2014-03-20 - SP Mtg 11 SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 841
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING MTG#11
MARCH 20TH, 2014
7:00 P.M.
BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT
SUPERVISOR JOHN STROUGH
COUNCILMAN ANTHONY METIVIER
COUNCILMAN BRIAN CLEMENTS
COUNCILMAN DOUG IRISH
COUNCILMAN WILLIAM VANNESS
TOWN OFFICIALS
Craig Brown, Director of Zoning & Planning
Stu Baker, Senior Planner
Caroline Barber, Town Clerk
Press: Glens Falls Post Star
Supervisor Strough called meeting to order and lead the Pledge of Allegiance
Public Forum—Main Street Zoning
SUPERVISOR STROUGH-Okay, we are here today to hear what the public has to say about
Main Street and what is your opinion on its current zoning or how it should be zoned. We want
you to share your thoughts with the Town Board and like I said, if some of you have just come in
and haven't signed up, I left a clipboard up there, please print your name in the order in which
you speak, to make it easy for our Town Clerk, Caroline. We all wish for a development strategy
that's going to make the most sense, which has the strongest economic and fiscal implications,
which offers the most livability, sustainability and vitality. We all want Main Street that presents
to resident and visitor alike, a kind of development that we be proud of, that offers a beautiful,
functional entry to our town and to our downtown, Glens Falls. This is the first of four meetings
that will explore development strategies. The next meeting is next Thursday, 7 PM, right here.
The topic will be Complete Streets. We'll talk about the kinds of development that enable safe
and convenient access pedestrians, and for bicyclists, for parents and their children. How can
streets and the development next to it be convenient for all users. What elements of design,
construction and operation would best serve for environmental suitability. And for next week's
program, we wish to thank Glens Falls Hospital's Creating Healthy Places to Live, Work& Play
for funding next week's program. The third meeting will also be here and will also be at 7 PM,
and it will be held Wednesday, April 16t1i The presentation and workshop will be about
planning for economic and fiscal health; it will be sponsored by the Town of Queensbury and
Smart Growth America, the program you'll see on April 16th was made possible through a grant
from the EPA, the EPA's Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities. And the last and fourth
meeting will be like a culmination meeting, it will be an opportunity for all of us to pull together
our thoughts, to summarize our thoughts and move our Main Street program forward in a way
that the consensus wants. Also present at the meeting tonight is Stu Baker, our Senior Planner
and Craig Brown, Director of Planning and Zoning and Caroline Barber, our Town Clerk. The
Town Clerk is responsible for making sure that this meeting has minutes. So, when you do
speak, that's why I have asked you to sign up, we will have your name and it's legible. Speak
clearly and into the mic. The speakers on this side of the room don't work, they do on that side
but as you can see, it still works in general. We've got a tape player here, we've got a tape
recorder there but we can't depend on them. This is not a meeting for discussion; this is a
meeting for input. Now, if you do have a technical question, we have our Director of Planning
and Zoning and we have our Senior Planner here. Okay, so they would be best to give you an
answer. So, without further ado and I'll call you in order, Don Daniels is the first to sign up and
speak.
DON DANIELS-I guess over the past five years or so, that we've had this great recession, not
quite a depression I guess, the President, and the Governor, and the Supervisors, and the Mayors
of towns, they've all said the small entrepreneur is the backbone of the country. One of the
problems with this zone is, if you want the small entrepreneur, who usually doesn't have very
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 842
much money, when they come in and run up against this wall of resistance, so of speak, it takes
the heart out of them sometimes, because they don't have enough money to go through to
completion to even get their foot in the door. I don't know if you five gentlemen, I don't know
of anybody else that's at those tables, has ever opened a business or had to pay sales tax or pay
payroll taxes and have people working and maybe the Town Board that was here five years ago
and ten years ago when this was talked about, it's not easy for the small entrepreneur to get
going. And then we also have, I see a couple of our real estate people here, there was some talk
several months ago about a Dollar Store, whether that would be appropriate or not, but they
wanted a single story building. There's a lot of chain operations, they certainly seem to have all
the money, they are not the small entrepreneur and they are not the ones that the President is
talking about. If there's supposedly millions of small entrepreneurs that want to get foothold,
this kind of zoning really stops them in their tracks and to get through the maze of paperwork
and everything else, they're usually broke and out of business, you know, before they even get
their business started. So, whatever kind of new ideas that come up, I have four different
buildings out here in West Glens Falls and one of the things that I thought about in the zone, is
making changes to my buildings, I don't want to put on a second story. I might be willing to
spend a hundred thousand dollars to put an addition on one of my buildings, but I don't want to
spend a half million dollars putting another story on top of my buildings, I just would not be able
to rent out the properties or operate the properties, at any kind of a profit and keep people in
there. So those are some of my comments.
JOHN REILLY-I have spoken to this Board and to prior Boards about the continued
development on both sides of Exit 18 over the past ten years. My comments tonight are intended
to help our current Board in their decisions with respect to continuing, continuing growth in the
area. The planning and the design of the redevelopment of Main Street involved private
consulting firms, multiple governmental bodies and a Citizen Advisory Board. It was a decade
long effort to ensure that the best possible outcome with a clear focus on how the new
infrastructure of Main Street could help businesses succeed in growing over the next twenty to
forty years. Those efforts included zoning changes and street scape design concepts and the
natural and continuing transformation from residential to commercial use of land, all within the
limits that the roadway dictates. What I see is a major deficiency with that effort was the
absence of a coordinated plan to guide commercial growth after the construction phase was
completed. At the public and the private level, there has been no visible effort to market the area
as a whole. Individual owners have attempted to market individual parcels with questionable
results. So, the timing of this meeting, in my opinion, is optimal. We are once again seeing
capital from investors moving somewhat more freely. If we look at the increase in the number of
building permits, the large scale concept, talked about between Glens Falls and Bonaccio
Construction, the expansion of two breweries in our area and substantial new investment in the
outlet mall district, it's clear that we are an area desirable to developers with bigger ideas. These
are positive trends, not a call for a change in course right now. I learned long ago that talking
about problems without offering potential solutions is a losing practice. So I have a few
suggestions to offer on how our community can move forward, taking the hard work of the past
into account, to achieve an outcome we can all be proud of First, I believe that there are some
areas where government can do things better than the private sector and the reconstruction of
Main Street is a great example. Traffic flows better then it did. The visual appearance is greatly
enhanced by the removal of above ground utilities; I know everybody loves the green boxes too.
Sidewalks are now in place, now they are much more attractive to residents and for future
development. To handle the next phase though, the commercial growth phase, the Town should
undertake a new study, and I think this is part of what's going on here, but to inventory the
current assets, inventory the available lands for redevelopment and to create a specific micro-
community development plan, something that targets just this area, with a ten year horizon. It's
not something that's going to be able to take place in two to four years; this kind of planning
takes a while. There should be a property owner advocate as well as a community advocate to
give balance in the decision making process. I also suggest that we start now to look for
financial assistance from our Senator and Assemblyman; it's not something that we should bear
on our own shoulders. And I don't think that as a town, we ask enough from those layers of
government in the way of assistance. The second part, while I believe publicly funded and
managed efforts would be the most efficient path to success as well as the property and business
owners in the area, I understand that some people in our community oppose spending tax dollars
in that way. If there's not going to be support for that, then I think the board should look to help
coordinate a business improvement district for this area. In no way will it be as successful as a
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 843
coordinated government funded operation but at least that would put together a structure for the
area to get marketed as a unit instead of individual pieces of property. That's something that I
think Queensbury has missed out on in a lot of areas, we lose our economic develop marketing to
the county and quite frankly, it's not just here but it's town wide where I don't think Queensbury
has gotten value out of that in the ten years that I have been here. I also want to point out that it
can be said that there are two different populations in Queensbury, those who were born here and
those who chose to move here for all of the benefits that the town and region offer. In 1960 the
population was ten thousand even and in 2014 it is close to thirty thousand people. The people
who were born here have much different connections to the area. They may have two or three
generations still here, they have close business connections as well as family. But residents like
myself, still care about the community and have ideas and insights from our past outside of the
area that can benefit Queensbury. As Board Members, I think it is important for you to hold
your life-long connections at a bit of an arm's length business from your advocacy and decision
making. And I ask that everyone look at where Main Street was ten years ago, twenty years ago,
thirty years ago. Property values have gone down where buildings have been neglected and that
has an impact on everyone. However, we also have businesses that are strong and growing.
Let's look at the success for our community and move forward with a positive approach. Thank
you.
JIM UNDERWOOD-I spent about ten years on the Zoning Board and at numerous meetings we
had to deal with people who were trying to improve their properties or to grow their businesses
along the Main Street Corridor and I think that some of the comments that have been made so
far, I don't want to repeat them, but I will say this, we have small businesses that currently exist
down here. I think many of us, you know, frequent those businesses whether it's the cobbler
shop, whether it's ... auto glass, there's lots of examples. But at the same time, I think we also
need to reflect upon the fact that the back corridor, as these lots are quite, quite a little bit of
depth built into them on each side of the street here, we do get into residential properties also and
we have to remember that we have people who have lived there for many years. It's probably
the most reasonable place in town as far as getting into a starter home in many respects. And I
think that we need to respect what changes might be affected by grandiose ideas. I don't think,
you know, realistically speaking, that we will see the benefit turning it into another downtown
like downtown Glens Falls. It would be, it would really be unnecessary for us to repeat the
second downtown. The downtown in Glens Falls has sort of been reborn over the past decade
and reinvented itself, it went through a long period of decline that we all recognize in most of the
urban centers in upstate New York. But I think what we're starting to see that what's driving the
changes is residential, it's not commercial. Commercial businesses come and go in the
downtown area and its' very difficult because the values of the properties down there now are
starting to creep back up again and I think we need to be careful on this corridor here too that we
don't do that. I know from the realtors aspect, it's been very difficult to sell any properties down
there and part of that comes from the fact that the properties are at the level that they're trying to
sell them at, are way over value. I think that if we look at the tax rolls of what their properties
are at, we would see that they are not nearly, not even half of what they are asking for. Those
properties which may be one of the reasons why we haven't had anything happen on the corridor
since we rebuilt the whole street. But I think one of the things we might consider doing down
there is this, we're still looking at a map that's broken up into many of these tiny narrow lots and
I think its incumbent upon the town to come up with an idea. I think that some of the
suggestions that were made that the economic development corporation or somebody else could
come in and act as a catalyst by purchasing several of those lots and jump starting the project
with something that's going to encompass all of the ideas that we have come up with. Some
urban street structure, I think more like the Fowler Square type project that fronts the street but
also has a back to it where people have green space that they can get away from the traffic and
noise. We know how busy Main Street is. But I really think that what we should be thinking
more about is the aspect of the street, it would not be pleasant to live in a residential
neighborhood facing all that traffic that comes in, even though we greatly improved the corridor
as far as traffic flow goes. But at the same time, I think that we don't want to go the other way
either, for One Dollar Stores and more, you know, strip mall type of development, things like
that because I think that's what we don't want to do. You know, you could go overboard the
other way and say why don't we just take everything on the street now and just make it like a
boulevard with trees lining it that leads into the City of Glens Falls. We'd probably be doing
them a big favor by doing that but that would not fly here as well either I am sure. But at the
same time, I think it's important when we consider what we end up with here, you know we have
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 844
sidewalks now which greatly helped the flow of pedestrian traffic and that's what's missing in a
lot of our commercial areas in town. If you ever get out of your car and try to walk around like
up on Route 9 and places like that, it's very difficult and very unnerving for anybody to do that.
But I think on Main Street, you still have the aspect of pedestrian traffic and a more of a mix that
includes residential and I think that residential is going to drive it with those deep depths on the
lot. You know, you could reconfigure what the housing is back there, at some point too. You
know it may go from bungalow type houses to multi-story things but I think we need to think
about the big picture in the long term and not just simply focus on, you know, make a few bucks
here for this year because that's not going to accomplish anything at this point in time.
RON BALL-I am not prepared like Jim was or the guy before him but I do use common sense.
If you look at the situation now, if you are around four o'clock in the afternoon, you get off the
Northway heading down Main Street towards Glens Falls; it's already swamped with congestion.
Sometimes it's a big congestion. And the same thing in the evening, about four o'clock in the
evening, they're headed home from Glens Falls trying to get on the Northway, again you see
congestions. There's two lights very close to each other, there's a narrow passage way
underneath the Northway where, if there's a big truck in there, you can find just barely enough
room to go past by and I don't think this is what we intended to do when they first proposed this
package there. I think and I have heard this before that originally, they thought about a five lane
highway and once you did away with the five lane highway, the whole thing should be tossed
out. Because all you would really be doing if businesses do pull in there, it's going to make the
traffic more congestion for people living in Glens Falls. I think what they should do is a hundred
and eighty degrees with it. Go west of the Northway where there is a lot of open space out
through there. You could put a four lane highway out there. The houses are set back further,
they're bigger lots and maybe in time, which I know this was a proposal at one time, Sherman
Avenue as an exit, an entrance off the Northway and the property is still there to do it and why
we never discussed anymore of that, I am not sure. But I think that someone should probably
look into that and see, you know for Queensbury is getting really developed and no matter where
you go, you see new homes popping up and whatnot, but to take the Main Street and congest it
and block that off for people who are trying to get to Glens Falls, I think that's completely
wrong. Thank you very much.
MIKE PARWANA-You really do not know how much I hate public speaking but I want to talk
about the plan that was put in place. I mean I think this all about vision, planning, investment
and potential. There was a lot of times spent on the plan that is in existence and a lot of
community input, a lot of work by a lot of people and they developed a plan and to me it seems
like a really good plan. They thought about it really well and the Town Board headed by Dan
Stec at the time committed to a huge investment in the corridor and they committed to the plan
and they made the plan for the future. Not for five years, not for ten years but for decades into
the future to try and plan out how the community should look and they took taxpayer money and
invested that taxpayer money. And I think we should look at the fact that the taxpayer's deserve
return on their investment, that they increased the value of those properties by putting in
potential for the future, by putting in conduits, by burying the power lines. By putting in
conduits, you can have high speed internet, you can have fiber optic cable put in there. I think,
you know, so they did the vision, they did the planning and we all did the investment. Now we
need to look at the potential and I think people are missing out on potential. I think this area is
probably some of the best potential growth area in maybe all of New York State. We have
infrastructure, we're having new businesses, you know everybody talks about Global Foundries
and I don't think Global Foundries is the be-all, end-all but Global Foundries has created huge
amounts of investment in Saratoga County. It is only ten miles further from Exit 18 to Global
Foundries then it is from downtown Saratoga and it's probably seven or eight minutes driving
time further. This area has the potential for, not big spinoffs but small spinoffs. We already
have Tribune Media out there, we have lots of businesses, this could be a really good walkable
community. You have almost every service a resident who may, you know if you have mixed
use buildings with commercial, residential and retail, you could walk to Hannaford, you can
walk to the CVS, there's a cobbler, there's a shoe repair and there's a lot already here and to put
in something like a Dollar Store, that's not a good return on investment. That hurts the potential.
I am sure people look at the livability of this community. I mean, you have the bike trail; you
have the Feeder Canal park trail. If people came down to live here, there are restaurants, you
could, if you're raising a kid, you can put your kid on a bike and the kid could ride up and down
the Feeder Canal trail, they can go to Haviland Cove, they could go swimming, they could
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 845
fishing. The community needs to be selling this and not looking at it and say, throw out the plan.
We need to be looking at the potential the plan created because the plan created a lot of potential
and I guess that's all I have to say.
STEVE BORGOS-Thank you very much, I really hadn't expected to speak tonight. But, I was
hoping we would have a lot more people here. I think part of the problem is that a lot of people
don't really know what the Main Street zone is other than a blue line around it but a lot of people
don't really know the rules and as one of the realtors whose been .. by the rules, I think Bob
Sears is still here, he's another one, I think that we ought to talk about some of those. We've
talked at our other meetings but it probably should go on the record as a public meeting to talk
about things. The first, in my opinion and the way that the rules are set, there's only two
different sets of rules here. One is for the properties fronting on Main Street, one is for the
others in the back of it. The properties between Main Street and Luzerne Road, a lot of people
are overlooking those but all of those residential properties are now zoned Main Street which
means if you live there and I think Craig will tell us, we've talked about this before, right now
this residence, if there's a vacant lot right here, you want to sell it, you can't use if for residence.
I ran into two or three use cases about two years ago and Tim Brewer and I talked about this and
people said, they would definitely want to build a new residential structure on the vacant lot, they
were told they found with the zoning area that they can't because it's now a commercial zone,
must have at least two stories and you may not have any residential use on the first floor. That
seems kind of foolish to me. I don't think the people who live in this area understand that. Also,
if you, correct me if I am wrong please but if you live in a residential structure and you want to
put an addition on your house, it must be two stories and you can't live on the first floor. That
doesn't seem fair or right as far as I am concerned. I spent most of my time in commercial
properties, in fact almost all of the time. Our biggest concern on Main Street is that the
regulations say, say a couple of things that are of concern. Number one, all the new buildings or
remodels must have the front of the building exactly built to the line, twenty-one feet from the
edge of the driving surface. Now there are a couple of sections, if you read through the plan, the
zoning ordinance doesn't get as specific but if you read through the plan, they say if you are
dealing with preexisting structure, you can put up a fence or a wall or something that tends to
line up with the other fronts of the building. But anything new going in, must have the front
walk exactly twenty-one feet from the edge of the road. There are a lot of TV news items over
the last few months where cars or trucks veering off the road and going through the fronts of
buildings, Albany, Schenectady, that area. I don't know how good it is to put them real close
because you got a forty mile an hour speed limit there, or thirty-five, a car will travel quite a
distance. We have another major issue, and we've talked about this before and we had a pretty
good general acceptance from new members of the Town Board, that the floor area ratio, that is
how many square feet of building structure can be built for so many square feet of land, has been
about twelve or thirteen percent under the present rule. The comprehensive land use plan
proposed fifty percent but the town for some reason went with essentially twelve or thirteen
percent.
CRAIG BROWN-The current is now thirty. The Town Board recently made a change to the
FAR, to be 30 percent.
MR. BORGOS-We discussed it, did it go through?
MR. BROWN-Yes, it's thirty percent.
MR. BORGOS-Okay, I wasn't aware of that, okay. So now we are at thirty percent, that's good.
So now you can have thirty percent of forty-three thousand square feet roughly, thirteen
thousand square feet per acre of building, that would be counting the first floor and second floor
and at some point we'll talk about, do you have to count basement. But under the present law,
you'd have to count the basement, so if you put in a basement that you can walk in, you've got to
count that against the floor area you can use which seems not the smartest thing but I am not on
the Town Board anymore. Another concern has been the one story versus two story, questions
have come up at our meetings we've had, I am surprised all these years talk about that tonight
and I hope somebody will talk about it. They talked about the Dollar General store. They
proposed a one story building, it's their money, it would be private property and would be
generating tax revenue and it would be appealing to people, so why not let them build one story?
Why make them build two story when they probably will go somewhere else. I think they
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 846
offered to do a second story, everyone seemed to like that, the rule says you must have two floors
that are occupied or can be occupied. A lot of people don't know that. And the rules also are
very, very detailed. What kind of windows you can use, in fact the corners you must have up on
the top must be ornately carved, on the top of the second story or third story ... and how much,
the wrought iron that you use has to be ornate, and all of the wrought iron in one building has to
match. All that's in the little nitty gritty stuff and the developers come in from outside and say,
you've got to be kidding me. We want to buy a piece of land for three or four hundred thousand
dollars, we want to put three or four or five hundred thousand dollars into the project and you're
going to tell me that I have to match the ornate wrought iron as you want, like everything else.
We'll go somewhere else. It would be one thing if a private developer owned all that land on
both sides of the road, and the private developer had this great idea to develop over here, great,
let him do it. Private money sounds terrific to me. If it works, he'll make some money, if he
doesn't he will lose his shirt. But I don't see its right to tell people, small business, that you've
got to build two stories when you only need one. Now there has been a project planned for one
of the spaces here, people were working on it for months and months and months but every time
they turned they had to do this, they had to do that, they have to watch this deadline, that
deadline and as a couple of days ago, they backed out. So one of the two projects we had going,
is now gone. Now we're down to the Dollar General as far as I know. It's going to keep
happening. The chances of getting a whole bunch of people, even in the upper twenty, or thirty,
or forty years to agree to combine lots over here, to build them exactly in line two or three stories
tall, to have fancy ornate on top of the building, in my opinion, zero. I hope to live for another,
at least two hundred years more; I don't think I will see it in my lifetime. I think we have to
understand, but mostly we have to tell the people who live and own properties over here, what
they are faced with. It would be a shame how, these things can get locked in, and they're going
to say alright, it's time to sell it but nobody wants to buy it. So I think the Town Board should be
looking at that. I think we have to make some changes to the existing rules... I told somebody
at some of the meetings I was at, I know what Main Street is like in the north country. I grew up
on Main Street; it was Main Street South Glens Falls. We had single story buildings, we had two
story buildings, we had a couple of threes but mostly singles and two, they were... everybody
was happy. You go through Warrensburg; there are a lot of one story buildings there. Go to
Hudson Falls, there are a lot of one story buildings mixed with twos and threes. So why do you
have to have two or three here? It doesn't make any sense to me. So that's my opinion, I am
telling you that as a realtor, that's why people aren't buying here, that's why you're not
developing. They are up at the outlets, they're doing ... but they're not doing it at Exit 18.
Thank you.
TOM JARRETT-I am going to speak in favor of the current zoning with some modifications. I
think certainly there's reasons to review the current zoning, as Mr. Borgos has said, there's some
things in there that probably warrant some review and maybe tweaking, if that's a good word to
use but I support the current theme in general. I think there are a lot of short term benefits.
Building multistory buildings is cheaper per square foot then single story. You save energy, you
save storm water and long term, our goal is to reduce sprawl and reduce car use, driving use and
I think multistory buildings in an urban, quasi urban setting there makes a lot of sense. We can
improve the walkability of the neighborhoods, we can improve the bicycle use, encourage
business. I think we can draw businesses to that corridor that's really not interested right now.
And really long term, our goal is not to have people driving out of town, out of the city and out
of Queensbury going south to work, our goal is to have them work here. I really don't want
them driving hell-bent out that corridor ... we'd rather have them stop here and work here and
support businesses here and have people maybe living on the upper story. From a practical
perspective, the code now reads that you have to have a livable second floor or third floor, I think
that needs to be changed. I think we can require people to build a second and third story frame
which may be occupied by a single story initially and then if they obtain a tenant or sell the
building, then the second or third story could be filled in or finished for use then. I think it
would mollify and modify the concerns to some degree and not absorbently expensive to put the
frame work up for a second and third story. Cognoscente of the, the impacts on the
neighborhood behind Main Street itself, I think that could be reviewed, I think some more
flexibility in that area as Mr. Borgos has said, that may not be prudent to make that ... zoning
requirement back off the Main Street itself. But, likewise I would like to see the Main Street
corridor allow more than three stories if someone wants to build it. I think there should be some
flexibility there. We gain more advantages by building multi-stories, as long as it doesn't impact
the neighborhood behind to a significant degree. And I'd like to see, not only zero front setback
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 847
but zero side setback allowed. I think we should allow more floor area ratios as long as the
landscaping and the green space is shown where management can be provided but I don't think
we have to have significant side setbacks, in fact zero setbacks makes a lot of sense and I think
you could get cooperative building projects in that light. So, I think with some tweaking, the
tweaking is necessary but I support the theme in that zone and I am really going to echo the
speaker who really didn't want to do any public speaking. I think you did a great job by the
way. That's all I have to say, thank you.
BOB SEARS-I am only going to speak for two minutes, cut me off A couple of people eluded
to the current zoning and the ten years that was used to study and put forth the visionary plan for
the Main Street Corridor. It took them ten years, there were some real flaws in that plan. It
would seem after ten years, they would have hopefully figured it out a little bit. Under that
current zoning, you needed one acre of land to do a six thousand square foot building. You
know six thousand square feet is about one and half times this size. Under that current zoning,
you would need an acre of land to put that building up. So, I mean, you can go back historically
and say, well there was a lot of things that was right with that plan maybe, but you also should
question that plan, the way it was written. And that's what we've been doing for the last couple
of months here and I think the Town Board has done a good job in doing that because I will go
back to what I said at the beginning of the offset, when you had this original discussion,
visionary planning versus the reality of the situation. You have to have a happy medium and I
hope that we arrived at that point. I hope you do not eliminate the idea of the single story
building on that corridor; you can have very good single story buildings that would be an asset to
the community and will make good economics and assist the developer as well as a good plan for
the community at large. Thank you very much.
ROBIN BREWER-I just wanted to, I know a sent a letter in a while ago but I just wanted to say,
I definitely like it, I agree with everything that you said. I think it's a vision and there's a goal,
things have to be tweaked, we really have to look at things,just like anything that you build, it
has to be tweaked, moved around but a vision stays a vision to grow into. And I think, I look at
it, I grew up on Main Street, I was born at 80 Main Street, we lived in the area for a long time,
the community is really important and what we put in and planned earlier, the buildings, the
sidewalks, the lighting, the underground utilities, that I just want to emphasis is the potential of
the place of Main Street. Aesthetics in Queensbury is a big thing, aesthetics, you know how
things look and... I think as a person driving through Queensbury, we have this that and the
other thing, and I mean it's great to have a plan and when we talk to our kids about careers and
... one is, urban planning. I think it's important for us, I don't know if we have, you guys are
urban planners or what we have but that's an important thing, it's important to think about the
future, you know, thirty, forty years down the line for our children, what that's going to look
like, and still, you know, really thinking about the community and the people who have lived
there because that's where I grew up. Thank you.
FADDOUL MONSOUR-I live at 95 Main Street. I'd like to know how many people here in the
audience here lives on the Main Street, West Glens Falls? Well raise your hands. Do you live
on Main Street, West Glens Falls? Apparently not. Who's got businesses here? I am not in
favor of two or three story buildings and if that's the case, we're not going to have any more
restaurants, any more fast foot places or whatnot and I can't see it, myself. I had an offer of
$265,000.00 from Taco Bell about three or four years ago. Now that they backed out of it, and
they built down the road where they didn't need any variances and I am not, I wasn't too happy
about it. But, two story buildings, three story buildings, I think they're out. Why not the
Aviation Road? Why not Route 9? Why not the Quaker Road? Why don't they have two
stories, three story buildings? Why does it got to be Exit 18 into Glens Falls? Is there a reason
for it? That's what I'd like to know. Anybody up front can answer me that question?
SUPERVISOR STROUGH-Well sir, we're just taking input today. We have three more
meetings for interaction but we just wanted to hear from you today.
MR. MONSOUR-Alright, no one is going to answer. Okay, well that's what I would like to
know. Why Exit 18? Why does it got to be Exit 18 for two and three story buildings when you
didn't do that to Route 9, didn't do Aviation Road, Quaker Road? That's all I've got to say right
now. I will be back.
SPECIAL TOWN BOARD MEETING 03-20-2014 MTG #11 848
SUPERVISOR STROUGH-We do have two other meetings where we can interact, learn, grow,
and then we have a fourth meeting in May, we're going to bring this all together and then we'll
probably make some changes. What kind? Well, we'll see but I heard a lot of good thinking
today from the folks that came up and spoke. The Board, I will speak for us all, we appreciate
your thoughts, we appreciate you coming. The next meeting, a week from tonight, will be
Complete Streets and then April 16th will be a meeting on how to zone and develop your
community in a way that's most fiscally efficient in the long run. So, that concludes our meeting
tonight and again, I wish to thank you for coming and please drive safely. The staff will be here
and available for a few minutes, if anyone has a specific question or questions to the drawings
present.
Respectfully submitted,
Caroline H. Barber
Town Clerk