statistics
at will support a decision for going to one rather than two,
t not if you can't consider what's going on outside that
p-operty boundary. You've got to look at it on a much wider
b sis. You're not interested so much in what happens on that
s retch of road right here, as what's happening on the stretch of
r ad between 9 and 254 and up at Exit 20. All right. We looked
a~ a project, the 9 and 254 Corridor Study. The boundary of the
S udy, the northern boundary, was where the road went from four
nes to two lanes. You've resolved that, but you haven't
uched your problems on the two lane section stretch.
guess what I'm trying to say is that we need
s me rationale that we can use when we've got the applicants in
f-ont of us and they're saying, what do you mean, (lost word).
W ¡at we've got here is good. I'd like to get as many more as
y)u've got.
M . MUNSON-I believe that I provided Jim with, and if I didn't, I
c rtainly will, with a copy of NHCRP 112, or something like that,
W lich is the National Study on Access Management, has all these
s_atistics in it, and why you have to do it, and why it's a good
i ea.
MJ. BRUNSO-The thing is, I wrote to Jim last year, and I said, my
r3commendation is that there should be no new driveways allowed
b~tween 9 and 254, and Exit 20. That you should do everything
y)U can to utilize the existing curb cuts to serve whatever
sbdivisions are necessary. He says, yes, to me. It sounds like
w 're going to do something with it, but somehow it never gets
oJtside his office, but that is the kind of thing that you should
b? looking at. You've got a pretty busy section over there.
You've already got too many driveways. You should force people
- 11 -
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to utilize the existing curb cuts that are already there.
MR. STARK-We ª-L.Q. knocking down the cud) cuts.
MR. BREWER-And I do think that we have, since that meeting, we
have eliminated some curb cuts.
MR. PALING-We're cutting Leo from four, to three, to two.
MR. BREWER-Right, and I think when applicants come in, we should
continue to do that. Somebody Justified, well, the place across
the street has five curb cuts, why can't he have two, but just
because he's got five doesn't make it right.
MR. PALING-Well, I just want to make them feel warm and cozy when
they're told they've got to have (lost word) curb cuts.
MR. STARK-You didn't see when we reduced them. Like Sutton's
knocked off a great big monstrous one right in the middle, now
he's only got two, I mean, but yoU don't see that.
MS. BRUNSO-No, because I don't have that long memory here, nor,
as I told you at the Planning Board, from yoU, I get the
development before it happens. I never hear about the results at
the final end, unless it is disastrous and I happen to ask about
it, and Jim says, well, we did this and we did this, and I said,
how many curb cuts do you still have left? And he'll tell me,
and there's no reduction. From the Town of Lake George, I get
the final decision, but not, I don't get the development at a
point where I could make a good recommendation to them.
MR. STARK-First of all, you can't compare Queensbury
George, because their Planning Board doesn't even
once every three or four months.
with Lake
meet, maybe
MS. BRUNSO-Yes, I know.
MR. STARK-We're meeting two and three times a month, we've got so
much development.
t-1S. BRUNSO--Yes.
MR. BREWER-That's another question we bring up. It says there
should be D.Q.. mo,-e curb cuts. How can yOU, if a develope,- has a
piece of land on Route 9, how can you tell him he can't access
it?
MS. 8RUNSO-Well, you can't, I mean, Mark Kennedy can't.
MR. STARK-I think that's about the end of it right now. I mean,
there's no more land to develop that already doesn't have a curb
cut there. There's no more.
MR. MUNSON-Well, as it turns out, you can. You've got all the
powers you need to require a rational performance on the part of
developers, and develop landowners alike. If you're always
reacting to a specific development, you're always going to be
behind the ball. I mean, you're going to have a hard time to
defend a decision, unless you step back some time and make
rational decisions, set some rational policies and standards that
are going to apply to all developers. That's kind of a last
bullet in this mixed benefit. If you've got a good management
plan, it's going to provide clear signals to developers about
what's going to be expected of them and under what conditions,
and that's, having done a lot of work with private developers,
they love that. They can come in to Town, what's expected of us.
We'll make a decision. We'll do it or we'll get out.
MR. BREWER-Yes. See, I have a big problem. Just because a
developer comes in with this grand building that he's going to
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bu'ld, and create all these jobs, and all the tax
to give him everything he wants. I don't think
th t"
money, we have
IrJe have t,o do
MR. MACEWAN-But that's the pressure we're put under.
MR. BREWER-Well, I think we should take a stand and say we
sh uldn't have to be put under that pressure. I think if we
ju tify what we ask him to do.
MR. STARK-Lets review, informally, Dave Kenny's project, okay.
What we decide here isn't going to.
MR. HARLICKER-Would you like a copy of the plan?
M~. BRUNSO-I haven't seen it.
M. STARK-He's losing a
t e front. He's trying
or a couple of parcels.
o n.
couple of curb cuts. He's
to internalize traffic which
He can't internalize what
landscaping
he's doing
he doesn't
M . MUNSON-Can you give us an overview of his plans? Is it a
r sidential development, commercial development?
1'1,. STARK-, \Io.
~ BREWER-But he can leave that window open, George, for the
o portunity to do that.
MUNSON-How big a parcel?
M STARK-Gee, it's too bad we couldn't go up there, I mean, not
n< w.
M.. MUNSON-I may know it, but I don't know it by.
M.. MACEWAN-It's currently the Plaza that's pretty much vacant,
j st betlrJeen.
M STARK-Where the boats were.
M,. BREWER-Between the Log Jam Plaza and.
MACEWAN-There was a little Philadelphia Steak sandwich place
there. There was a little Jeweler in there.
STARK-Las Vegas Discount.
MUNSON-How many square feet of?
HARLICKER-He's talking 52,000 square feet.
MUNSON-Yes. New?
BREl.JER-New.
BRUNSO-Wait a minute. You have to realize that this area
b tween Exit 20 and 149 is very solidly developed. There's a
D,ys Inn in the middle. There's 72 discount outlets, and what
h 's done is taken one small plaza that used to have about four
0" five different little businesses in there, knock it down.
Here's the Days Inn. Here's Route 9. North.
Log Jam. Here's the existing building right here.
to level this, put this building up. He's got curb
cuts here, here, and here. He's losing these in the middle.
Okay. He's internalizing from that side to this side, to the
ays Inn side, so they don't have to drive out anymore.
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MR. MUNSON-What kind of traffic does he expect?
MR. STARK-A ton.
MR. HARLICKER-What about something like this, providing a single
access down here, with access from the parking.
MR. MUNSON-There's another Mall?
other Mall?
Where's the entrance to the
MS. BRUNSO-There's another Mall here. There's another Mall here.
There's three over here.
MR. HARLICKER-There's a gas station over here some place.
MR. MUNSON-All right.
on the other side?
This entrance is aligned with the people
MR. STARK-No.
MR. MUNSON-All right. I'm not even going to react to this,
because I'd want to go walk it. I'll tell you what I did when I
wrote the plan there, which anyone can peruse that report. I
came up two weekends and actually walked the entire area.
MR. STARK-What way are you talking about?
MR. MUNSON-Nine and two fifty-four, at that intersection there,
in the area, and that's the only thing that gave me a sense of
what was going on, what the distances between the curb cuts were
like, what the curb cuts themselves were like. I mean, you had
three curb cuts and a little block of three to six stores, with
only 20 feet frontage between the stores, right beside a merge
lane. I mean, people were hopping off into the stores, when the
cars behind them were trying to accelerate, a real safety
problem. So I'm going to beg off of this, because I cannot react
to it without knowing more about the area at this point.
MR. STARK-Okay. You're going to
would you recommend? I mean,
recommend?
get these plans, okay.
just quick, what would
What
you
MS. BRUNSO-See, I have talked to these guys, and I've told them
that they really should.
MR. MACEWAN-Who's "these gUYS", now?
MR. STARK-Kenny and his partner.
MS. BRUNSO-Dave Kenny. Who's the guy from Dexter's?
MR. STARK-Dunham's Shoes, or Dexter?
MS. BRUNSO-Well, I don't know.
MR. STARK-The same side or the other side?
MS. BRUNSO-The other side.
MR. STARK-That's Dexter.
MS. BRUNSO-Because he also has a place by Builder's Square, down
on Route 155 and Route 5 in Colonie, and one other guy from the
Million Dollar Half Mile came down together with Dan Kane.
MR. STARK-Ed Moore, big, tall guy, he's from French Mountain?
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. I think so. There were three of them. We
talked about it. We talked about the problems, the accidents.
We considered putting in a five lane road through there. They
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di' n't want they way it would look. Everybody seems to want a
by pass in that area for the truck, for the vehicles that are
on Y interested in getting off at 20 and going to 149 to 4, to
Ve-mont, but we're trying to figure out, where can we put that
by-pass.
MR. STARK-There's a 100 foot drop off in the back.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. We know that, and what our consultant gave us
th ee years ago was a plan for a road in the back, where the
trucks could come in to service both these businesses and go
around, but you're right. There's too big of a ravine in the
back, unless they put it up on stilts. It's just ridiculously
expensive. How do we solve that problem?
M STARK-He's coming up next Tuesday for this project. Okay.
W 're going to go out and look at it Saturday. We decided
S turday at 10 o'clock we're going to have site visits. Anyway,
o so we're going to go out and look at this thing Saturday.
N Tuesday it's going to come up. He's going to want
Preliminary approval or whatever. Okay. What can you, just
b tween now and next Tuesday, can you tell us?
M . MUNSON-I can tell you one thing that Mark Kennedy is going to
went to see, as far as the permit, is adjacent driveways,
dl iveways on the other side of the street.
M STARK-This is just his plan right here. I mean, you've got
s many entrances and exits up there.
M BREWER-See, that's what we should ask him, George, when he
c mes to the meeting Tuesday. Say, Dave, give us a map of all
t e entrances and exits. I mean, he's not going to look at you
a Id say, well, gee, look at what I'm doing. I'm putting all that
g een space in the front. What green space? I mean, he's
p tting a little bit of lawn in. I mean, I'm not saying it's
n gative, but he's putting a little bit of lawn in here that
i,sn't here, and he's not losing anything. He's doing that
b..cause he likes it. He's not losing anything, believe me.
Mil. MUNSON-I mean, if the entrance is directly across here, it
w uldn't make sense to have an entrance here and an entrance
h~re, and just all that many more possible conflict points.
STARK-So you're saying, just quick, one entrance, one big
M . MUNSON-What I'm saying is, it would depend, somewhat, on what
t,e other entrances are in the area. If they're directly across
f-om his parcel, it wouldn't make sense for him to have these two
e,trances, if there's one directly in the middle on the other
s'de, because then there's all the people going every different
direction.
M\, BREWER-Okay.
M~. PALING-You want them aligned, is that the idea, rather than
o "fset?
M~. MUNSON-Rather than offset.
M. STARK-Lets just say, okay, we say, okay, Dave, you've got to
h ve one entrance. That means there's one coming in, two going
out. One for right, one for left, right?
MR. MUNSON-What I'm saying is, we'd have to see what the others
are in the area.
S. BRUNSO-There's a very narrow center turning lane, continuous
left turns.
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MR. STARK-That most people don't know enough to use.
MS. BRUNSO-No, most people don't know enough to use, and what
it's done is exactly the case where we have this accident I was
telling you about, where the truck is so close to the shoulder
that he really can't make that right hand turn, because you've
got to make such a wide turn, and the curb cuts are really quite
narrow. I think they're narrower than DOT really likes to see up
there, in order to capture as much parking spots.
MR. STARK-Well, in that Lake George outlet, they're not, about as
wide as this room.
MS. BRUNSO-What we talked about, see, the problem is, what is
this? Is this Market, this is the Log Jam.
MR. STARK-The Market Grill, or the Meeting Place is right there.
MS. BRUNSO-The Market Grill, yes. Both of these are so close, we
talked with Dave Kenny and his other colleagues up there, about
coming in just one place, and then making a driveway all the way
along here.
MR. BREWER-They don't want to do that. They want the grass in
front and the driveway in back, which is okay, but people aren't
going to know it's in the back.
MS. BRUNSO-Well, I mean, that's what the people in California
said, but if you notice now, all the new developments in
California are, they're right up against the highway, and people
know enough now to go, and you do that also. I just came back
from Scottsdale this summer, scottsdale, Arizona. All the
developments are up near the highway. There's a sidewalk in
front of them. There's a little bit of landscaping and the
parking is behind. It's off the road.
MR. MACEWAN-We talked that idea with K-Mart. That went over like
a you know what.
MS. BRUNSO-Well, but you did some good things with K-Mart. You
did, and Jim was new on the job and I was new on the job, and we
brought all our enthusiasm, and you people on the Planning Board
did some good things. You made them use joint driveways. You
opened up a driveway between the Furniture store the K-Mart.
MR. MACEWAN-Well, there's a classic example right there, if I may
interject that. When we talked to them and we wanted them to
have that drive between the Furniture store and them, their
representative came back to the Planning Board and said, if you
make us do that, we're going to pull the entire project, and
we'll look for some other town to put it in. We dug in our heels
and said, then we'll see you later. It was nice knowing you, and
they, obviously, are going to open this month.
MR. MUNSON-You guys are operating from such a position of power.
It's not that you have the power to permit or not, it's that
you've got customers driving down that road. They're not here
because they love your tax structure or because they love Route 9
or 254. They love it because there's cars coming down the road
and they're going to stop in their place. If you say no, they're
not going to go to Saratoga, because there's no one driving down
the road.
MR. STARK-He's got to be allowed to have at least one entrance.
MS. BRUNSO-What I was saying with them, and they agreed, they
agreed. The place really doesn't look very good up there.
MR. STARK-The lli2.!cl. place?
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MS. BRUNSO-Well, I mean the whole strip. The whole strip looks
ki d of crummy. It looks like an afterthought, and they were
ta king about putting in some sidewalks, putting ,in some
landscapes, putting in some sort of theme type lamps because the
ar.a is not ¡"-Jell lit up there eitheì-, and perhaps making some
crosswalks to sort of, so people would come into the area, park
th ,ir car, and then walk to the various stores. Kenny, and there
was somebody by the name of Eads.
MR. STARK-Do you know, for the amount of traffic up there, and
t at place is mobbed, there's not that many accidents, and the
accidents there are, are just fender benders. Somebody stops and
s mebody runs into them.
STARK-Yes, it is. I know, but I mean, there are, for the
a ount of traffic, there's not that many accidents.
HARLICKER-That's because the traffic's going so slow.
· MACEWAN-Are those outlets, all the properties up there, are
much locally owned? I mean, like, Dave Kenny owns a
· STARK-Wait a minute.
You mean own the outlets, or the
MACEWAN-I'm not talking about the stores. I'm talking about
property for the outlets.
STARK-Kenny owns his. Ed Moore owns his. The lady that owns
tie Lake George Outlet store is a Doctor in Westchester, all that
nd. Okay. The Factory Outlets, the guy that owns the Log Jam,
Dave White from Guilderland, but the other guy, he sold his
o t. the Log Jam Outlets. Mort Rosen owns Dunham's building
tl ere now, from New Hampshire.
M\. MACEWAN-I don't know~ This is just a thought, to get some of
t ese owners at some sort of informational meeting.
· STARK-Tried that for the sidewalk, the whole, they should
ve an eight foot wide sidewalk down each side.
M~. BREWER-We tried that when Dexter was in front of us, three
y,ars ago.
MUNSON-How often do these places come back for a change of
or expansion?
· HARLICKER-Not very often.
STARK-He is trying to internalize, here, you know, between
to the other to the other. That's something.
· BREWER-My question is, did DOT get a set of these plans yet?
not, how come?
BRUNSO-No. L haven't gotten them.
M,. HARLICKER-Well, they were sent out. I'm not sure when, but
y u're on the list of people to get them.
STARK-I got mine today.
ours today. So if we got ours today, you
today. I can guarantee you that.
BREWER-Well, I guess what I'm saying is, if they just went
today, and the meeting's Tuesday, how can they possibly?
HARLICKER-My guess is they got mailed out some time earlier
- 17 -
this week. Yours gets delivered.
MR. STARK-Yes, but they
to look at these plans.
don't even look at their mail, you know,
You're doing this monstrous region.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes. My responsibility is Warren/Washington County,
and the Town of Moreau, but I don't have just the State Highways.
I have, and I would quite gladly defer to Don Robertson to do the
State highways, because I have the 254's and the Bay Roads and
the Havilands and the other things, and plus the fact I'm trying
to write a long range plan, and do a transit plan and do a
bicycle plan, and try to do public participation. It's just all
the things that an MPO has to do.
MR. BREWER-So what we should do is ask for some guidance from DOT
on this, when we get it Tuesday night.
MR. PALING-I think so. Yes. This one, (lost word) the amount of
traffic this is going to generate, I would think, would be a
factor in the thinking.
MS. BRUNSO-Absolutely.
MR. STARK-I don't think there's going to be, there's going to be
an increase in traffic, or an increase of people wanting to go
there, because there's, what, four or five crummy stores there
now, one or two good stores. Here he's putting in 10 stores.
MR. MACEWAN-He's negotiating, preliminarily, to bring in some
upscale outlet stores, Sac's Fifth Avenue was one name he
mentioned, stores of that nature, but an outlet store is an
outlet store to me. It doesn't matter whether they sell two
dollar trinkets or whether they sell (lost word).
MS. BRUNSO-I know so many people who come up here to do their
Christmas shopping, and L do.
MR. BREWER-Wait'll K-Mart opens.
wouldn't believe it.
I was in there today, and you
MS. BRUNSO-Well, that's another problem. You mean the new K-
Mart? That's the other problem that we have coming along. Now,
I don't know, I'd like to have Steve finish doing this, his
access management.
MR. BREWER-Be aware that we're going to send this to DOT and
maybe get it to them tomorrow or the next day or whatever.
MS. BRUNSO-You see, Steve is dealing with Statewide issues and
policy issues, and, hopefully, he's getting a course together so
that he and Don Robertson can go marching off to Albany.
MR. BREWER-Well, then this should go to you. Correct?
MR. MUNSON-Well, it would come through me, and like I said, the
one thing I know that Mark Kennedy and in our Traffic Office is
going to want is he would want us to see what other entrances
there are, so he can make a determination on the safety issue.
MR. STARK-I'm sure he's aware of what other entrances there are,
because he's seen them many times.
MR. MUNSON-I'm sure he's seen them, but it still helps when
you're looking at the picture, and seeing how they relate. Let
me go on here, because I'm going to rip off some things pretty
quick. I got, I think, to where we're talking about access
management techniques, and from the Transportation, from the
Department's perspective, our techniques are pretty limited.
They're basically engineering techniques. We can limit the
number of conflict points. We can separate conflict points. We
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~
ca move, we can make the appropriate lane designations. In the
pa~t, we used to be able to add capacity, just to make a little
ro m for everybody, and I'll get back to that, but that's still
av~ilable. Our authority to require appropriate access
management of a developer really is conditioned on their work
pe mit. That's the only thing that we can do. If they want
access to the road, they've got to have a work permit. They've
qot to build access, and they've got to meet our standards, where
;ppropriate. We can't deny access, except on extremely limited
grounds, safety, some cases interference with traffic flow. We
c n do a lot more working through the towns, basically, than we
ccn on our own. We can do a lot more if there's a SECRA
r-quirement, or if there's a land use management plan or a master
plan, or an GElS. We can do a lot more under those conditions
t an we can if they just, if they have authority to build and
t~ey just come to us for a work permit. Okay. The next page has
a-cess management techniques. All of these techniques are
e~sentially available to look at, to a local government, to you
glYS and not to us.
1'1
BREWER-How about, what does regulate flag lots?
M
MUNSON-Flag lots are basically flag shaped lots.
1'1F. BREIrJER-I Know exactl),' what they are. You don't IrJant us to
h ve them?
M' MUNSON-We don't want you to have them.
Mf BREWER-Is the,-e justification fo,- that?
M:. MUNSON-Yes, because every narrow lot wants its own driveway.
( APE TURNED)
M,'. BRUNSO-And maybe somebody in here wants to put in a flag lot.
W ll, we make them redesign this, and what we don't want to see
l' a whole lot of cul-de-sacs, eventually, because that's what's
gc ing to happen in this aH,a that's a g,"owing area that's fairly
n.ar the intersection. So what we make these people do, we make
t em put in a road, and maybe they put it in here, and they put a
cJl-de-sac in here, but we also make them dedicate and deed over
t the Town a right-of-way here, so that when this piece of
p'operty is developed, back here, this guy can hitch up to here,
a,d actually create a through street. Now, the residents here
d n't want, they want to live on a cul-de-sac. They think it's
fer for their kids, and so what has happened is that we have, I
ve a set of instructions, or techniques here, called traffic
lming, that we've been passing out, at least I passed them out
a my own Planning Board, and let me just, here, you pass them
a-ound to everybody, because when you've got a developer like
t at, who only wants to build on a cul-de-sac, and he's afraid of
w1at the residents are going to say, he's not going to be able to
s 11 his lots for as much as he wants to, if they, if he can
enploy traffic calming techniques on the streets that are
e1entually going to go through, then he can allay the fears of
n~t being, having as high selling lots. I don't want you really
t look at this right now, but I want you to take it home and
r_ad it, and if you want me to come back and talk about it at a
1 ter time.
MACEWAN-I can see from the standpoint, and correct me if I'm
w'ong, but from Q.1!..'C. Town standpoint, this dedication of a right·..
of-way for the Town, I mean, our Town Highway Superintendent's
gone on record and said, he's not in the road building business.
He doesn't want to build roads.
MR. STARK-No. He's not building a road.
R. MACEWAN-But (lost word) if you've got that development on the
- 19 -
left already approved, he dedicates the thing. He's built out,
maxed out. Then the guy on the right comes and builds, who's
going to be responsible for tying in to that development?
MR. HARLICKER-The guy on the right. He'd have to tie into it.
MR. BREWER-The guy on the right.
MR. MACEWAN-That's going over like a you know what, too.
1"1R. BREWER-No.
MR. MACEWAN-I can hear
us, Tim. Why should I
existing development?
at that time?
these developers, and they've said
be responsible to tie into a road,
Why didn't you make that developer
it to
to an
do it
MR. BREWER-Because he was in first. The same exact thing we did
K-Mart with. We made him tie into Bobby Whipple's place, because
Whipple was there first. So you make him do it. If you don't
want to do it, don't build your development.
MR. STARK-One good thing is, we're just about maxed out on the
developments now. There is no more.
MR. MUNSON-He's basically arguing that it's the Town's
responsibility to spend money so that he can make money, and your
response is, no. It's our responsibility to see you have the
opportunity to make money, but not at our expense.
MS. BRUNSO-You know, when I was in Don's place, and I
particularly remember the Town of Brunswick, which is just behind
Troy, to the east of Troy, and I had three different developers
fighting over a piece of property along Route 7, and this was
prior to the recession. So they were, and they thought things
were going to continue to boom, and I remember those developers
telling me, there was one who did only developing in the state of
New York, and there was one guy from Michigan and California, and
another guy from Florida, and the guy's from California and
Florida told me, said, you guys in New York don't ask a lot of
your developers, if I was doing a (lost word), they would make me
build bridges, and they would make me build landscaping. They
would make me put in turning lanes and other things. They said,
you don't ask enough. The gUY from New York said, nobody in New
York ever asked (lost word). It just depends upon where you're
coming from. If you're in one of these growing states, and,
where you have a lot of people competing for land, those
developers are so eager to get in there, that they will put in
half a million dollars in infrastructure, and when the State of
New York wakes up and makes the developer put these things in,
it's going to work better for the Town, because your people have
already taxed yourself. You've already built the roads. What
you've got is developers coming in and taking advantage of money
that you've already put down on your land.
MR. PALING-You read the recent Supreme Court decision in this
,- ega r d?
MS. BRUNSO-Yes, I did.
about it.
Well, I haven't read it.
I've heard
MR. PALING-Okay. Well, I did. So maybe they're being too
extreme in California. We're not being enough and there is a
middle ground, but the purpose of that was to limit some of the
extreme requirements that have been put on developers. There was
just too much.
MR. ROBERTSON-Yes, but that was something that was, like, not
related to the development per se.
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~
~
MR. MUNSON-I mean, that decision that went down would not
pr hibit, in any sense, this kind of.
MR. PALING-Not something like this, no.
MR. MUNSON-All right. Let me go on. Essential authorities, on
th - next page. We have the Highway Work Permit, and we can be a
SE~RA involved agency. You have all kinds of power as SEQRA Lead
Ag~ncy, with comprehensive plan, and supporting powers, zoning
regulations, supporting powers, subdivision regulations, site
plan review permits. I'm just going to repeat again that, in
terms of developing an access management plan and really
providing good access, it's essentially a local responsibility.
MR. ROBERTSON-With DOT, our main requirement is that if a
developer comes in, they have to keep the same level of service
0\ our system that was there before, it has to be retained
atterwards, which, generally, a fairly larger development will
moan putting in a traffic light, putting in a turning lane,
things of that nature. We don't get into any requirements as to
wI at goes onto a town road or what goes onto a County road, or
t ings of that nature.
MF. MUNSON-Is there, when you say major development, are you
tclking about the 500 trip?
M ROBERTSON-No. We get into them with smaller ones, but I
man, 500 is very major in my estimation, because we've had one
i ¡ the last year, but the way it's written, it's either 500 one
w y trips coming in, or going out, during the peak hour of the
d velopment, which a Walmart doesn't make it and a K-Mart doesn't
m: ke it. The only type of things that make it are when yOU get
i to the planned developments of the large scale, where they're
t .lking offices. They're talking residentiall combined light
i Idustrial, maybe something of that nature. The one we have had
i the last year, the Town of North Greenbush, is looking to do a
d,velopment, but that's the only one that meets that standard,
b t we do get involved. Primarily it's through the Traffic
O·fice. Traffic is our law enforcement arm. The Highway Work
P·.rmit, they will not issue the Work Permit unless the developer
h's shown that he's keeping the same, again that term "level of
s.rvice". It's a qualitative measure of how the traffic is
f owing, and we do get into problems. We have a developer who
w'll downsize his development by the amount of space that would
h ve triggered him having to put in an extra lane. Latham Farms,
I'm sure you guys have heard of that, where they put in a
W lmart, a Sams, Dick's Sporting Goods. You can't walk from one
s:ore to the other. You have to drive your car, practically, but
t ley downsized from a 720,000 square foot mall, to just over a
7 0,000 square foot mall they were proposing, to 630,000 square
f et, because if they were a 700,000 square foot mall, that would
h3ve meant, the traffic generated from by that would have
r,quired adding a lane on, over the Northway, on the bridge at
E<it 7. So they made their project that much smaller. Then
s mebody comes in later, we're talking a 70,000 square foot mall,
and they're suddenly, well, in and of itself, that isn't a very
big thing, but they're immediately adjacent to Latham Farms, and
this is just the amount of space that Latham Farms downsized by.
S) it's a round about thing that's being worked out so that these
p ople can develop, the Town of Colony has an airport area
planned. They're contributing to that, which is a round about
way of addressing their.
MR. BREWER-Some contribution towards it.
MR. ROBERTSON-Yes. They're making a contribution to a
that is supposed to alleviate the traffic on that
They're making a contribution to that project. That's
hat's our law enforcement, is that we will maintain that
rf service. That's about the only club we really have.
project
bridge.
where,
level
- 21 -
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-
MR. MUNSON-I'm glad you raise that, because that leads on to the
next phase of the strategic considerations in here. These were
things that I considered, in putting together or making both the
specific and general recommendations which you made have seen for
the 9 and 254 Study. One of the very general recommendations
that I made there is that you consider developing an access
management plan on the Corridor for a larger basis, and that plan
would do a number of things. It would provide a, it would
address some of these strategic considerations. Those had to be
equitable. From my point of view. on a good access management,
when you're in a position where you've got bad capacity
conditions, poor safety, you generally have poor access
management. You don't come in and impose good access management
on the next customer, on the next developer, and assume that
you've got good access management. So you've got to address the
ones that are there and the ones that are coming. That has a
number of implications. One of the implications is an access
management has short, mid and long term steps. One is it's got
to provide clear signals to the people that are there and the
people that are coming, in terms of what's expected and what the
consequences are if they don't conform. That same phasing is, in
part, appropriate timing. If you have businesses who will be
damaging to be forced out of business in the near future. If you
provide them a 10 year signal, they've got a hell of a lot of
time to adjust to what's going to be required of them when (lost
word). Ten years is a long time for a small business. One of
the things you try to do is minimize costs. Anything extra isn't
minimizing costs if it comes out of their pocket, but you try to
reduce costs the way you can, and you try to allocate, get back
to the top, you try to allocate costs appropriately, based on
their proportional impact or benefit from the access plan. One,
I think, that's particular Planning Boards, Town Boards, is
you've got to balance the transportation benefits against all the
other considerations that, you know, you're economical
development, environmental protection, social, how the people in
the Town feel about it, and owner's rights. You can't, you're
going to find yourself with some court problems if you do that.
So that lead me all back to the conclusion I made, the general
recommendation I made. You can't look at just the, project that
I was looking at. You've got to look at this corridor and
probably the 254 and 9 Corridors in balance, and you might look
at a transportation overlay zone, or transportation development
district, or something like that. Now, I say that for a number
of reasons. If you look State wide, and you look over the past
10 or 15 years, you're going to see some things happening.
You're going to see that the amount of money that's available for
transportation infrastructure, roadway development, is declining.
You're going to see that Federal, State, and environmental
requirements, among others, are increasing, and really they're
suggesting that capacity solutions to the kinds of problems we
have now are going to be extremely difficult, and they're going
to be made more difficult by competition for limited State
dollars and Federal dollars for transportation. So, those three
trends are really going to restrict the kinds of solutions we've
been able to provide up to about 1985, 1987, where, I mean, if
you had a capacity problem, we Just added a lane. That's not
going to be available, even if you have the land in five or ten
yeay-s. That's ~ guess.
MR. STARK-Suppose the developer wants to pay for it themselves?
MR. MUNSON-Hey, come ahead. Come ahead.
MR. STARK-Or the Town wants to pay for it?
MR. MUNSON-Okay. That gets down to my next, and these things are
going to do something. They're going to limit development,
economic development, that's linked to State roads. No new
capacity. No new roads. Where are you going to put new
businesses, if they're already filled up? It's going to limit
- 22 -
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',,--,
--
ca acity improvements or any improvements that are linked to
po rly planned development, and if that doesn't happen, it's
going to shift the cost to local governments or the private
se~tor, okay. We're already doing that.
MR. STARK-You put a big development in.
You pay for it.
You need another road.
MR. MUNSON-And I'm going to say. We already do that. We already
h va a program now where we'll let, under certain conditions, and
it's not a big program, but we spent $60 or $70 Million on it,
wI ere we'll do a development with a Town, and they put up a hefty
s~are of cost, and I'll give you an example. There's a little
c se study, here, I wrote up, on the Town of Ulster, if you will
f ip to the map. Five or six years, well, longer than that,
U ster recognized that they had a problem along Route 9, near
wat's now the Hudson Valley Mall, and they approached the
D partment and said, hey, we'd like to increase capacity. We'd
l·ke to widen the road, and the Department kind of laughed, but
tley did a study, and the study said that, effectively, to get
tte kind of service that they wanted, it was going to cost about
$ 3 and a half million, and involve taking about 60 businesses,
olay, to widen, I think, a two mile stretch of 9W, and I don't
tl ink it v~as the cost, but I think it was getting a right-of-way
t lat the Department, I think, effectively said, you know, you
rt,ally need the project, but somehow we don't see it, if we're
9 ing to have to do it. In about 1988 or 1989, we started a cost
staring program, and the Town came to the Department and said,
h ,y. how about if we build the local road that provides us,
p,ovides you with the same kind of capacity relief on 9W? Will
Y')U put up some of the money? It was kind of an interesting
c ncept for the Department to be asked to put up money for a
I cal road, but they looked at the capacity relief, and they
sid, ask us a little bit different, and the answer would be yes.
S. . basically, what the Department agreed to do was to put up $2
m.llion to build three intersections, two on Route 9 and one on
R ute 32. The Town put up $10 million to build, I believe, four
a d a half miles of road, the dark line, and the connector roads
f-om Route 9 to this new road. Now the dotted lines, part of a
l.rger transportation plan that the Town's eventually getting at,
b t, basically, we said, you've got bad access management
c nditions. They're so bad, we can't get the right-of-way.
O,ay, and if the Town hadn't come up with this solution.
MACßJAN-How did the Jov.!.D.. end up ~Jetting a ri9ht-of-v~ay?
M MUNSON-They Town didn't have to get the right-of-way.
w~nt to the property owners and said, can we develop
p'operty, you're going to have to kick in.
They
your
M. MACEWAN-What would he do if the property owner's property is
already maxed out and developed?
MUNSON-Out here, it was all unbuilt. It was only built along
Corridor.
M,. STARK-If you're going to have a problem, like on Corinth
R ad, from the City line to Carl R's. How many houses are there.
There's only a few businesses, but there's houses right next to
the road, a big problem.
M,. MACEWAN-It's quickly becoming commercial through there,
though.
STARK-Well, but it's a big problem, though.
BRUNSO-But that, we
we are going to be
since 1999.
are going to two lane that road, which
taking some of the people's (lost word)
- 23 -
- .-
,
MR. STARK-But that, you're going to walk out of your front door
and step off the curb into the road. I mean, the houses are
going to be worth nothing. You might better just take all the
houses.
MS. BRUNSO-See, (lost word) where a land use plan says, okay,
this is what I tell, if you have a land use plan, and you say,
this is where we expect them to go. This is where we can
accommodate them. You say, this is what's going to happen in
five years. This is what we expect to happen in ten years, and
yo let people adjust to that.
MR. STARK-Okay. You're telling me 1999, now. I had no idea that
that was going to, did you know that, Craig, that that was going
t.o be built up?
MR. MACEWAN-I heard talk, but 1 didn't know that there was any
plans.
MR. STARK-See, we didn't know anything about this.
MS. BRUNSO-It's in there.
MR. MACEWAN-This here?
MS. 8RUNSO-Yes, it is.
MR. MACEWAN-Yes, well this is what we just got when we saw you
the last time.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes.
MR. STARK-Okay. You're going to, you plan on, right now, doing
that in 1999? Well, okay.
MS. BRUNSO-Wait a minute.
engineering in 1999.
1 think they're beginning the
MR. BREWER-So the year 2010 the road will be built.
MR. MUNSON-Hey, that's one of the reasons that
with towns, because we can go to them. They say
build a local road to provide us with relief.
They can do it five years faster than we can.
I like working
they're going to
We say, g,-eat.
MR. STARK-Right now, I would think the State doesn't have any
money to do anything, or very darn little.
MR. MUNSON-If you looking at capacity, we're certainly much more
limited than. I've got to step back here. I've been with the
Department for less than a year and a half.
MR. STARK-I'm surprised they're doing as much paving as they're
doing, for the money.
MR. MUNSON-Well, that's part of the management. I mean, taking
care of that pavement is as effective as building a new lane, in
a lot of situations. I mean, there's no reason to let it, it's
much more cost effective to maintain what you've got, than it is
to build something new.
MR. STARK-They did one heck of a job on the Northway.
of course, that didn't come out of New York State money.
that was Federal money.
That is,
I think
MR. MUNSON-These local things that I've been talking about, we're
really looking at more and mo,-e, at least ~ unit is, right now
we're in negotiation on a $20 million project in Southeast. They
want it, and we said pretty much what we said to the Town of
ulster, we're not going to get all that right away. The Town is
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.'ì,~
-./
go'ng to provide us with $6 million worth of right-of-way.
MR. STARK-Let me ask you a question, get back to Guido's
prJperty. Okay. Guido, he's going to put a bowling alley up
th3re, I think, eventually, and he's going to spend a lot of
money, and Guido's got a lot of money to do these projects.
You're coming north down the hill on Route 9, okay. You're
worried about deceleration and acceleration, stop and go. Lets
assume he had one entrance there. Could you make the
recommendation that he puts a right hand turn lane into there so,
I'm coming north and I want to turn into Guido's, whatever he's
g-t in there. I pull off into the right hand turn lane. Now the
right hand turn lane, he didn't have that, he graded a couple of
h ndred thousand yards in there, I mean, to put a right hand turn
l·ne in wouldn't cost him thirty, forty grand, probably.
MUNSON-Well, that's certainly something to consider.
M ,. STARK-Would you rather see a right hand turn lane in there,
no?
M . MUNSON-I hate to be put on the spot. I mean, I would say I
w(uld rather have it than have them have those cars exiting off a
s ngle lane, yes, if there's a lot of traffic.
STARK-Okay. That's something we never even considered.
M'. ROBERTSON-Left hand turns usually cause more of a conflict
tha n right ha nd tunlS.
MACEWAN-But see the problem with that particular site,
ough, George, was that he was adamantly opposed to having only
s, ngle access serving that site.
STARK-Well, the thing is, you're coming over that hill,
b!cause I drive the road 10 times a day, and nobody goes 40, but
n body goes, really, 55. Usually they go right around 47 to 50,
r'ght, because the cops don't pick you up until you go 50, okay.
S , as you"re coming over past Kay's Motel, if there was a right
h-nd turn lane going into the single entrance, that would be
b,tter than this having. .
M~. MUNSON-Let me kind of present the bottom line, at least from
m perspective, and the bottom line, for me, is if you get the
o~portunity, you really should press for some access management
p)licies and standards, so a plan. Not just access management,
bJt a good transportation plan for these corridors,
M . STARK-From who?
M,. MUNSON-Well, if the powers of the Town's to enforce it, then
the plan should come from the Town. Now, we're kind of pushing
the Department to try and get some joint planning, I mean, real
joint planning done, but you cannot, unless you have good
policies and standards, and you've got a plan, you're going to
have the same problems you have right now, in dealing with every
develope'r.
R. ROBERTSON-What the MPO in the Capital District area, CDTC,
Capital District Transportation Committee, has worked with a
rumber of municipalities, particularly the Town of Colonie, where
they have looked at an area, and they have one called the Albany
,irport area GElS, but they have made a projection as to what
improvements will be, you know, what development will come over
the years. They don't know exactly, but they have a general idea
f how things are going to develop, and where that development
ill be, and as a result, what sort of highway improvements will
e needed over the next 10, 15 years. What they have done with
that is said, okay, we're going to improve the Albany/Shaker Road
oute 7 intersection. That intersection improvement is going to
- 25 -
cost $2 million. By doing that $2 million improvement we will
. ,
lncrease the capacity of that intersection by 500 vehicles. You
are going in, there's a development coming in. He is going to,
this developer is going to be adding 100 vehicles to that
intersection. He is eating up 20 percent of the added capacity.
He would be assessed 20 percent of the cost of that improvement.
MR. STARK-You're talking right by Keeler?
MR. ROBERTSON-Yes. Okay. This is just as an example. I don't
know the particulars on it, but that's what they have done in
this case. They carry it out to the fact where, if a medical
office is going in, that they're talking about producing 10 trips
during the peak hour, they say, three would go through this
intersection. So you have to pay three five hundredths of
whatever improvement is here. Six are going through this
intersection. You pay six one hundredths of what~
improvement, and they carry it right out, and then they go back
afterwards and they actually take counts, during the hours. They
make a preliminary assessment. It's going to cost you $432,618.
Afterwards, we'll go back and do traffic counts, and it'll be
either adjusted up or adjusted down, based on the actual traffic.
It's a very involved process, and that one is mostly a venture
between the Town of Colonie and CDTC. We are starting to get
involved, as a Department, in the North Greenbush area. We're
trying to get CDTC, the Town, DOT, to come up with some sort of a
plan, because we're going to be building a highway from just east
of the Hudson River. You go up the hill. I don't know if you've
ever noticed, they were, at one time, planning to build a road
from the Empire State Plaza that would have connected through
t.hat area.
MR. STARK-It stops down at Broadway and Rensselaer.
stops.
It just
MR. ROBERTSON-Right. Yes, the bridge to nowhere, but they did
put in the grading. They put in the stubs of ramps. We are
going to build a road from that area up to where Washington
Avenue and Route 4 join. Eventually, that road is expected to
continue up to Hudson Valley, be a reliever for Route 4. Well,
the Town is already talking about, you're going to build a road
this far, we have just approved this big development just north
of where that road would be. There's going to have to be all
sorts of improvements to the system, and so we're looking to work
with the Town and with CDTC, as far as developing a management
plan.
MR. STARK-Going through Rensselaer's going to
hassle, right up through, past st. John's and
t.here.
be the biggest
right up through
MS. BRUNSO-I don't have the ITE Manual here, but my guess is that
this building, on a normal p.m. peak hour, is going to add about
450 cars already.
MR. STARK-More than what's there now.
MS. BRUNSO-More than what's there.
MR. STARK-Well, he'll come back and argue, well, we're taking
down some buildings that have a certain amount of traffic. So
you've got to subtract them out then.
i"1S. BRUNSO-Yes.
MR. BREWER-George, those buildings that are there, how much
traffic do they get?
MR. STARK-They don't get anything. I'm just saying.
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MR. BREWER-Okay. What are we going to take out?
MR. STARK-Three cars.
MR. BREWER-Ten cars, twenty cars?
MR. STARK-I'1a){.
MR. MACEWAN-We have to be realistic.
what he puts on paper (lost word).
MC. BRUNSO-8ut the thing is, that doesn't do anything. That
d esn't tell you anything about what's going to happen on a rainy
d;::y in AU9ust.
I mean, lets not look at
M·. STARK-Yes, it does. The traffic's stopped now. It's going
tr be stopped then. What difference does it make?
M . BREWER-I would still like to see if you could get some simple
glidelines as to what kind of development indicates that we need
seme kind of improvement. Is there such a thing, a statistic,
s me simple value?
1"1 . STARK-HOlfJ
\~ n' t impn)ve
can you ask him
it.
to improve the road?
1 mean, he
M
BREWER-Or limit the curb cuts, let me say it that way.
M
STARK-Well, you could do that.
ROBERTSON-There are all kinds of guidelines and standards. 1
you \ see some that come from ITE that say, under these
nditions, no more than one driveway. every three hundred feet,
der these conditions, these speeds.
M BREWER-Are those available to us?
M ROBERTSON-They should be, certainly, some of them are in the
p¡blication that I thought I gave Jim.
M<. BREWER-Can we get some of that for the Board members?
ROBERTSON-But I go back to the point that I'm making. If
u're only dealing with Q..D.Q. development, or even two
velopments, or even developments on a quarter mile stretch of
rJad, you're doing yourself a disservice if yoU only look at
tlose guidelines. They are more helpful than nothing, but you've
t to deal with that whole road.
BREWER--E:~act 1 y .
M ROBERTSON-Eventually. Bob mentioned the GElS. We really
think that's a very useful idea, and it's something that you can
h ve paid for, in effect, by a larger developer who comes in.
YJU can require that they participate in a (lost word) actually,
a GElS, for a corridor, for appropriate corridor.
MR. BREWER-I think our Ordinance only says we can, it's up to
$1,000, or something, expenses we can ask of the applicant.
MS. 8RUNSO-You may have to change those.
R. BREWER-Or would that be considered engineering, or some kind
of stud,!'?
i"R. ROBERTSON-In the project's that I'm involved in, in this
I lster one, and some others, we do something similar. We do a
'ransportation impact study on a corridor, and in effect what
this solution here, where the Town built the road, what they came
ut with was a method of financing in which all the businesses,
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and effectively the residences in the area, were put in a, what
they called a Transportation Improvement District, and were
assessed for the bonding period, which I think was 20 years,
based on two factors. One was the amount of trips that they were
generating in the peak hour, the total number of trips, and the
other was on the value of their land, the assessed value of their
property in respect to the total assessed value of the property
in the district, and what that did was really. It does really
two things, which really captured this undeveloped property up
there. It captures all major developers that are coming in, or,
in fact, are there. The ones that generate the most trips pay
the largest share, and the ones who get the greatest increase in
their property value from having this property accessible, or
having improved capacity on Route 9 also pay a larger cost. So
it captured both existing businesses and new businesses. It
captured people who got a benefit from their property, which they
otherwise would have gotten for free if the State or Town had
gone in and built the road at their own expense, or at the
taxpayers' expense. So it was, it's kind of a nifty idea, and a
GElS, in the same kind of system, could well suit your purposes
here, if that's what you wanted, but I will make a pitch. I
think an access management plan or a transportation management
plan is really important here. You guys must just be getting
killed with development.
MR. STARK-It's just about over now. Just about all the places in
Town are.
MR. BREWER-There's a lot of land left, George.
MR. STARK-Well, not along these corridors, I'm talking about.
MR. HARLICKER-We're going to get a lot of second generation
stuff, like places like this get torn up.
MS. BRUNSO-Let me show you where it's coming. This is Route 32,
and this is Dix Avenue, and this is K-Mart.
MR. STARK-What's Route 32?
MS. BRUNSO-Highland Avenue.
MR. STARK-Highland is Route 32?
MS. BRUNSO-This is Route 32, yes. This is Route 4. This is your
next, I can feel it. This is your next development corridor.
Now, this is Queensbury and this is Kingsbury, but what yoU
people should tell Jim to do is to really press GFTC to do a
corridor study for you of this area in here, and I understand
McDonald's wants to come here.
MR. MACEWAN-That's being surveyed right now.
guys.
MR. HARLICKER-They just came in and picked up a site plan
application.
I've noticed the
MR. STARK-The local guy, or another guy?
MR. HARLICKER-The guy from McDonald's Corp.
MS. BRUNSO-All right, and you're going to have a Burger King in.
You're going to have a Taco Bell in. You're going to have.
MR. MACEWAN-You're going to have Earltown being developed here
soon.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes, you are.
MR. STARK-Eventually.
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MS. BRUNSQ-So, what you need is a corridor study, together with
ro ds that the developers can build. You need somebody to tell
yo what the future of Route 32, Dix Avenue is over here.
MR. STARK-Dix Avenue is maxed out right now, just about.
MS. BRUNSQ-No, it isn't.
MR. STARK-I'm talking about
there's businesses right there.
road hold?
going to Hudson Falls.
How much more traffic
I mean,
can that
MC. BRUNSO-A big developer comes in, and he'll just knock down
tIe old, cheap properties, and he'll put 400 more cars on that
r ad. There's no room for 400 cars, so what we're going to have
t do is make that developer add lanes to that road. Now,
probably the State will come in and do Route 32. This is Route
3. over here. This is Route 4. The State will probably come in,
a some future time, like 20 years from now, and four lane this
r ad down here, but you want to know how much to require of these
b sinesses to set back. So that the widening of this road is not
inpacting these businesses.
1'1 '
STARK-I think we do that right now, don't we?
M
HARLICKER-Certain roads, yes.
M.. STARK-You can't be 25 feet from the front, or, you know,
y( u've got to be back.
M,). BRUNSO-Yes, and there should be a plan, if this is Queensbury
(~\'enue and t.his is 254, and this is Route 4 over here, there
S ould be plans for intersecting roads, because this is going to
b(, a de'v'eloping a'"ea. There's going to be a lot. of commercial
a d a lot of industrial development down here. You should know
it's going to be, what. you're going to make the developers
d in this area. Why should the Townspeople pay for this? Why
nJt make the people who are going t.o make the profit on the land
d it?
. ROBERTSON-I think the day is coming when the State is going
t) say, you're going to have to pay for your local traffic. I
m~an, you can plan anything you want, but if you want a road or
f ur lanes up there, if 50 percent. of that t.raffic is local,
y u've got to pay 50 percent.
STARK-Queensbury can afford it.
M,. ROBERTSON-Yes.
what we're saying.
That's what we're saying. That's actually
MS. BRUNSO-Here's an article on a Town that's grappling with the
same project.s, the same sort of.
MR. STARK-Then you've got the fire, and you've got the lighting
dist.rict. and the sewer dist.rict now, and the library tax.
~R. ROBERTSON-Most of your revenues are sales tax revenues,
right?
BREWER-Sales tax.
R. BRUNSO-Sut, you know, these big corporations come in, and you
hink, they tell you they're going to increase t.heir share of the
own taxes, but by the time you add the sewers and the lights,
he added police, the added fire protection, and maybe it just
coesn't happen when one K-Mart comes in, but when you've got a
arget store in there on the ot.her side, and maybe you get one of
hose big furniture stores coming in, I mean, you're going to
ave to add people.
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MR. ROBERTSON-I've watched two towns go broke over the last two
years, because they gave tax credits. They're, essentially, in
receivership with the Comptroller now.
MR. BREWER-I pay more taxes on my house than a company that made,
I don't know how many millions in profits, billions in profit
last year, and they own 34 acres of land. I own two and a half
acr es .
MR. ROBERTSON-That's really too bad. I don't know how most.
MR. STARK-WhQ are you talking about?
MR. BREWER-Native Textiles. They pay $1500 a year of taxes.
MR. STARK-Where, up there?
1'1R. BREWER-Yes.
MR. ROBERTSON-But I wish the State would say, we're going to do
away with those credits.
MR. STARK-Then they'd go to some other State.
MR. BREWER-Let them go.
MR. ROBERTSON-It's not that. Most of them aren't coming here
because of your taxes, and they're not going to leave because of
your taxes. They're coming here because you represent a good
market.
MR. BREWER-And the location.
MR. STARK-Well, in this case, he's talking about Native Textiles.
They don't sell anything local.
MR. BREWER-They don't generate anything local.
MR. ROBERTSON-I'm not so opposed to them if they create jobs that
might be created some place else, I mean, out of State.
MR. BREWER-The thing of it is, they wouldn't be created some
place else, because their factory is in Glens Falls, and they
wanted to build another plant so they wouldn't have to ship back
and forth.
MR. STARK-We're talking three miles apart, or four miles apart
maybe.
MR. BREWER-Yes, versus Pennsylvania, where they were. So who's
benefitting, us or them? I think them.
MS. BRUNSO-I (lost word) receivership.
MR. ROBERTSON-Receivership is the wrong term, but one of them was
Wallkill, two years ago, and I know that because when, I got
involved with them with the Department, because I know a lot
about local finance, but when they asked me to participate in
this program, one of the things I said was, did you look at these
town finances before you started to do projects with them, and
they said, no. So I went back and took a look, and r said,
Wallkill's going to go down, and they did. They have, their
budget is 130 percent of their gross receipts, gross revenues.
That includes revenues from all sources.
MR. STARK-It's a good way to operate. It's just like the State,
just like the Federal government.
MR. ROBERTSON-So the only bonding that they're allowed to do is
deficit bonding. No infrastructure bonding. No facilities
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bOìding.
MR. BREWER-Well, just look what happened to C.B. Sports in the
City of Glens Falls.
MR. STARK-That was a beautiful deal. This guy's a crook, though.
MR. BREWER-It doesn't make any difference whether he's a crook or
not.
M'. MACEWAN-The circuit board manufacturer, too, which is now the
C'ty DPW's garage there. They did the same thing with them. I
c"n't think of the name of the company. They ended up going
b-lly up and they moved out. It's where the City of Glens Falls
DEpartment of Public Works is now.
MACEWAN-Yes, but the business was in that building.
BREWER-The City bought that from Claude Charlebois.
STARK-Let me tell you what's going
nght, he's going to come in. So some
g ,ing to say, well, we ,-eally can't ,-ule
a traffic study, or we want this or we
ol'inion from you people, okay, and you're
o inion by Tuesday night.
to happen, okay. Tuesday
people on the Board are
on this because we want
want that. We want an
not prepared to give an
M.'. BRUNSQ-No, but we can fax you over something that says, this
b ilding is of such size that we are not prepared to give you an
a swer until a traffic impact study is done, and we have had a
Cìance to review it.
. STARK-Then these guys are going to go running right to the
wn Board.
BREWER-Let them run, George.
STARK-No, no. Listen, okay. This is probably what's going
happen, isn't it? I mean, the Queensbury Businessman's
A sociation is going to go running right to the Town Supervisor,
y u know, we're doing this. We're eliminating a curb cut. We're
p tting green space. We're internalizing traffic, blah, blah,
blah. Why should we have to have a traffic impact study, you
know. We didn't need one for Dexter across the street.
BREWER-Yes, they did.
MS. BRUNSO-Yes, they did.
MR. STARK-Okay. Well, okay. Dexter didn't get built. Here's
this thing, the same size, actually a little smaller. It's not
going to impact more than Dexter did, supposedly, blah, blah,
blah. So the Town Board's going to get after the Planning Board.
then do the improvements that Dexter was going
BRUNSO-Yes.
STARK-Well, I don't know. I don't recall what Dexter had to
What did Dexter have to do?
BREWER-They had to do a lot of stuff. They had to put a turn
ane in. They had to put a cross walk, a new light.
BRUNSQ-Yes. They had
:ntersection of 149. This
'ntersection of 9 and 254.
quite a bit
is about 700
of impacts at
feet dov.Jn from
the
the
R. MACEWAN-Probably not even that far.
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MR. BREWER-That's why we're appointed, George. There shouldn't
be any political pressure, and the Town Board calls you up and
pressures yOU, tell them to go pound salt. You're doing your job
as best you can for the Town, not for individuals.
MR. ROBERTSON-It seems to me that it's
development of such size, we've asked
look at it. They've recommended a TIS.
the traffic impacts of that development.
perfectly fair to say, a
the Department to take a
That until you know what
MR. STARK-You can't, I don't care. You can come up with anything
you want to come up with, okay, legitimately. What's he going to
do about it? He can't do anything to control.
MR. BREWER-He can eliminate a curb cut, George.
MR. STARK-Okay. I'm saying, we make him go in with one curb cut,
Tuesday night. You can only have one curb cut. Redesign your
plans, whatever. Okay. Fine. What else can he come up with to
eliminate traffic on that road?
MR. BREWER-We're not asking
road. We're asking him to
bet te,' .
him to eliminate traffic on that
make a bad situation a little bit
MR. STARK-He has already, though. I mean, you want more now?
MR. BREWER-Yes.
I'1R. STARK-Okay.
MS. BRUNSO-Actually, what he can do is.
MR. MACEWAN-Well, I've got to raise the point,
think that he's making a bad situation better?
project has doubled the amount of cars going in
existing plaza that's there now.
what makes you
This proposed
and out of the
MR. STARK-Doubled? It's quadrupled many times, but, I'm saying,
he's internalizing what he can. He's eliminating a curb cut.
Maybe he's going to eliminate two curb cuts. Okay.
MR. BREWER-But what you have to remember, George, is,
granted his internalizing, but what he's internalizing
something that was never there. I mean, there was never
traffic (lost word) Plaza to speak of.
he's,
is
any
MR. STARK-No. The people are going to go from one outlet to the
other outlet to the other outlet, once they learn it's there, and
they'll learn it's there.
MR. ROBERTSON-I don't think that your options are just limited to
right here. You've got to know what's going on down the street,
what's designed across the street.
MF~. STARK-Yes, but I mean, what can he do about a place that he
doesn't own?
MS. BRUNSO-Let me tell you what he can do. All right. We are in
the process, Dexter's was supposed to improve the intersection of
Route 9 and 254. I believe that whole intersection problem IS
coming up in 1999, in 1998. Actually, next year they're
beginning the engineering for that. He can contribute toward
building some of those extra turning lanes that he's going to
add, and there's no reason in the world why he shouldn't do that.
MR. STARK-You're saying, okay, contribute $100 grand to, I'm just
pulling these numbers out of the hat, $100 grand to a couple of
right turn lanes? Is that what you're saying?
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MS. BRUNSO-Yes.
~1R. STARK-Okay.
MS. BRUNSO-But the point is, if we get these plans, now this is
not enough, because we need to know what the surrounding
pr perties are. If we get these plans, we can take them to our
engineers and we can look at the planning perspective of this,
and we can say to him, there's already so much traffic up there.
There's not enough space on the road for you to build 52,458
square feet. Maybe the only thing you can do is build 24,000
s uare feet, and he's going to say, wholly mackerel, what should
I do all that work for? And maybe they can come up with some
m"tigating factor that can be applied in this case, but the only
tr i ng that Q..IdI... consul ti ng engi neer IrJould do for this whole side
o , east side of Route 9, is to come up with a scheme for putting
a road in the back, and it's a difficult procedure to do that.
M . STARK-You can come up with all the plans you want, but who's
g ing to pay for the road? I mean, nobody's going to pay for
t ¡at road to go around the back.
8RUNSO-Well, of course, they were going to ask the developer,
people who already have their businesses along here, to pay
that.
M,. MACEWAN-And what happen:::.; if they don't? I mean, I can really
s e you approaching all these developers up there who already
h ve existing businesses, who honestly probably really don't care
w at the traffic is on the road, if it's bottlenecked, because
i~'s slowed down. It gives more people an opportunity to look at
t-ìeÜ stc))-es. That's the way the!, look at it, I think. I
r 'ally, honestly, believe that's the way they look at it. They
d n't care that traffic flows smoothly through that corridor.
Tìey want traffic at a crawl, so they can see that, wow, there's
a Swank store. There's a Corning store. Lets go in here. The
1 st thing they want is traffic moving through there at 40, 45
miles an hour.
M\. STARK-If you put a four lane road there like, say, Quaker
RJad, everybody goes 50 miles an hour down Cuaker Road, 45, 50.
M.. BREWER-I think not. I think because, people are going to
know that they're there, and they're going there, they're not
going up Route 9 to 254 just to drive up that road. They're
going there for a reason. So I think if you put a four lane or a
ten lane highway, you're still going to have the same amount of
traffic, because people are going to those malls.
R. ROBERTSON-Well, there's a certain amount of, you know, the
five or ten percent, depending on what kind of a store, that's
,ust drop ins.
R. MACEWAN-Has there ever been
zlternate exit off the Northway
,xit just serving this corridor
it east bound 149?
any discussions about making an
just to service 149? Like an
of Route 9, there's an exit to
BRUNSO-See, Exit 20 was put where it was because it's
,elatively flat, relative to Exit 9. If you look behind Dexter,
,ou're looking straight up the hill, and you can't do it. 50,
xit 20 can be redesigned. We're already up to 5ix and a half
r illion at Exit 19, in its redesign.
STARK-And that's not due for, what, another three, four
¡ ea,íS"
IS. 8RUN50-It starts in '97, because DOT has a regulation that
:'ays, if you're going to rebuild a structure. it better be good
~nough to carry the traffic for the next 30 years. 50 now we've
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already got five lanes on that bridge, and a sidewalk for the
kids. It's got to be two and a half higher than it is now.
MR. BREWER-We were told seven feet.
MR. STARK-We were told seven, seriously.
MS. BRUNSO-Who told you that?
MR. STARK-Mike Brandt, as a matter of fact. Didn't he say that?
MR. BREWER-Jim Martin did. Isn't that what we were told?
MR. STARK-We were
can't they go up
ramp, you know,
about that, then.
told that, and then Naylor said, well, why
the off ramp, and then go back down the exit
and that didn't fly. So everybody had a fit
MS. BRUNSO-But the point is that if we're going to 'build an exit
now, why build an exit that's too small?
MR. STARK-No. You build way over capacity.
MR. MACEWAN-So you're going to have two lanes each way with a
middle turning lane, or something? What is the fifth lane for?
MS. BRUNSO-You have two lanes going west so that they can turn
south, in order to accommodate the traffic, and one through lane.
Going west, you have three lanes. You have two going to the
Northway, southbound. You have to come over the bridge, stop at
that stupid light, and then turn south.
MR. MACEWAN-Two lanes getting on the southbound entrance.
MR. STARK-There's only one lane there now, on the road. No,
there is two, isn't there.
MR. MACEt,.JAN-No, but she's sayi ng, two lanes to get on to the
Northway, with one lane going straight west.
MR. STARK-Yes, so that's three, that's five.
MS. BRUNSO-Two coming the other way.
MR. BREWER-(lost word) and they only put one lane going on to the
NO)- thway .
MS. BRUNSO-No. You can't build any additional lanes until we
knew what the design for Exit 19 was going to be, and we looked
as hard as we could into a right turn clover leaf there, but we'd
have to take out one of the school buildings to do that.
Otherwise, we'd have to tighten up the curve so tight, we can
assure you that there will be tractor trailers that will turn
over there.
MR. BREWER-Are we done? To wrap up?
MS. BRUNSO-Yes.
On motion meeting was adjourned.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Timothy Brewer, Chairman
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