2000-01-18
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING
FIRST REGULAR MEETING
JANUARY 18, 2000
7:00 P.M.
MEMBERS PRESENT
CRAIG MAC EWAN, CHAIRMAN
CATHERINE LA BOMBARD, SECRETARY
ROBERT PALING
ALAN ABBOTT
LARRY RINGER
ROBERT VOLLARO
ANTHONY METIVIER
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-CHRIS ROUND
SENIOR PLANNER-MARILYN RYBA
PLANNER-LAURA MOORE
TOWN COUNSEL-MILLER, MANNIX & PRATT-MARK SCHACHNER
STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI
MR. MAC EWAN-Two brief announcements. Number One, I’d like to welcome Tony Metivier as
the new Planning Board member who starts with us tonight, and Marilyn Ryba, new Staff Senior
Planner who’s with us starting tonight. With that, we’ll dive right in to the agenda.
CORRECTION OF MINUTES
September 28, 1999: NONE
October 19, 1999: NONE
October 26, 1999: NONE
MOTION TO APPROVE THE MINUTES OF SEPTEMBER 28, 1999, OCTOBER 19,
1999, AND OCTOBER 26, 1999, Introduced by Larry Ringer who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Alan Abbott:
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
RESOLUTION:
SITE PLAN NO. 70-99 – GREAT ESCAPE – ACCEPTANCE OF SCOPE FOR DGEIS
JACK LEBOWITZ, JOHN COLLINS, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT
MRS. MOORE-Do you want me to read the memo in?
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, would you, please.
MRS. MOORE-It’s addressed to the Planning Board, dated January 14, 2000. “Attached is the
Scoping Document for the Great Escape Theme Park Draft GEIS for your acceptance at the January
18, 2000 Planning Board meeting. The draft scoping submitted on November 23, 1999 has
undergone several revisions that reflect the comments received from the public (about 30 letters), the
Town Attorney’s review comments, several consultations with officials from NYSDOT and the
applicant. Upon acceptance of the scope, the applicant will commence preparation of a Draft GEIS.
Several additional procedural milestones lay ahead in the SEQR review process. They are as follows:
Planning Board must receive/accept the Draft GEIS as complete for public review. Establish a
public comment period on the Draft GEIS (30 day minimum) A public hearing (optional) may be
conducted during the comment period regarding the Draft GEIS Preparation of the Final GEIS by
the applicant Accept the Final GEIS Prepare a written Findings Statement At the completion of
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the SEQR process, the Planning Board may then entertain approval of the site plan/proposed
project. Stuart Mesinger and I will attend the January 18, 2000 Planning Board meeting to answer
any questions you may have regarding the process.”
MR. MAC EWAN-I’ll turn it over to you at this point. Maybe you can give us an overview of where
we’re going, and we’ll probably have a couple of questions for you.
STUART MESINGER
MR. MESINGER-I think the memo fairly summarizes where we’re at. There were, as we say, about
30 comment letters received. Most of them I think related to asking for us to provide a greater level
of detail, in the scope, in other words, to provide more direction, so that we spelled out in greater
detail what it was that we were asking the applicant. We also met with the DOT and the applicant’s
traffic engineer down in Albany to talk about the traffic aspect in great detail, and that’s why, in this r
revised scope, you’ll see that there’s, where before I think we had a paragraph or so relating to traffic,
we now have kind of bulleted out a dozen or so specific points as to what they are to do, and
essentially we took the comments that were received. We indexed them by subject. We reviewed
them. Chris and I talked about them at length. We traded some drafts. When we felt that we had a
draft that was fair, we provided it to the applicant. We got their comments. We met with them. We
talked, again, with the DOT, and the result of that entire process is what you see in front of you
tonight. Just procedurally, you are under a clock of 60 days from the 22 of November to adopt the
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scope. So that’s where we are.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Bob, we’ll start with you. Any questions?
MR. PALING-No. We’ve got to refer to the scoping document is what you’re asking, right, Craig?
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes.
MR. PALING-Okay. I have several questions.
MR. MAC EWAN-Fire away.
MR. PALING-If I were to take this document and use only the brief description of the proposed
action, I don’t think I’d have a very complete picture of what’s going on, especially the most sensitive
issues I think the Planning Board conveyed last time, and that is in regard to exactly what the scope
covers and where it covers, namely on the east side of Route 9. Going down the laundry list here,
the document refers to attached sketches, and there were no sketches attached. I used the two from
the older document. I trust that they’re the same, but the communication regarding identification of
these documents, I guess you can figure it out, but it doesn’t state clearly which document is being
referred to. I would prefer that you refer to Study Area A, B or C, rather than the title on the map or
the sketch, which is not done very accurately. Going back to the most sensitive item, and that is a
description of what this project will cover, we felt the initial document did not do it. I think if you go
deep enough into this document, it does cover what we want, but I’m going to ask for Mark
Schachner’s confirmation on that, because there was doubt on my part and others the last time that it
did. I refer specifically to the area east of the Park and noise as the major questions. On Page Two, I
think specific mention should be made of Bobsled, loudspeakers and concerts. Now, this question
has been asked many, many times, and I’m going to ask it one more time, and I really think we
should get an answer. We’re told what their increase in numbers is for attendance is going to be. I’d
like a better idea of the timeframe on that. When that estimate was made, I’m sure it was made with
a timeframe in mind, but yet no one would give us an idea of what that timeframe is, and I’d like that
question to be reconsidered.
MR. MAC EWAN-You mean by that, how soon they anticipate hitting that attendance figure?
MR. PALING-Yes, right. When they made the number up, I’m sure they had a date in mind, and I
recognize that any long range plans will change. We always updated ours every year, and they, I’m
sure, do, too, but why can’t they give us an idea when that was formulated what the timeframe is, or
what they feel the timeframe is now. Page Three, Number Three, shouldn’t Sunday be included in
that?
MR. MAC EWAN-Sunday as well, in addition to Saturday.
MR. PALING-Yes, in addition to what they’re saying now.
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes.
MR. PALING-And then on Page Four, Item Six, include concerts and fireworks. I would think,
specifically in special events. On Page Five, second paragraph, I would add loudspeakers. Page Six, I
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don’t, Round Pond is not mentioned. Am I just overlooking something, or should that not be
included in both paragraphs under Aquatic and under Stormwater? I would think that Round Pond
should be. Okay, and I guess Page Eight, mitigation should be directly related to visitor numbers or
other specific thresholds where applicable. I guess I just didn’t understand that sentence. I guess
“where applicable” is what confuses me.
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re on Page Eight?
MR. PALING-That’s Page Eight. Right.
MR. MAC EWAN-Under Section Four?
MR. PALING-On Number Four, right, and on Page Nine, under Noise, again, it is not descriptive
enough. Limitations on noise levels, mitigations for specific rides, and I would add, and other noise
sources, for example loudspeakers, and the second sentence, I’d insert the word “sources” between
noisy and rides. Outside of that, it’s okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Alan?
MR. ABBOTT-Can you come back to me.
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. Cathy?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay right now.
MR. MAC EWAN-Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I would like, as long as the document mentions, in several areas it mentions
project area and Chris and I had a discussion today. Chris called me on this document, and I wanted
to include as a reference the original map, because this document does refer to Park Area A. It refers
to a thing called the Project Area, and it also says the attached project map. So on Page One, I would
like to see, right in front of a brief description of the proposed action, that it have referenced
document the Great Escape Project Location Map, dated October 28, 1999. So long as we’re
referring to it, it should be part and parcel of this document. On Page Two, the extent and quality of
information needed for the preparer to adequately address each impact. It says in there that the
DGEIS shall present information about existing conditions (i.e., the baseline condition). Now, in
order to establish a baseline, I’ve written it down to define the methodology, the way I think. First,
we have to establish an acceptable baseline for the existing Park, and then establish an acceptable
departure from that, or delta to that quantity. Now, when I talked to Chris today, Chris’ position is
that we establish an acceptable envelope around the Park, for the entire Park, and then the applicant
lives within that. I think first you have to look at the component of the generators within the Park,
each component generator, and I know this is going to take a lot more analysis than just coming up
with an arbitrary envelope, but I’m trying to establish a valid baseline from which to work. If that
baseline is incorrect, then your whole study is flawed. My opinion. The applicant, I think you have
to look at the component generators and sum those, and then see if they establish an acceptable
baseline based on some HUD standard. That’s how I see that particular exercise being run. If
anybody at the table disagrees with that, feel free to talk it over with me, I guess.
MR. ABBOTT-Could you say that again, Bob, just go through your thought process one more time.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. Chris’ idea, and I think it’s a good one. He said what we want to do is
establish around the Park an envelope. It could be a noise envelope. It could be a traffic envelope.
It can be a height envelope or a visual impact envelope, any one of those envelopes. Establish that,
and so long as in the future, when the Great Escape makes any move, brings in any ride, does
anything, it could have 1,000 rides, so long as those rides, cumulatively, don’t exceed that envelope.
Now I feel that, in order to establish that envelope, you’ve got to determine what it is now, establish
your baseline. Once you’ve established a baseline, then you can depart from that and come up with a
new envelope. Now that baseline may not be a baseline that gets expanded. It may be a baseline that
gets contracted, in order that your final envelope is acceptable, and that envelope has got to be
looked at against some HUD standard or some standard of maybe not just HUD in some cases. I
think when you get into things like views, you know, from outside the Park, that’s going to become a
little bit subjective, and I think you’ve got to play with that a little bit more, but on noise, you can get
very objective on noise envelopes, traffic envelopes, things of that type.
MR. ABBOTT-Well, I agree with your logic, but I don’t want us to paint ourselves in a corner in
saying that the baseline for the existing conditions are acceptable.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s right. I said the baseline could be contracted.
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MR. ABBOTT-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-In other words, when they look at that, at the existing baseline, they could very well
say, you know, that baseline currently exceeds or is too large, and to build on one that’s already over
the top, that wouldn’t make any sense at all.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-You’ve got to establish a reasonable baseline first. Then you go from there, and
that’s pretty much everything that I have. I don’t have anything else. There’s a few words here and
there. I think you’ve got to describe, if you’re going to use the map, and when you’re talking about
things, when you’re explaining things in this, I’ll just come up with one real quick. The applicant will
study the direct short term, long term, indirect and cumulative impacts for each of the potential
environmental impact areas set forth above, including the cumulative effects of the environment and
the community operation of both, and then it says, right now, the existing Park and the Park with the
new visitor parking. I would like it to say, operation of both Area and Park Area C, and that kind of
laps back into this diagram. Now if the diagram is going to be either confusing or too limiting, then
we have to talk about getting rid of the diagram and explaining something in another way, and I
think, Chris, that’s what you and I talked about today, was trying to explain it, rather than use Area A,
Area C, back and forth, it becomes confusing in some people’s minds. We describe it a little bit
better. So, in that way, you can get rid of the map.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else?
MR. VOLLARO-That’s it for me.
MR. MAC EWAN-Larry?
MR. RINGER-Nothing right now, no.
MR. MAC EWAN-Tony?
MR. METIVIER-Nothing right now.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, let’s respond to them
MR. ROUND-We’ll give you some guidance on a couple of them, and I think we can resolve most
of them here at the table. The map was omitted, that was an error on our part, in the transmittal to
your office. That map is still part of the Scoping Document, A, B, and C. There’s only a single
reference to Area A, and that is in the brief description of the proposed action. I don’t think any of
us or the applicant contest the areas that we’re talking about in our narrative. I think that the
narrative, in any section of the document, talks about those issues. Stu, I don’t know how we want
to do this, but noise, in intro, it’s not necessary to describe all the analyses that are going to be
conducted in a brief description of the proposed action. The proposed action is the expansion of the
Great Escape facilities, and that’s the things that are described in the second paragraph of the
description. I know noise is the main concern, according to Mr. Paling and we do go in and discuss,
in the methodology section, how that noise is going to be measured, how we’re going to establish a
baseline condition. We don’t describe what that baseline condition is, because we don’t know what it
is, and that’s what’s going to be revealed as part of the Impact Statement. Timeframe for attendance
increases. We did discuss this, from trying to analyze the project, well, when are certain things going
to occur, and our viewpoint with several of the impacts is time is not the concern. It’s the increase,
and this threshold, the traffic increase is the threshold we’re worried about. Whether it occurs in
September or whether it occurs in 2003 is not, the mitigations will be tied to the increase of
attendance, whether it’s vehicle trips or whether it’s noise.
MR. MESINGER-I mean, I have no objection to adding a line, in effect saying the applicant shall
provide information to the extent that it’s available, as to their proposal or their plan for increasing
attendance. They may say that that’s internal privileged information, and choose to treat it as such,
and you guys will then have to treat it as such. There’s a limit to what you can ask, I think, and Mark
can correct me on this in terms of business plans, but you can certainly ask if they have a timeframe
for doing this, and we can add a sentence, something to the effect, the applicant shall provide to the
extent that it’s available, or to the extent that it’s known, the timeframe for increasing attendance, but
remember the whole point of this thing is not to assess impacts based on a year. The point is to
assess impacts based on an increase in use, regardless of the year. So that it’s this many cars and this
noisy in 2001, or 2010. What we care about is what’s the impact, not when it occurs, but I
understand your desire to know. They may not particularly want to share it with you. I think you
can ask in a way that couches it that would respect their corporate needs, whatever they may be, and
at least ask the question for you guys, and we can do that.
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MR. ROUND-I don’t know to what extent that’s useful information, other than to give you, bring
some context to what you think, but it might lead to confusion. Well, what if they exceeded a target
attendance figure in 2002. What do we have to worry about? Well, we don’t have to worry about the
time. Again, we have to worry about, well how many vehicle trips is that particular intersection?
MR. MESINGER-Which is what we care about. I mean, that’s what we care about is how many
vehicle trips, not what year it happens.
MR. ROUND-Right. Traffic peak hour Sunday, I think that was Bob’s third item. Typically, traffic
analyses, we look at peak hours. Peak hour doesn’t occur on a Sunday. The mitigation measures, the
most significant traffic loading is going to occur during that AM Peak period during the week day,
and it’s going to occur on a Saturday. We will look at what is the highest traffic volume that’s going
to be able to be accommodated on highway infrastructure, and that’s not going to change a lot during
Monday through Friday or Sunday.
MR. MAC EWAN-I’m just curious here. Why would you say that?
MR. ROUND-Well, typically, when you do a traffic analysis, you go out and you find, what is the
peak period, and you go out and you say, okay, what is the highest volume? Because that’s going to
be the most critical time when you’re trying to assess a level of operation, a level of service safety
volume estimates for highway. So you don’t want to know what it is during the softest period of
time. You want to know what it is during the most critical period of time. So they went out, and
actually DOT actually collected the data and they said, here’s the peak hour periods, and based on
Great Escape’s attendance figures, we know here’s the highest attendance peak periods, and those are
the ones that are indicated in the impact analysis, and we’re not, and I think DOT has bought into
this, and so that’s a very important point that they’ve validated those periods.
MR. MESINGER-Yes. That’s my concern with that particular point is that when we met with DOT,
they agreed with the contention that we don’t need to look at Sunday. What we need to look at is the
highest hour generator, because that’s what’s critical from a traffic capacity. When you guys see a
new store, grocery store or whatever, you ask them to look at the peak hour of generation, and that’s
what you base your study on, and these are the peak hours.
MR. PALING-Well, let me ask one more question in that regard, then. This is a vacation area, and
most vacation areas fill up Friday and they empty out Sunday are your peak traffic times, and there’s
probably more traffic impact from the lake than there is from Great Escape, and that’s why I have a
hard time thinking that Saturday in this area is busy.
MR. ROUND-Real quickly, Bob. Data was collected during the August period, and that was verified
that Saturday and weekdays, and it included Sunday. There were 24 hour collections.
MR. MESINGER-The other thing, Bob, is on Page Two, in Item Three, which is what we’re talking
about, the first sentence defines the hours to be studied, then the second sentence says exactly what
your concern is, which is provide the data that justifies it. So that you’ll be able to see what the
spread is, and I don’t know what the spread is. I mean, it may be that you’re intuitively right, and it
turns out it’s two percent off, and that when we look at the Saturday we’re really also looking at the
Sunday. I don’t know.
MR. PALING-Okay.
MR. RINGER-Did they do traffic analysis for PM also? They’re not going to include it in here, but
do they have it for the five o’clock or six o’clock?
MR. ROUND-We have raw data for those periods, but when we’re forecasting the future, the peak is
going to occur during a different time. Whether it occurs at two o’clock or whether it occurs at five
o’clock, that doesn’t matter to the highway system. That matters to the driving public. We’ve got it
devised in the mitigation package that the highway doesn’t know what time that peak period’s
occurring. So you’ve got to make sure that you’re accommodating the largest bubble of traffic.
MR. RINGER-Well with this type of an operation, the direction of traffic may be different at five
p.m. than the direction at eight a.m.
MR. ROUND-That’s correct.
MR. RINGER-So wouldn’t we want to look at the a.m. and p.m.?
MR. ROUND-We’ll look at both departing and arriving traffic, departing p.m., I’m not sure if I can
answer that completely to your satisfaction tonight.
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MR. RINGER-But you said that the scope, they’re not going to include the p.m.
MR. MESINGER-But we’re asking them to provide the data that would justify not including the
analysis. I mean, I think if you look at that, and you see the red flag, and you say, you know, we want
this level of service analysis because of this group of movements, then we can ask them to do that
during the process.
MR. RINGER-When they did this in August, did they do it for the p.m. in August as well as the
a.m.?
MR. MESINGER-I believe that they did.
MR. ROUND-Yes. Concert, fireworks, special events was a broad term to include all those. It’s
difficult to assess what are actual special events. They’ll provide a description of typical special
events, again, what’s going to occur during that. Again, it’s the impact. It’s noise, it’s traffic, etc. So
whether it’s a concert or whether it’s a fireworks display, it’s going to have a noise impact, and they’re
not going to be able to exceed a threshold that we’ll establish through this process.
MR. MESINGER-But in the interest of specificity, I would just say such as concerts and fireworks.
MR. ROUND-Yes. It’s easily included.
MR. PALING-Okay.
MR. ROUND-Again, loudspeakers, I think that was a good point. Round Pond, I don’t know how
to answer that one. I guess the direct impact is to the Glen Lake Fen, Glen Lake, Round Pond is not
directly adjacent to the Park. There’s not a tributary contributing to Round Pond through that area.
MR. MESINGER-I don’t quite see how it would, but we have no problem putting it in there and
having them tell us that. I mean, I just don’t quite see how it would be effected, and I think it’s
probably a throwaway.
MR. PALING-If there’s no chance it’ll be affected, throw it out.
MR. MESINGER-Okay. I guess I don’t understand how it would be.
MR. PALING-Okay.
MR. ROUND-I have Page Eight, where applicable, the question.
MR. MESINGER-Okay. This is the “where applicable”, and that’s an important.
MR. ROUND-Do you want to wait on that one?
MR. ABBOTT-Let’s go back to the Round Pond issue. This map with the green area, which is the
effected area, the area includes Round Pond is within the area.
MR. ROUND-In the study area.
MR. MESINGER-Well, you know, other people may want to say something, and if only it’s a
textural description that explains why they don’t believe there would ever be an impact because of
the way stormwater is managed. So I mean, it’s not going to kill them to write the paragraph, and so
let’s put it in.
MR. ABBOTT-Let’s put it in.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Back up. You were going to.
MR. ROUND-Other noise sources, loudspeakers. I think we touched on that one. That was Page
Nine on that one, and then, I don’t know where Mr. Vollaro landed on that discussion, because
regarding component noise generators, and I think we had the discussion earlier in the day that we’re
looking at quantifying individual noise generators within the Park, and then summing those
components in order to devise mitigation measures.
MR. VOLLARO-No, not to devise mitigation measures, but to establish the first baseline.
MR. ROUND-Well, I think the baseline that is proposed to be established is at the perimeter of the
Park, and that’s where noise is leaving the site, in a simple sense, and that, whether it comes from a
kiddy ride or a roller coaster, etc., on the site is not.
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MR. MESINGER-I’m sure that the scope that we’ve written will do exactly what you’re asking us to
do, which is to define a baseline for noise. I mean, we’ve asked them to go out and measure noise,
when the Park is being operated, during different time periods at sensitive receptors, and I don’t
know what better way of getting a baseline you can get than actually measuring it. If the idea is to
individually operate rides and measure noise, I think it’s an academic exercise because the real
question is, what is the whole package, what happens when all of them are turned on when you’re
actually operating the Park? How loud is it? And then what we’ve asked them to do is compare that
to exactly what you said, the HUD standards, which are really the best standards that we have for
residential uses, and see what we’ve got. So I think we’re accomplishing exactly what you’re asking
us to accomplish. I’m not sure if we’re totally on the same page, as a point of methodology. I would
give you my opinion that it’s not practicable to do it in any other way. The analogy would be, I once
had a client, or I once was involved in a SEQRA process not long ago, in fact, where we had to
measure students, and how many students parked in a college, and so we said, well, the best way to
do that is to go get student parking registrations and count them, and somebody said, no, no. What
we should do is we should research insurance records, to see who has an insured car, and I just
thought, it’s just a roundabout way of maybe the car was on campus and maybe the car was at home,
and maybe the car was owned by my brother. It just wasn’t the direct data. To me, the direct data
here is you go out and you put a noise meter when the Park’s running and see how loud it is.
MR. VOLLARO-What I would say to that, Stu, is that that’s an acceptable method, so long as you’ve
got a fairly broad database. It depends on what kind of database you’re going to use. If you’re going
to take five snaps, that’s not good enough for me, because I don’t know what, in those five snap
periods, I don’t know what rides are running and what rides are not running. This is what I’m saying.
MR. ROUND-Right. We asked for that. You’ve got to associate the noise measurements with what,
you know, we want to know how many people are in attendance during the noise measurement data
period. You want to know that all rides are operable. It’s not valid if the Bobsled is not operating
and the Boomerang and the Rollercoaster are not operating. That’s not a typical operating day (lost
words). We’re looking for fully operational day, and that’s what you’re going to get out of this.
MR. MAC EWAN-When they submit the data, then, they’re going to have this other information
supporting that data saying that it happened to be Sunday, June the 6, and there were 35,000 people
th
in there for special events and every ride was operating.
MR. ROUND-Exactly.
MR. VOLLARO-You could actually write an operational scenario and then follow that probably. I
don’t know. What you’re saying is this is not a controlled exercise. What we’re going to do is, and if
it’s not a controlled experiment or controlled exercise, that we’re going to have to take, in my view, a
lot of data in order to determine that this is indeed the baseline.
MR. MESINGER-And you know what, I agree with you, and I think, thinking ahead down the line,
how this all plays out, it will not surprise me at all to find us talking, next summer, about some kind
of condition that asks them to do that kind of thing, and to come back, so that there’s a condition, as
part of this approval, that says, you know, we’re going to have to take measurements X, Y, and Z, at
such and such a time, so that we can better put our finger on what’s going on out there, and so on.
The thing of it is right now, we don’t have anything, okay, and it seems like the place to start is,
what’s the big picture, what happens when you turn the key to the Park and it fills up and all the rides
are running, and we know people are complaining. We think we know what some of the problems
are, but we don’t have, you know, the data to go from, and so once you, I mean, that’s what the
process does. We get the data, and then we have questions, and we may ask them for more data. I
mean, I think that’s a perfectly conceivable outcome of this whole thing.
MR. PALING-I have one more question. I’d like to direct it to Mark. Last time we reviewed this
statement, or the statement that was submitted, I think the Board indicated a lack of confidence in
the area that it covered, that is to say the east versus the west side of the Park, and some about the
specific components it covered, to use, for the lack of a better word, it gave the applicant a way out,
in many of the measurements, and we’re particularly concerned that we do the whole Park, and that
we include items of complaint that have been with us for a while, like noise and traffic and so on.
Does this document, as it’s written, or this Scope, does it allow us to do that, in your opinion?
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, Bob, in fairness, I don’t really think that’s a legal call. I think, the way I
was going to answer your question when you first brought it up a few minutes ago was that I think
that it’s important that the Board, as the SEQRA Lead Agency, the applicant, as the preparer of the
GEIS, and your Staff, all be confident and comfortable that the geographical scope of the proposed
document is what you think it is, in other words that we’re all, not only figuratively, but literally, on
the same page. Now, I think I heard Chris say that he feels that there’s no disagreement with the
applicant, as to what the geographical scope we’re talking about here is, but clearly, just sitting here
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
observing and listening, clearly you at the very least, and perhaps some of the other Planning Board
members as well, don’t feel that description of the geographical area to be studied is as clear as it
needs to be. I can’t sit here and point you to a very specific, I mean, in my own opinion, the first
paragraph talks about the proposed action, and talks about it in a way that could arguably be
construed as not including new rides, I’m sorry, not including existing rides and attractions, until you
get to the last sentence of the first paragraph, and it there says, it’s anticipated that rides and
attractions in the Park will change and/or be constructed to attract such visitors. That sentence
seems to hint at that we’re talking about both existing rides and the potential for new rides. Then
the in the next paragraph, we talk about the project map and Park Area A and all that. I mean, I tend
to think, I think, like Stu tends to think, big picture, broad brush, let’s be simple, let’s be direct, let’s
be plain, let’s be understandable. If you’re not comfortable and confident, and if Staff can’t convince
you that this multi-page Scope makes it crystal clear what area we’re talking about, then I think we
should sit here, either now or some time between now and next week’s meeting, and write a couple
of sentences that make it crystal clear what the geographical scope of the analysis is, because you
need to be comfortable with that.
MR. PALING-Yes.
MR. SCHACHNER-And I think you’re being consistent, by the way, in fairness to you. You have
voiced this opinion throughout the process.
MR. PALING-Okay. Then I think what I’d like to see us do is to do what you’re saying, write just a
few sentences and make that part of the resolution, when we go to pass this. Is that the route we
could take?
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, we can make it part of the resolution, but the more important thing is that
it’s part of the actual Scope, that the Scope says some place in a very, very clear manner, you know,
the geographical Scope of the study will be whatever you want to say. I think what I’m hearing
everybody saying, but using different phrases and different words, is that the geographical scope of
the study will be the entire area of the Great Escape Park, both existing and proposed expansion of
future or proposed future expansion area.
MR. PALING-Right.
MR. SCHACHNER-I think I heard Stu say something like that. I know I heard you say something
like that, and I don’t know that anything that’s that direct really appears clearly where you need it to
appear.
MR. PALING-I would hope it would be in the summary, what the call a brief description of the
proposed action, if it could be inserted there and maybe sentence in regard to noise and traffic. No, I
think if it covers it geographically, then I think using the rest of the document would be okay, and I
think that, a sentence or two could do that.
MR. ABBOTT-I think where we’re hung up is on Page One, the last paragraph at the bottom, “but
will also review the secondary and cumulative effects of the new improvements and the projected
growth in Park patronage within the broader DGEIS ‘Study Area’ as indicated on the Project map”.
If that quotation “Study Area”, was changed to the, what’s referred on this map as the GEIS Primary
Study Area, which is the green outline, and references this specific map, then I think that that covers
it, and Study Area B.
MR. PALING-Well, it goes beyond that scope. It’s out more than that. It’s more than just Study
Area B.
MR. ABBOTT-Because I see maps with study areas, a small piece on the west.
MR. PALING-Go back to the words Mark used, just the entire geographical area of Great Escape
Park that is under consideration now and is under consideration for future development.
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, Bob, Alan’s point I think is well taken, which is he’s trying to add some
specificity to it, so that there’s no confusion as to what is meant by the entire Great Escape Park
area, and I think that point’s well taken, and I think Alan’s focusing us on the correct text, and I
would just say to Alan and the Board, also look at the front part of that very same sentence, which
says the DGEIS will study not only the direct impacts of the new construction west of Route 9, but
will also review, etc., etc., and again, I think you’re focusing on the right section. You need to make
sure that that adequately encompassing existing Park facilities, to the extent you want it to encompass
existing Park facilities, those on the east side and what’s newly proposed on the west side. I think it’s
a matter of fine tuning that language, essentially.
MR. PALING-And that can be added to the introduction, to the description of proposed action.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, which is where it already is.
MR. MESINGER-That’s where it is.
MR. PALING-Yes, but the way Mark is putting it.
MR. MAC EWAN-I would agree with you Bob, and Alan. Okay. Now what’s the best way to
approach that? Do you want to amend it right now? Do you want to table it and then you amend it
and bring it back next week, or what do you want to do? What do you think’s the appropriate way to
go?
MR. MESINGER-That is the easiest way to go. You had one other comment.
MR. SCHACHNER-Yes. I had one comment to make, which I think may just be, again, it may be a
semantic misunderstanding type comment, but on Page 10, in the second portion of Paragraph Five,
this is the discussion of what alternatives will be discussed in the document, and toward the end of
that, in discussing the various alternatives, it talks about elimination of the conference center
component, meaning you would be discussing a proposal that would include all the other growth
aspects, but not including the conference center, but I think that that particular alternative should
encompass elimination of the hotel and conference center components. It’s a small comment, but
one possible means of growth here would be all the other improvements but no hotel and
conference center.
MR. PALING-That’s one possibility, yes.
MR. SCHACHNER-And in fact, I don’t much care, but if the applicant wants to have all the, I
mean, each alternative, possibly, you could say elimination of the hotel and/or conference center
components. I guess that would be the most flexible to the applicant.
MR. MAC EWAN-How does everyone feel about that?
MR. ABBOTT-What I think we need is a map with the outlined area, the map labeled and referenced
on Page One.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. The clock is running here as well.
MR. SCHACHNER-I mean, certainly it would seem to us, I think as a group, the three of us, that
the easiest way to handle this, rather than sit here and slog through this language and plug it into
everybody’s documents, I mean, we’re meeting next Tuesday night anyway, would simply be to revise
the Scope, have Staff prepare a revised Scope. In concert, we can share that with the applicant,
between now and next Tuesday, and then hopefully have this stuff clarified to your satisfaction for
next Tuesday, and if you want to do that, then I would suggest that you ask for the applicant’s
acquiescence in that as well, and that would be the neatest, cleanest way to finalize this, it would seem
to us.
MR. MAC EWAN-So primarily what we’re doing here is we’re just going to change the language
around in Paragraph Two of the description of the proposed action. That’s really the thrust of where
we’re going with this thing.
MR. SCHACHNER-Yes, and a couple of other clarifying phrases, as some of the other Planning
Board members have indicated.
MR. MAC EWAN-Does the Board feel comfortable with that?
MR. PALING-Yes, and a revised map. I think that’s included.
MR. MESINGER-The map that Alan has referenced.
MR. PALING-This one.
MR. MESINGER-It’s not a revised map. It’s the map.
MR. VOLLARO-Just attach it to the document.
MR. ABBOTT-Just to clarify, are we including Study Area B in the GEIS?
MR. VOLLARO-It’s not mentioned anywhere in the document. The study area is defined by the
green dots, and then you get more specific in going Project Area A and Project Area C.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. ABBOTT-Do you want the green dots to include Study Area B? Do you want this circle to go
all the way around Study Area B?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, is that the area that encompasses Rush Pond?
MR. PALING-Well, aren’t there roads at least going to be included in that (lost words)?
MR. VOLLARO-If we’re going to have Rush Pond talked about in the document, then.
MR. MAC EWAN-No, I mean, that’s on the other side of the Northway.
MR. VOLLARO-Then I don’t see a need for Area B being in it here.
MR. MESINGER-See, I guess the reason that we weren’t too tied to the map, and were more tied to
the textural descriptions of what you’re actually doing, and the perfect example is traffic. Because
we’re looking at intersections that are well removed from whatever bubble you draw. We’re going all
the way down to Aviation and Route 9, and we’re going all the way up to 149. So, I understand that
the map helps people understand what’s being done, but where the rubber meets the road is saying
to them very specifically, look at this intersection, measure noise over here. Do us a visual
assessment from this point here.
MR. MAC EWAN-Well, look, why don’t we go this route. You know where we’re all coming from
up here on the Board, the confusion that we have with that paragraph. It’s not clear enough to us
exactly what that includes in the Study Area. Revise that paragraph, and then next Tuesday we’ll
take a vote on it.
MR. SCHACHNER-Just to make sure, though, that Staff has clear instruction on this, I think we
should be mindful of Stu’s last comment, which I’m going to say I think paraphrase in different
words. There really isn’t a map that shows a study area for each potential environmental component.
I think that his point is that for traffic, for example, we’re going beyond what most people would
draw as a circle around the Great Escape Theme Park.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s correct. I’ll agree with you, but the confusion on here, and I think
everyone will agree with me, is when we refer to Park Area A, Project Area and Study Area. That’s
where the confusion’s coming in, although the description does include the Route 149 to 254
corridor, which it clearly indicates that that’s the corridor they’re going to be studying, but is tying in
what we’re familiar with with this map, as to what the description is in Paragraph Two, to pull it all
together.
MR. ABBOTT-And even if you were to use wording to include at least the GEIS primary study area,
and other areas as outlined, as specifically outlined.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. ABBOTT-One other question, quickly. They’re defining a baseline, and in the case of noise,
comparing it to a PUD standard. Is that, then, the standard we are, I won’t say stuck with, but who
is defining, then, or when is the definition of the envelope that we talked about?
MR. MESINGER-You are engaged in part a research project here, and you’ll notice that the noise
scope is written in such a way not to limit itself to the PUD standard, and in fact specifically asks the
applicant to look at other residential standards, and in our work in doing the re-zoning for the Town
right now, we’ve given Chris and Bob a raft of the kinds of noise standards that are often applied in
residential areas. Now the Town of Queensbury doesn’t have a noise ordinance right now. One
conceivable outcome of this process is that you may recommend to the Town that it adopt such an
Ordinance, or that it apply some standard. So you are not limited. However, that is a commonly
used standard, and it’s as good as we have, at least for comparison purposes, if only because it’s
brought to us from on high in Washington.
MR. ABBOTT-That’s fine, as long as we’re not tied to those standards.
MR. MESINGER-You’re not.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay. That’s all I have.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any other questions, comments from Board members? Mr. Lebowitz,
Mr. Collins, with your blessing, may we table this until next Tuesday?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. LEBOWITZ-Mr. Chairman, I don’t think that at this juncture we could acquiesce in an
extension of this deadline. Not to be overly difficult, but the Staff said, we filed this document on
November 18. It’s now January 18. SEQRA provides a 60 day timeframe for this to be approved.
thth
I think that we might be able to get together at a meeting perhaps with some of the representatives of
the Board, and hammer out some language that deals with some of these concerns that we could
agree with before the next meeting, but based on a lot of things that Mr. Collins and I heard tonight,
I’m not entirely comfortable that the Board understands what SEQRA provides or what the
applicant’s proposing. It’s our view that we’re going to be able to expand the scope of operations of
the Park and provide impacts in critical areas such as noise and stormwater runoff, traffic, which, at
the end of the process, people will feel are better than existing conditions, and acceptable to the
community. That’s a judgement we’ll discover through the process, but I don’t know that I could
agree to come to a meeting here next week where for reasons of just satisfying everybody on the
Board, we would agree, in the first instance, to provide a scoping statement that says, the applicant is
proposing to expand the Park, but if the Board or community feels that the existing baseline isn’t
satisfactory to the community, we’re proposing to shrink the Park. I mean, we’re not going to say
that. You may, through the process, we propose you dispose. That’s the way the process works, and
I don’t think that we’re going to agree to waive time limits. I don’t think we’re going to agree that
the project includes everything that was there from Day One. We’re simply going to discuss existing
baseline conditions, but I think it’s conceptually confusing to basically come in and say, this site, as
we said for months that the site is a tabularas, and we’re going to justify Little Bo Peep’s house and
everything that was there since 1954. I don’t think that that’s the way SEQRA operates, and I don’t
think it’s fair to be asking us to put that in our scoping statement about what we’re proposing to do
as a project, and I don’t think it’s fair to be, at this juncture, after we’ve had many meetings with
Staff, gone through many revisions, and sat down with DOT and gotten, and as Mr. Schachner and
others have read, have definitely put on the table that we are definitely going to consider the
cumulative impacts of everything in the Park. I think it’s unfair, at this point, to be asking us to go
back to Square One and say that our project is building the Park as if it didn’t exist. That’s kind of
unfair.
MR. MAC EWAN-No one is asking you to go back to Square One. We’re just trying to clear up the
language in here to be definitive as to what areas we’re talking about. That’s all we’re doing.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. Craig, once again, I’m sitting back there, and I’m reading the paragraph, and
correct me if I’m wrong, is it Paragraph Two on the brief description of the proposed action? Is that
what we’re delaying on? Is that what we’re waiting a week for?
MR. VOLLARO-We’re trying to take the ambiguity out of that. The answer is, yes.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. Well, I’m reading it here, it says, well, you have it right in front of you, “as
well as the cumulative impacts on the environment and surrounding community from the operation
of the Park.” I mean, that, to me, is pretty clear that we’re going to study the operation of the Park.
Everything in this document says that. Why do we need to go for another week and mesh those
words around when we’ve been doing that for 60 days?
MR. MESINGER-Maybe the simple solution. I mean, I’m fairly certain that I understand these
fellow’s objection is to the map, and I think that the Scope asks them to do what you want them to
do. The sentence that Mr. Collins just read might be amended by saying the Park as shown as Areas
B and C on the attached map. Because that’s the cumulative and future impacts, and so forth, that
you’re most concerned about, as well as the baseline condition, and maybe that gets us off the, I
mean, that’s what you’re asking and that’s what we’re going to spend a week doing is coming up with
those three letters that I just said, but I think that’s what you’re after is something that better defines
what it is that you’re asking to be studied.
MR. MAC EWAN-I guess my question would be, why, five minutes ago, were you comfortable in us
tabling this for a week to define this language, and now I’m hearing you say something different?
MR. MESINGER-Because I don’t particularly need to see a big fight about.
MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t think anyone here is looking for a fight. We’re just trying to do our job.
MR. MESINGER-The problem, Craig, is if they won’t acquiesce, you’ve got to act tonight. Unless
I’m wrong.
MR. SCHACHNER-Let me address that if I could, Mr. Chairman. My own opinion, having been
through many, many, many SEQRA processes, is that it’s highly unusual for an applicant, in the
context of the magnitude of what we’ve been working on for many, many months and what they,
principally, and others, will be working on for many, many months, to dig it’s heels in and draw the
line in the sand when a Planning Board, as a SEQRA Lead Agency, in my opinion, reasonably asks
for a number of things to be clarified in a very important SEQRA document for a total delay of one
11
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
week, but my legal opinion to you then would be that the applicant certainly can do that. I would
say, let the applicant dig its heels in. Let the applicant draw its line in the sand. The applicant’s
responsibility, if we don’t act on this, is to go prepare a Draft Environmental Impact Statement in
accordance with the scope as it currently exists to the best of their ability. You will then, as the
SEQRA Lead Agency, have an opportunity to decide whether what they submit is acceptable to you
as complete or not, and whether it fits what you’ve described as the scope of this document. If it
doesn’t meet your satisfaction, you’re not going to have to accept that Draft Environmental Impact
Statement as complete. I don’t think it’s worth playing some silly hardball game. I’ve not, in about
three or four dozen SEQRA experiences, I’ve not seen this as a typical response by an applicant, but
they are totally within their rights to say, no, we won’t accept another week’s delay. They are totally
within their rights. I would say just send them home, let them do their Draft Generic Environmental
Impact Statement. When it comes back to you, you’ll have ample opportunity to review it. Staff will
have ample opportunity to review it, and if you don’t feel it meets the criteria that you set forth in
your scoping discussions and document, you won’t accept it as complete. I don’t think you should
accept some offer that I think I heard about meeting individually or separately with Planning Board
members. That would be a bad idea.
MR. MAC EWAN-No, that won’t happen.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. No, Mark, first of all, I did not say that we’re drawing any line in the sand.
My question is, why can’t we hash this out now? Are you on a schedule where you don’t think this
can happen right now, that we can come to an agreement on what you want it to say?
MR. MAC EWAN-I, for one, would be more comfortable, we gave direction to Staff as to what we’d
like them to do. I’d like them to go back, this is for me, I’m speaking, is to revise this draft, bring it
back next Tuesday and we’ll put it to a vote. I think they know what we’re looking for.
MR. LEBOWITZ-My concern here is that we’ve been through a lot. This is probably the fourth or
fifth iteration of this document that we’ve been through since November 22. We’ve been working
nd
very hard with Staff, and in terms of not being uncompromising on this, I think that Stu and Chris in
particular would agree that this thing has had a lot of language added to it to be responsive to the
Board’s concerns in so many words to look at the whole Park, and especially in the last few
iterations, this has been fine tuned so that we understand some of the things that we have to do, and
when you get into some very technical issues about noise studies, for instance, we’ve objected to
maybe a word here or there, just to make sure that the whole thing is clear, so that there aren’t
inadvertent problems when we come in with some very expensive and extensive studies and have the
Board sit there and say that this doesn’t comply with the Scope. What I’m concerned about, Mr.
Chairman, is that this document which has been very carefully honed down, we come in, and
everything but the kitchen sink is thrown in, you know, next week to basically satisfy the Board, and
then it’s kind of a crown down. Then it becomes for us, take it or leave it, and when we disagree
with a lot of the stuff that it requires us to do analytically. That was the sense of doing this outside of
this room and in a meeting.
MR. MAC EWAN-Can I just respond to that for just a second? While you’ve said you’ve worked
very hard with Staff over the course of several meetings and DOT in preparing and helping to
prepare this draft, the first draft that we saw for the first time was on November the 22. This is the
nd
original draft here. This revised draft, the first time we saw it was Friday. Okay, so now we’ve had
an opportunity tonight to look through it for the first time, as a Board, in a public forum, and we
have some concerns about changing some of the language. You’ve heard that clearly from seven
members up here.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. I don’t mean to interrupt, Craig, but then that is different, because that’s
what I told Staff at our meeting. If it was an extension based on your need to digest the document,
we’d be willing to do that, okay, and you’re just getting it now on Friday, and you’re saying you really
haven’t gone through this document. Is that basically what you’re saying?
MR. MAC EWAN-No, we went through the document.
MR. COLLINS-But you haven’t had a chance to talk with Staff about your concerns, though.
MR. MAC EWAN-We’re talking about it tonight, and that’s when we will talk about it, and that’s the
appropriate time to talk about it.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. Now, I said that I’d be willing to do that and give an extension if that was the
case, okay. You remember that discussion, okay. My concern, then, is Stu Mesinger is not going to
be here at next week’s meeting. Is that still the case?
MR. MESINGER-That is the case.
12
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. COLLINS-Well, then all of a sudden it becomes next month. That was our concern about next
week.
MR. PALING-Okay. I have an alternate suggestion. Why doesn’t Stu and Chris vacate and re-write
the paragraph tonight and bring it back in for us, and we can read it into the record, and we can look
at it and see if that’s acceptable and go from there.
MR. MESINGER-I can read it to you right now. I mean, there’s nine, I have nine changes.
Honestly. Eight of them are easy. The last one’s the map. I’ll give you the other eight, and I’ll give
you my proposal and the map and we can talk about it.
MR. PALING-This evening?
MR. MESINGER-Right now.
MR. MAC EWAN-I just want to be absolutely clear that this is going to end up being the way, you
know, the concerns that members of the Board had over the language in that paragraph.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. If that’s the case, then, and Stu feels he’s got those down, there wasn’t really
anything that you brought up that we had a problem with, okay. Our concern that we don’t just
continually re-hash it to re-hash it, okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s not what we’re trying to do.
MR. COLLINS-Okay. Which is fine, I just want to clarify that. If you have some questions, basic
questions about language, then I’d be willing to come back next week.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s what it boiled down to was the language.
MR. VOLLARO-I think we’re just trying to take the ambiguity out of this, John.
MR. COLLINS-I didn’t read it as being unclear, Robert. That’s my.
MR. MESINGER-And I will reverse myself totally, which I hope you take as a sign not of an idiot,
but of an open mind, and say to you that the changes are so relatively minor that you can adopt this
next week without me, and that would be the other way of doing it. I mean, I do think that they’re,
you know, that they are very minor. Honestly they are.
MR. LEBOWITZ-I just think that there needs to be some closure on this process relatively soon,
and the point that I wanted to make a minute ago is I think what happens with the 60 day clock is
that where we start with this is that if we can’t get to agreement on these revisions, our original
scoping statement becomes a scoping statement. Now, I think that this, you know, fifth or six
iteration since then is better and deals with more of the Board’s concerns than what our original, the
way we put it in our original scoping statement. I think we understood what we wanted to do. I
don’t think that Stu and the Board would have agreed that that was, what we were going to do was
responsive to what you wanted, but we really do want to, you know, not get sandbagged and come in
here next week and then, you know, being asked to look at a document that’s radically different from
this.
MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t know how you could worry about being sandbagged. We’re certainly not
trying to sandbag anybody. I mean, this is a very important document. This sets the movement for
the rest of the program here, and in order for us to be mindful that we’re heading in the right
direction, that we’re going to cover all the bases, we just want to be absolutely clear that we have that
language there, and I know that, for myself, and these other six members up there, that there was
some confusion in there, and we just want that paragraph cleared up. That’s all we’re asking for, and
the advice we’re getting is table this tonight, let them revise that paragraph, bring it back here next
Tuesday and we’ll put it to a vote, and quite frankly, I don’t see how it wouldn’t pass next Tuesday. I
think everybody would be very comfortable with it, because we all have the same mindset up here.
We’re all looking for the same thing. Okay. Thank you very, very much.
MR. COLLINS-No problem.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s good cooperation. You’re allowing us to table it until next Tuesday.
MR. SCHACHNER-Is that the case? I mean, having heard on the record only that they won’t allow
it, I guess as your Counsel I have to say, that should be on the record.
MR. COLLINS-We will allow it to be tabled.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. LEBOWITZ-On the representation that the changes that are being discussed are the changes
that Stu wants to make as he’s proposing.
MR. MESINGER-As I’ve heard from you folks.
MR. MAC EWAN-As you heard from us.
MR. SCHACHNER-And, Craig, you just summarized that by focusing on that one paragraph, but in
fairness to Bob Paling, there were six or seven other very minor comments.
MR. MAC EWAN-Eight to be exact.
MR. SCHACHNER-Okay, or eight.
MR. LEBOWITZ-I’m sure that we can work with Stu to get something that we agree is acceptable.
MR. MAC EWAN-You know where we’re coming from?
MR. COLLINS-Yes.
MR. LEBOWITZ-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you very, very much.
MR. COLLINS-No problem.
OLD BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 54-99 THE GLEN @ HILAND MEADOWS, INC. OWNER: EDDY
PROPERTY SERVICE INC. AND GLENS FALLS HOME, INC. AGENT: DAVID
WENDTH ZONE: PUD LOCATION: HAVILAND & MEADOWBROOK ROADS
FINAL SITE PLAN APPROVAL. APPLICANT PROPOSES A RETIREMENT CENTER
CONSISTING OF A TWO STORY APPROXIMATELY 126,000 SQUARE FOOT
FACILITY CONSISTING OF 62 INDEPENDENT LIVING UNITS AND 44
ENRICHED HOUSING UNITS AND 18 COTTAGE UNITS IN 9 DETACHED
BUILDINGS, ALONG WITH ASSOCIATED SITE IMPROVEMENTS INCLUDING
ROADS, UTILITIES, PARKING AREAS, OUTDOOR COURTYARDS AND
LANDSCAPING. CROSS REFERENCE: HILAND PARK PUD BEAUTIFICATION
COMM.: 10/12/99 WARREN CO. PLANNING: 10/13/99 LOT SIZE: 45 +/- ACRES
SECTION: 179-58
DAVIE CAESAR, JOE SPORKO, KEVIN HASTINGS, PRESENT
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And the public hearing was back on October 25 and it has been left open.
th
MRS. MOORE-No, I believe it was closed.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-You believe it was closed. I kind of thought it was, too, but I wasn’t sure.
MR. MAC EWAN-I am pretty sure we left that open because there were outstanding issues
regarding Town Water, Wastewater, and Highway Department.
MRS. MOORE-You closed it because you approved the preliminary.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, we did. Okay. So there is no public hearing tonight. It was closed back
in October.
STAFF INPUT
Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 54-99 – Final Stage, The Glen At Hiland Meadows, Meeting Date:
January 18, 2000 “Project Description: The applicant proposes development of a retirement
facility consisting of 124 living units. The application was tabled at the December 21, 1999 Planning
Board meeting pending additional information (see attached resolution) 1. Clarification of
landscaping of undeveloped land. 2. Resolution of town Highway issue regarding what roads are
proposed to be dedicated, and who is proposed to maintain the granite island. 3. Identification of
turning radiuses on final plans in relation to emergency apparatus turning radius requirements. 4.
Provision of additional detail of the relationship of the Glen and Family Golf. 5. Resolve
Wastewater Department issue regarding ownership. 6. Provision of scaled dimensions for the
entranceway on the final plans. 7. Provision of a detailed light plan. Staff Notes: The Planning
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
Board requested the applicant to resolve several issues with select Town Departments (Water,
Wastewater, Highway) The applicant has met with these departments and has provided
correspondence indicating the plans as submitted meet the requirements and are acceptable by the
Town’s Departments and Town Engineer. The applicant has addressed Staff comments with
notations made on the plans in regards to sign dimensions, undeveloped land, lighting and proposed
linking with family golf. Recommendation: Staff would recommend Final approval for the
construction of a retirement facility consisting of 124 units as presented by the plans submitted (L-1
thru L-12; U-1 revised 1/10/00; U-2 & U-3 final site plan revised 1/7/00; A-201 through A-208 final
submission dated 11/24/99; and CA- 201, GA-101; SA-101; E-101 final submission dated
11/24/99).
MR. MAC EWAN-We should probably read in a couple of these memos.
MRS. MOORE-All right. I’ll start with the Fire Marshal. This is addressed to Mr. Wendth. “I
would like to thank you, Mr. Caesar, and Mr. Meehl for coming in Tuesday morning to discuss the
Glen at Hiland Meadows project with us. I think all of those involved will agree that we had a very
productive meeting with the following results: 1. The Town Highway Department has requested
that the planter at the Meadowbrook Road entrance be removed. Removing the planter will also
improve the necessary turning radius for fire apparatus. 2. The driveway in front of the main
entrance canopy has been widened to 18 feet and the turning radius of the entrance loop has been
improved to allow for the turning radius of fire apparatus. 3. Placement of fire hydrants will be
considered in respect to the fire department connection. Fire hydrant spacing may allow for moving
a fire hydrant closer to the service driveway leading to the fire department connection. 4.
Temporary alterations to the site plan will be made to allow fire department aerial apparatus to access
the rear of the building. This temporary gravel driveway will be provided to allow for placement of
an aerial device at 30 feet and 34 feet from the building. Prior to beginning the proposed expansion,
representatives from the Glen will return to discuss how to provide fire department access on a
permanent basis. The modifications to the site plan, as discussed in Tuesday’s meeting, have
addressed our concerns for fire department access and fire hydrant placement. Thank you for your
cooperation in this matter. If you have any questions or any comments, please feel free to call me at
761-8205. Sincerely, Christopher J. Jones Fire Marshal” Town Highway Department, this is
addressed to the Planning Board, from Richard Missita, “Based on the letter dated December 10,
1999 from Kevin Hastings of the LA Group to Chairman MacEwan, it has been confirmed that the
seven stipulations set forth by the Town of Queensbury Highway Department have, in fact, been
satisfied. In addition, the island at Meadowbrook has been removed. Therefore, as the Highway
Superintendent I hereby recommend its acceptance. Respectfully, Richard A. Missita, Highway
Superintendent, Town of Queensbury” Town of Queensbury Department of Wastewater, “I have
recently met with Kevin Hastings, David Wendth, and Davie Caesar to discuss the outstanding
sanitary sewer items on my letters dated October 14 and December 3, 1999. All issues were
satisfactorily addressed. It was agreed that the sanitary mains would be extended so that it will
provide for future connection of development on the west side of Meadowbrook Road. With these
changes, we agreed that the Town would own and maintain all the sanitary sewer mains in this
complex. If you have other questions on this, please feel free to call me at my office.” I have a Rist-
Frost letter dated January 7, 2000 addressed to Chris Round, “We have reviewed the additional
lighting information dated January 6, 2000, submitted in response to the request of the Planning
Board. The type of fixture, fixture distribution and wattage of the light source are standard for this
type of application. The placement and spacing of the roadway fixtures will provide adequate
lighting levels on the road and will not provide any trespass light onto neighboring properties. It is
RFA’s determination that the proposed site lighting design is acceptable from a functional and a light
encroachment standpoint.” I think that’s it.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Gentlemen. Good evening. Could you identify yourselves for the
record, please.
MR. CAESAR-Good evening. My name is Davie Caesar. I’m the Director of Project Management
for the Eddy Group. Standing in tonight for David Wendth who made the previous two
presentations here. He had emergency surgery last night and was unable to attend tonight. To my
right is Joe Sporko from the LA Group, and to his right is Kevin Hastings from the LA Group.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We pretty much left things off there last month with those outstanding
seven issues, and it looks like everything’s been addressed satisfactorily. Anything you wanted to
add? No? Any questions?
MR. VOLLARO-I just have one on the temporary road, the gravel road that is mentioned in the Fire
Marshal’s letter. I’m just wondering if, it seems that they talk about that as a Phase I temporary road,
and I wonder how long that will remain temporary, whether or not we should put some sort of a cap
on that that if Phase II never comes along, for some reason, I don’t see why it would not, but in the
event it doesn’t, should there be some cap on how long that temporary road would remain
temporary?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. CAESAR-As far as the time constraint, the temporary gravel road was conceded to be put in for
the fire department so they would have access to the rear of the building, which is a staging area for
the aerial equipment. If Phase II does kick in here, we would come back to the Board again for
approval on the Phase II.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, that was exactly my point. In the event, and I don’t see why Phase II
wouldn’t come about. It seems to me that a project like this certainly Phase II will, but if it doesn’t,
you’ve got a temporary road, a temporary gravel road, and there should be some time mark set out
there that says, after a period of three years, whatever, some number, two years, that that road would
then become a permanent turnaround. Otherwise, if we never get into Phase II, you’ve got a
temporary road forever.
MR. RINGER-You’ve got the road and it’s there.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Fine. I’m just saying, is everybody comfortable with a temporary road for a
long period of time? If they are, fine. That’s good.
MR. MAC EWAN-The usage of it is strictly for fire access. It’s not like they’re going to be using it
for deliveries or anything like that or parking.
MR. ROUND-The reason it was called temporary is it was anticipated Phase II would be constructed
and that portion of the road would no longer be necessary because the facility then would have
access from the new road. It’s permanent until removed.
MR. VOLLARO-I think what I’m hearing up here, particularly from Larry, who’s an experienced
long term fireman, is he doesn’t mind having to run a truck or something on a temporary road.
MR. MAC EWAN-Which didn’t you agree with, experienced or long term?
MR. RINGER-Just using me as an example as a firefighter.
MR. ROUND-We met with the Fire Chief, Chip Mellon, with Dave Hatin and with the Fire Marshal,
and I think it meets all those individual’s satisfaction. It’s going to solve our issues.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That was my only question, whether it would stay there. I think that,
incidentally, I’ve got to say that everybody did a fine job of putting all that together, but I had one
other question. I think at a previous meeting, I had asked about, in the total build out, in other
words, the total build out picture would be I think something like 300 units, 294 to 300, something
like that. What these temporary expansion marks on L-1, what would this whole project look like in
a totally built out state? I think I had asked that question back upstream.
MR. CAESAR-I believe that information was given at previous meetings, as to what the build out
was proposed for future build out.
MR. VOLLARO-I’ve got that. It kind of in words. It says how many different things. I was looking
for some sort of a visual description. In other words, here we have, L-1 shows where all the
buildings are going to be.
MR. ROUND-There was a tabular summary, as well, that was presented to you last meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-The tabular summary which takes you up to 294 units.
MR. ROUND-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-I recognize that. I’m just wondering whether we could have gotten a build out
picture of the entire project.
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re looking for a site plan layout, what you’re looking at.
MR. VOLLARO-I’m looking to fill in these dotted areas with what’s going to be there. If that’s the
footprint, if those dotted areas are going to be the footprint of what’s going to go in there, then that’s
fine, if that’s the real footprint. What I’m looking for is what I’m really driving at is density. See, I
don’t know what those other 300 units are going to look like if they’re put within that footprint that
they have here.
MR. ROUND-I don’t think the applicant yet knows. They haven’t yet tailored that facility. It’s a
bubble diagram. It’s a typical way to present a concept.
16
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. SPORKO-If I may just reiterate that, it’s not totally known what the future layout will be as far
as design goes. We’re showing, to the best of our ability, where those areas would be and at the time
that we come in for anything beyond this plan, you obviously will be reviewing the plan, and the
density along with that plan. So I think that you’d be able to really take it up at the time of review of
any future phases.
MR. VOLLARO-Do you feel that 300 units is probably your maximum build out, as you see it today,
on that 45 acres?
MR. CAESAR-As we see it today, I believe it is, yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I don’t have any other questions on it, then.
MR. MAC EWAN-No other questions or comments from Staff? Board members? Anything you
gentlemen want to add? Does someone want to put a motion up?
MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 54-99, FINAL STAGE, THE GLEN @
HILAND MEADOWS, INC., Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Alan Abbott:
To construct a Senior living facility as submitted and to include the following letters as part of the
final stage approval: 1. Mac Engineering (Jim Mackenzie) subject is site light spill off dated
12/30/99; 2. Highway Department memorandum (Richard Missita) dated 1/10/00; 3. Town of
Queensbury Wastewater Department (Mike Shaw) dated 1/6/00; 4. Rist-Frost Asssociates (Town
Engineer) dated 1/7/00; 5. Fire Marshal (Chris Jones) dated 1/6/00; 6. Town of Queensbury
Water Department (Ralph Van Dusen) dated 12/6/99.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re all set, gentlemen. Good luck
MR. CAESAR-Thank you very much.
SITE PLAN NO. 51-99 PRELIMINARY APPROVAL THOMAS J. FARONE & SONS,
INC./J. BUCKLEY BRYAN, JR. OWNER: SAME ZONE: PUD/SR-20, MR-5 & LC-42A
LOCATION: END OF FARR LANE AND FOX FARM ROADS APPLICANT
REQUESTS PRELIMINARY APPROVAL FOR A 75 LOT SINGLE FAMILY
RESIDENTIAL AND MIXED USE DEVELOPMENT IN THREE (3) PHASES. PHASE
I, 25 RESIDENTIAL LOTS, SENIOR HOUSING, COMMUNITY SERVICE AREA AND
ACCESS TO OPEN SPACE/CONSERVATION AREA. PHASE II, 25 RESIDENTIAL
LOTS. PHASE III, 25 RESIDENTIAL LOTS. PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND
APPROVAL IS REQUIRED FOR A PLANNED UNIT DEVELOPMENT. CROSS
REFERENCE: PUD 1-96/SP 1-97 TAX MAP NO. 73-1-21, 22.1, 22.2, 22.3, 22.4 LOT SIZE:
135.15 +/- ACRES SECTION: 179-58
MATTHEW J. JONES, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT; TOM NACE, PRESENT
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And the public hearing back on September 23 was closed. Are we re-
rd
opening it for tonight?
MR. MAC EWAN-There’s a public hearing tonight.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-There is a public hearing tonight.
STAFF INPUT
Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 51-99, Thomas J. Farone & Sons, Inc., J. Buckley Bryan, Jr., Meeting
Date: January 18, 2000 “Project Description: The applicant proposes preliminary approval of a
Planned Unit Development of single family lots and a senior housing facility. The Planning Board
requested the applicant obtain additional information regarding groundwater flow, and
interconnection with the adjacent school property. Staff Notes: The applicant has submitted a site
plan identifying the proposed interconnection with the Queensbury School Campus. Staff
anticipated dialogue regarding the interconnection and we anticipate formal confirmation of the
interconnection. An additional groundwater monitoring well was installed on the site and a complete
17
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
set of water level measurements have been collected confirming the direction of groundwater flow to
the south. See the attached correspondence dated November 20, 1999 (transmitted on 1/13/00)
from Tom Nace. Recommendation: Staff recommends Preliminary approval pending Board
discussion.”
MR. MAC EWAN-Could you read in Mr. Jones’ letter of the 22 of December.
nd
MRS. MOORE-It’s addressed to Mr. Fred Champagne. “I am writing to you in connection with the
Indian Ridge project. As a result of our successful meetings with the Citizens for Queensbury last
spring, we have been able to finalize various issues with the Planning Board and the school. The
matter is now on the Planning Board agenda for Tuesday, January 18, 2000. At that time, we will ask
the Planning Board for preliminary site plan approval. As you may recall, your ordinance requires a
separate vote by the Town Board on the question of site plan approval. As your successor will be
very busy with new agenda items in January, I thought it would be appropriate at this time for us to
ask for a tentative place on the January 24 Town Board agenda, for possible consideration of a
th
resolution approving the site plan. Of course, we would only ask the Town Board to consider such a
resolution if we have received an affirmative vote from the Planning Board. I also want to take a
moment to thank you for the courtesies you extended our office as the Town Board considered this
project over the past four years. It has been a long process for all involved. At the same time, it has
been a pleasure working with you and your staff. The Town has been the beneficiary of
distinguished, courteous leadership during the 90’s. Good luck to you as you continue your service
to the citizens of Queensbury. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Sincerely, Matthew J.
Jones”
MR. MAC EWAN-And we also have a Nace Engineering letter of November 20.
th
MRS. MOORE-This is addressed to Mr. Round, “At the direction of the Planning Board, we have
installed an additional groundwater monitoring well in the northwestern section of the proposed
subdivision. The purpose of this well was to confirm that the groundwater gradient is away from the
wetland across the entire subdivision site. The well was installed and developed on October 28.
th
On November 5 the water level in this well and in the previous wells was measured. The surface
th
water level in the wetland adjacent to the proposed subdivision was also measured at that time. The
results of these water measurements are shown on the enclosed portion of the subdivision plan and
are summarized below.
Groundwater Distance from Groundwater elevation
Location elevation edge of wetland below wetland
Monitoring Well #1 418.9’ 1680’ +/- 9.1’
Monitoring Well #2 419.5’ 1630’ +/- 8.5’
Monitoring Well #3 426.6’ 550’ +/- 1.4’
Monitoring Well #4 425.7’ 410’ +/- 2.3’
With this additional information, I believe that we can unequivocally state that the groundwater
gradient under the entire subdivision is away from the wetlands. I trust that this final monitoring
well satisfactorily puts this issue to rest.”
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else?
MRS. MOORE-No.
MR. MAC EWAN-Good evening, gentlemen.
MR. JONES-Good evening, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MAC EWAN-The floor is yours.
MR. JONES-Thank you, sir. For the purpose of your record, Mr. Chairman, I’m Matthew J. Jones
of the Jones Firm, the attorney for the applicant. To my right is Tom Nace of Nace Engineering,
and to my left is Jim Miller of Miller and Associates, who are well familiar to the Board. This
evening we’re seeking preliminary site plan approval with this PUD. We propose to address three
issues with you, the first of which has to do with the wells, which the Board asked us to undertake at
our last meeting in October. We have done so, and I’ll ask Tom Nace to summarize that
information for you.
MR. NACE-For the record, Tom Nace. Just briefly, you just had the letter presenting all the data
read to you. The new well was located here, we’ve labeled Monitoring Well #4. The elevation
difference in static water level between that well and the wetland is 2.4 feet. The well’s about, I
believe, 500 and some odd feet from the wetland. That establishes that there is a gradient here away
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
from the wetland. There was a gradient here that we measured, between Well #3 and the wetland, of
I believe approximately one and a third feet, and then the gradient as you come on over to these two
far wells is eight to nine feet from the wetland. There was a question that came up from the
audience. I believe Mr. Strough asked that we go back and look at the soils, just to make sure that
there were no anomalies anywhere that we found, where the might be layers in here that would perch
the water table or pitch it back in any particular place toward the wetland. I have done that. I looked
back through all of the test pits that have been done over the past years, as well as the well logs from
the drilling, the monitoring wells. There was a very little trace of silt in some of the samples, but it
was just a trace. There was nowhere in any of the tests that had any appreciable amount of silt that
would possibly impede the flow of water. So I think at this point, that the data speaks for itself.
MR. MAC EWAN-Do you happen to have a site plan showing, with you tonight that shows the
position of the houses, the driveways on there? You had one earlier on. Could you just put it up
there on the board for us, please.
MR. NACE-These are broken down into 50 scale, Craig. Is there any particular different sheets, any
particular area that you’re interested in?
MR. MAC EWAN-No, just any one, it doesn’t really matter. Those are clearing limits delineated in
there, too, on the lots themselves, the clearing limits on the lots?
MR. NACE-Those are on the landscape plan.
MR. MAC EWAN-It’s on the landscape one?
JIM MILLER
MR. MILLER-This doesn’t show the individual lot clearing. It just shows the clearing that’ll result
from the road construction.
MR. MAC EWAN-We’ve looked at so many plans over the last couple of years now. I recall one of
the plans you showed the way the driveways had turnarounds in them so you wouldn’t be backing
out on the street.
MR. NACE-A typical lot.
MR. MAC EWAN-And that’s still going to comply with this?
MR. NACE-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Wasn’t there also some green space left in the middle area here that was
dedicated as open space?
MR. MILLER-No. That’s gone, because all the open space now, because of the negotiations with
the neighbors, has been pushed to the top of the ridge. So now what we have, we have some no cut
zones.
MR. JONES-If there be no further questions on the wells, the second and third issues that we talked
about in October actually kind of lump together. They had to do with discussions with the
Queensbury School District, in connection with its interest in an interconnect between the School
property and this PUD, and that kind of dovetailed into traffic. We discussed both of those issue
together, and I intend to do that this evening. Following, in October, at the conclusion of the
meeting, we discussed with you if the School District had undertaken a study with its consultant to
study traffic flows within the School District property, and several members of the Board were
interested in the results of that study for, among other reasons, to assess what you may be asking us
to do with regard to traffic, and further traffic studies on our site. That study was undertaken. We
met on November 30 with the Superintendent and representatives of the School District, Larry
th
Paltrowitz, and I know Larry is here this evening, and Chris Round from the Town Planning Staff.
During the course of that meeting, we reached an agreement with the School District on the
interconnect between the two properties. It is the only thing that is different on the plan that you see
tonight, that you haven’t seen before, and in the previous plans, there was a proposed easement
which is right about where that red line is, I believe, right in there, a bike path, a foot path, an
emergency access, vehicular path which connected our property and the road system within our
property with the bus garage access road. What you see now, on the left side, in the blue, is that
parcel has been relocated. It still connects the bus access garage, but it also goes on the more
westerly side of the property, and connects over where you see it, and there’s a reason for that, and
let me just briefly kind of take you through the agreement we’ve reached with the School District. It
is a 30 foot wide conveyance that we intend to make to the School District. So the School District
will own title to the area in blue which you see. Within that 30 foot wide conveyance, there will be a
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
14 foot wide asphalt paved road or path, and it will be asphalt for maintenance reasons. It’ll be easier
for the School District to maintain it in that form, but its use will be limited, and it will be limited still
to pedestrian traffic, bicycle traffic and emergency access and vehicular traffic. There will be no
motorized traffic contemplated within that parcel, unless and until the Town of Queensbury, and this
is a little bit different, unless and until the Town of Queensbury should change that prohibition, and
there is some possibility, however remote, in the future that the School District may come to you and
seek to utilize some part of that, what would be a road system for ultimate access out on Manor
Drive. They wanted to preserve the ability to do that, and our arrangement with them is that because
it’ll have an impact on this neighborhood, even though the School District is exempt from the
planning and zoning process within a municipality, because this conveyance is made in connection
with this project, it would need to come to you to get your approval before they could use that for
any other than the three purposes which I’ve just identified. We have agreed to install breakaway
gates at each end of the parcel, consistent with the previous plan that we’ve shown to you, and we’ll
ask that the Planning Board Staff and the School District approve the specific type and style of
breakaway gates. We’ll install four cut off style lights into the School District’s existing lighting
circuitry. Those lights will be on the north side of that parcel, and they will be sufficient to light the
blue area on the map. We’ve made provision for the specific kind of lights as well. In addition to
that, the developer has agreed to install a six foot concrete sidewalk, and the best way to do it is
where Jim is pointing. From the end of the parcel all the way to where there’s a stop sign at the main
intersection on school property. We’ll do that according to the specs which are standard in the
Town. Following the conveyance to the School District, the School District will have the sole
responsibility and the affirmative obligation to maintain and plow the pavement, the sidewalks and
maintain the lighting and pay the electrical cost. So once we transfer it over to them, it’s going to be
the School District’s responsibility to maintain this area, and we have agreed to pay an initial one time
fee to the School District on a negotiated amount to cover the anticipated cost of that for a 10 year
period, less some credits that we’ll receive for installing the sidewalk on School District property. All
that’s been laid out again in correspondence between myself and the District’s Counsel, and what
we’d be asking you to do tonight is, if you’re in agreement with that, and that’s satisfactory to you, to
grant preliminary subdivision approval contingent upon us filing the formal agreement with the
Town Planning Staff. We would expect to do that within the next couple of weeks.
MR. MAC EWAN-Does Staff have a copy of that agreement?
MR. JONES-It hasn’t been drafted yet. It’s only in letter form.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Could you just back up to the three things that you said that the School
can utilize that road for, and how it reflects that they would have to come to this Board for any kind
of approval.
MR. JONES-You bet. The authorized uses for that parcel are pedestrian traffic, non motorized
bicycle traffic, and emergency vehicular traffic, as the name suggests, fire trucks and the like. In the
event that the School desired to use that parcel for any other use, anything but those three uses, they
would have to come and seek the approval of the Town of Queensbury, and I would presume the
Planning Board, although the Town could designate the appropriate agency, and the reason for that
is if they decided to build a road system within the School District property, and wanted to make use
of that parcel as part of the road system, possibly to exit out on Manor Drive as it’s been told to me,
that will impact the neighborhood, and we want to build in protection for those neighbors that at the
time may be what they’re going to do is or is not a good idea. We felt the best protection was not the
developer, at that point, but the Town, for you to say yes or no, we think that works or does not
work, understanding that the School District would be able to go over but a few feet on its own
property and do the same without the permission of the Town of Queensbury.
MR. MAC EWAN-To back up to a statement that you made was that normally, you said something
about that school districts are exempt from local zoning ordinances?
MR. JONES-As I understand it.
MR. MAC EWAN-Well, how would this Board apply to them if they’re exempt from it?
MR. JONES-Because we’re making specific provision in the deed that we’re going to convey to the
School District that the property may be limited in use for three things, and the only way that use can
be changed, and by restrictive covenant deed restriction, that kind of thing, the only way that that use
can be changed is with the permission of the Town of Queensbury.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. PALING-In the future, shouldn’t it be 50 feet wide, rather than 30?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. NACE-The intended use right now is as the three stated uses were said, and for that, 30 feet is
sufficient. If the School District wants to use this for some other purpose in the future, it wouldn’t
be to come all the way through to our subdivision road. It would be to come through some other
means and access out through the front of the School property, either onto Manor Drive or Aviation
Road, or even some sort of internal circulation, and in that case, if they needed extra room, it would
come off the School property.
MR. PALING-So they could never use that access to run vehicles in.
MR. JONES-Not without your permission.
MR. PALING-Well, the width, too.
MR. JONES-Correct.
MR. PALING-Okay.
MR. RINGER-So there’s no way, then, that the School could go into this development with buses
because they wouldn’t own that, they wouldn’t have the right to that.
MR. JONES-They’ll actually own the fee. They’ll own the title to all that. It would require, any
change of the use would require the permission of the Town of Queensbury. So for them to enter
vehicular traffic any place on that blue strip would require the permission of the Town of
Queensbury, and I don’t foresee that occurring, given the discussion that we’ve had over several
years on the issue.
MR. RINGER-But to make it a road, they’d need more than 30 feet.
MR. JONES-Yes.
MR. RINGER-So there’s no way they could put a road in through there.
MR. JONES-No. I don’t ever see it going into our subdivision, but the possibility would exist, they
would have the right, at the present time, because it’s their property, to just run a parallel road right
out here, right next to ours, without any intervention from the Town, because the School District is
not subject to the zoning rules of the Town, and so if they were going to use this parcel for that
purpose at all, we just said they’re going to need your permission to do that.
MR. MAC EWAN-Any questions?
MR. RINGER-The one question, Mark, that contract, how would that apply to?
MR. SCHACHNER-I don’t know, Larry. You’re asking the right question and this is all news to me,
and I guess I’m going to invite Mr. Jones’ and the School District’s Counsel or anybody else to
educate me as to how this might work. I certainly don’t have any philosophical problem with what
they’re proposing, but from the legal standpoint, it sounds pretty cumbersome to me for private
parties to contemplate subjecting themselves to municipal jurisdiction that they think they don’t, that
they think doesn’t otherwise exist, and I’m also thinking out loud, because this is the first I hear of
this, what is the standing of people who purchase lots in the subdivision to object to some proposed
use that the School District may have down the road, no pun intended. It’s striking me as sort of a
private agreement among private entities, or a private entity and a quasi private entity, the School,
that typically we wouldn’t get involved in, and if, in reality, obviously, I know the School District’s
Counsel is present, and I don’t know if you want to hear from him. I don’t know if he wants to
address this issue, or he may just be here observing, but regardless, I’m sure Mr. Jones has accurately
portrayed the nature of the agreement. It sounds cumbersome. My gut reaction, hearing it for the
first time, is it sounds cumbersome, but I don’t have any philosophical problem with it if the various
Counsels can convince me that it’ll work. That’s a long, marbly mouthed way of saying I don’t know.
MR. JONES-It’s cumbersome, and I think the reason it’s cumbersome is that the School District is
one of the few entities in your Town over which you don’t have jurisdiction over such things as
roads, and so we’re trying to protect the residents by having the School District consent to your
jurisdiction on that limited issue.
MR. SCHACHNER-Excuse me for interrupting. I understood that to be the reason, and that’s why
I say, philosophically, it sounds commendable, but I need some help here, you know, as to why it’s
going to work legally. I mean, I’m not sure you have to do that right now.
MR. JONES-Sure. We’re okay on the terms of the agreement. The theoretical rationale that I had
for it was we would name the Town as a beneficiary of the easement, with enforcement powers for
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the easement, and as a beneficiary that could stop an unlawful use that they so desire. So that was
the theoretical basis.
MR. SCHACHNER-All right, and I don’t know if we should get into this legal theory, that’s
different than, for example, coming to the Planning Board for some type of site plan approval. That
would be treating the Town, in essence, as a neighbor that would have a legal right to object to a
proposed use by somebody, and that, to me, is different than the way I understood Mr. Jones initially
making the proposal, just because I didn’t understand. That, to me, sounds more likely to be
workable, but it would not involve this Planning Board in a site plan review function. That would
involve the Town Board, in essence, as the Town property owner party. We’ve got to work on that.
MR. JONES-Conceptually it works. I think the lawyers could work out the language.
MR. VOLLARO-On two of the three uses, the pedestrian and the bike use, is that an unimpeded use
with respect to these breakaway gates and so on, in other words, that traffic flows freely? That was
the only question I had.
MR. ABBOTT-Do you know if there are sidewalks on what’s labeled the school main access road?
On this map it shows the detail of the.
MR. JONES-If there are there now?
MR. ABBOTT-Yes. The sidewalk you’re building, are you connecting it to something?
MR. MILLER-We took it up to the corner where there’s a crosswalk that ties to a sidewalk that goes
to the new Four Five school, I believe.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay. (lost words) sidewalk being built going nowhere.
MR. MILLER-That was part of the reason we moved the whole access point, because it dumped out
more in the middle of that bus road, just got it back around the edge of it.
MR. ABBOTT-You mentioned that the lights were going to be on the north side of the path. On
the diagram it shows on the south side.
MR. JONES-Correct, and this afternoon we worked out that that detail, the School District has
asked us to put it on the north side, and in our agreement they’ll show on the north side.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay, and the lighting is such that people in Lots 9, 10 and 11 will not have spill over
of the lights into their back yard?
MR. MILLER-I think when we specify those lights, we’re going to use a cut off style light that
throws the light away from the site. They have a type of lens and a type of shield that can be
specified, it’s meant to go against a building or something, so you don’t get wash onto the building.
So we’ll specify the types of lens and shields, so we will minimize the light going into the back yards.
Most of those, one other point. I think there’s actually only going to be a couple of the lots that
really would be impacted by that light, because we have a no cut zone in that corner. Here’s the
access to the School, and this gray shaded area is a no clear zone and actually in areas where it’s
already, it’s previously been cleared, there’ll be some additional planting in there. So the only place,
only Lot 9 and a corner of Lot 10 are actually right against that access way.
MR. ABBOTT-And potentially eight.
MR. MILLER-Yes, and potentially eight. I think the first light we had indicated was right about at
this bend point in that access way.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Could I ask you gentlemen to give up the table, and we’ll open up the
public hearing.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
MR. MAC EWAN-Before I let the general public come up, Mr. Paltrowitz, would you come up,
please, and respond on behalf of the School for us.
LARRY PALTROWITZ
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MR. PALTROWITZ-I’m Larry Paltrowitz. I’m the attorney for the Queensbury Union Free School
District, and first of all, I just want to say that the School District approached meeting with the
developer in the fall, in October and in November, with a spirit of cooperation. We had some
direction from you as the Town Planning Board, and we felt that we needed to work out an
arrangement that was accommodating to the developer as well as meet the School District’s needs,
and so as you know, when we were here before, I indicated that we were looking for some full
access, if that were possible, to utilize the soon to be Town roadway within the subdivision, but from
your direction, it seemed to indicate that that was not going to be a good idea, and as we evaluated it
and had our consultant look at it, there may be some other alternatives that we could look at. So
from the first standpoint, the District did agree that the blue shaded area leading out to the proposed
road in the subdivision would only be used for the three purposes that Mr. Jones indicated, and so
we are in full agreement with that. However, even though we worked very diligently with Mr. Jones
and his consultants and the developer, it wasn’t until today that we actually got the draft of the
location. Although we talked about it, we didn’t actually see it, and second of all, this whole notion
of the restrictions came up for discussion as late as this afternoon. The School District still believes
that it will only be using, and has agreed to only use the blue shaded area for the purposes of the
three items Mr. Jones mentioned. However, the discussion today, and it’s as late as this afternoon,
was the fact that the School District was looking at the possibility, down the road at some point in
the future, to utilize access on its own property heading south down to Manor Drive, and in order to
do that, that’s where the discussion came up with the legal issues this afternoon, about the fact that
the District was willing to restrict its rights out into the subdivision, but we were concerned about
not, giving up rights with regards to using a portion of the blue shaded area as part of a roadway that
may need to be wider than 30 feet in order to have regular traffic, and so we’ve been struggling, this
afternoon, with trying to come up with some approach that would allow the developer to protect the
lots within a subdivision and confirm access wouldn’t go into the subdivision, and still reserve the
right to the District if its plans in the future were to develop a roadway system that would require a
road going along the northerly boundary of its current property, and then head south on the westerly
boundary, and so it was just this afternoon that we came up with this idea that the reservation of
rights would be somehow established, so that it would require the Town’s approval if we were going
to utilize any portion of that 30 foot strip as part of a roadway system that would somehow
ultimately exit out onto Manor Drive. We have not worked out the details, as you can appreciate the
discussion that just took place. We haven’t worked out the details of how that would actually
happen, and part of it is because of the time constraints of this meeting this evening, but I can tell
you that, again, in the spirit of cooperation with the developer, we are not looking to delay the
project, however, we would request that any approval that this Board gives is contingent or
conditioned upon the fact that that we do enter into an agreement with the developer, and although
Mr. Jones has outlined, in a letter which we just received, the concepts that he described to you, the
actual details of the document, the agreement itself, haven’t been drafted as of yet, and so we’re
confident we’re going to be able to reach an agreement with the developer with these concepts, but I
wanted to report to this Board that we haven’t yet done that, and perhaps one of those issues that we
do need to resolve is how we can accommodate the concerns the district has with regard to that use
issue, if it were to ever develop a roadway system, but I can tell you, in summary, that those items
that Mr. Jones identified are acceptable to the School District, provided that we can put the contract
liners together that confirms those concepts.
MR. MAC EWAN-You think 30 feet is wide enough for your usage if you ever should plan in the
future to want to expand the usage of that road?
MR. PALTROWITZ-It may not be, but it may require that, as we anticipate if we were going to
develop the road, we would have to come on to our property, so that it wouldn’t be using solely the
30 foot strip, but our concern was, if we were to restrict our rights totally with that 30 foot strip, we
would never be able to use a portion of it if we needed to use a portion of it in order to have the
roadway system that may occur many years down the road. So, it’s, at this point we want to keep
that option open, as best we can.
MR. VOLLARO-Is that one of the reasons you put the lights on the north side of the road, so that if
you were going to utilize the southern end of it you wouldn’t be interfering with the lights? Is that
part of it?
MR. PALTROWITZ-That’s part of it. The other reason was there’s an existing series of lights on
the School District now, and one light is actually located on the School District property on the
north side where that 30 foot strip is, and so to be consistent with the lighting as it comes out to the
School property, it made more sense to put it on the north side. So it’s really a combination of those
two things that caused us to believe that the lighting should be on the north side, as opposed to the
south side.
MR. MAC EWAN-That will change, then, from the drawings that we have in front of us?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, they’re going to go here.
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MR. PALTROWITZ-And again, our thought was, in talking with the developer, that it could be
constructed in such a way, or purchased in such a way that, as Mr. Miller indicated, would have a
minimal impact on the housing in the subdivision, but would provide the lighting necessary to light
that roadway.
MR. RINGER-If you own all the property south of the 30 foot, why would you need to disrupt the
30 foot? Why couldn’t you put the road just south of that 30 foot?
MR. PALTROWITZ-Right now, that property is being used as a ball field, and so the thought was
that we’re tight for space when it comes to our fields as they exist right now, and the thought was
that perhaps 10 or 15 or 20 feet might make a difference in terms of keeping a field there or not
keeping a field there.
MR. RINGER-Okay. Thank you.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any other questions from Board members?
MR. PALTROWITZ-Okay. Thank you very much.
MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you very much. Anyone else?
MARK HOFFMAN
DR. HOFFMAN-Mark Hoffman, Fox Hollow Lane. We had a previous public hearing on this
several months ago, at which point I had a submission which I think detailed my concerns. The basis
of my concerns at that time related somewhat to the fact that there was a new PUD agreement which
had been submitted which markedly differed from the prior PUD agreement in many ways, and my
request of the Board at that time was to go through that PUD agreement and see where the
differences were, determine whether they were substantive enough to provide an objection to any
aspect of this proposal, and I don’t know whether you’ve done that. I don’t know whether the PUD
agreement is an issue to be discussed tonight or if that’s purely before the Town Board. I would
assume the Town Board is going to take their cue to some extent from you, since the substantive
issues that relate to the project are being brought to the Planning Board. Some of the specific
concerns I had, I think some of them have been addressed. I think the one substantive concern that
I still feel should be addressed is the issue of the no cut areas. There have been some, I believe,
some no cut areas added to some of the lots. I have a particular interest in seeing that a no cut area
is inserted into the lots that border up to the conservation area. I think that that is an adjoining use
which is considered to be an important part of what the PUD is all about. It’s intended as an area
for passive recreation, and as such, I think that area would be enhanced by having a no cut zone in
the rear lots of the neighborhood homes that adjoin the conservation area. The other concern I have
that relates to traffic, I heard mention of traffic tonight, but I haven’t seen any substantive discussion
of it. I think at the last, the most recent prior meeting of this Board that dealt with that. There was
perhaps some hope that the School’s traffic study would address this to some extent. I’ve received a
copy of the study that has been done to this point. It really didn’t address any of the substantive
traffic issues that relate to the development on Aviation Road. It basically addressed the different
alternatives for how this access way could be addressed with the School. In my conversation with
the School Superintendent, he indicated that there was going to be a Part B of this study which
would address internal traffic management on School property, whether that would have any impact
on Indian Ridge traffic or decisions that might be made regarding mitigation of Indian Ridge. I don’t
know. I have not received any data from Part B of this study. It was my understanding, from
driving on Aviation Road every day, that there were some traffic counts done, but I haven’t seen any
reports of any of this. The basic point that I made previously in regard to traffic was that the
SEQRA approvals were based on traffic mitigation, and to date, we have no concrete mitigation plan
that’s dealing with traffic. Along those lines, I would simply add my own observation which is that
some of the prior discussions about traffic mitigation seem to be overly concerned about widening
Aviation Road. I don’t think that widening Aviation Road is going to significantly mitigate any of the
traffic problems related to Indian Ridge. I think all of the prior traffic studies that have been done
show that the levels of service for cars on Aviation Road was fine. There was minimal delay for
people who are on Aviation Road and trying to continue along their path. The traffic problem
occurs with people who are trying to get onto Aviation Road, trying to find enough gaps in the traffic
to get on to the road, and I don’t think widening the road is going to solve that problem, and the two
intersections that have been the main discussion for the last four years are Fox Farm Road and
Aviation and Farr Lane and Aviation. As far as Fox Farm and Aviation goes, during peak hours, it’s
not currently feasible to make a left turn onto Aviation and will not be in the future. Whether they
widen Aviation Road or not, and frankly, I don’t see any realistic way that that problem is going to be
mitigated, without an excessive expenditure and adding too many traffic lights and so forth. The way
that the neighborhood currently deals with it, and probably will continue to deal with it, is to not use
that intersection during peak hours, but to go up Gilmore instead. That can continue to be a feasible
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approach if, and only if, the restriction on the traffic, which was part of the original PUD agreement,
is continued, which is that the access from Fox Farm into Indian Ridge is restricted for entrance and
not exit. If that is adhered to, I think it will be a passable intersection probably. The more difficult
problem will be Farr Lane, which is not currently a particularly easy road to get out of during peak
hours, certainly to make a left turn out of Farr Lane during peak hours is very difficult, perhaps
dangerous. The mitigating factor right now, which is why nothing needs to be done at the moment,
is that there’s only an occasional car that leaves Farr Lane during peak hours, and that car can
probably make a left turn onto Manor Drive and go up through another fashion. However, if you
have an entire neighborhood that has to use that intersection during peak hours, it will be a
nonfunctional intersection. So, I don’t think widening Aviation Road will solve that. Perhaps
realigning the roads may make it feasible. It seems to me that some sort of traffic management
apparatus is necessary, either a traffic signal or possibly hiring somebody to direct traffic during peak
time, whichever is cheaper, but I don’t see any way that this project can be built out without
something being done to that intersection. Whose responsibility it is, is that the developer’s
responsibility, is it the Town’s? That’s your call and the Town Board’s call, but I would hope that
you don’t ignore that issue, because it’s obviously a key factor and has been for several years.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you very much.
MR. VOLLARO-Mark, I’d just like to ask one question if I could. In your opinion, you probably
have been with this project a lot longer than I have, and I would ask you whether you think that the
new PUD as you mentioned it is consistent with the original PUD. In other words, is this proposal
consistent with how you read and understand the original PUD?
DR. HOFFMAN-Well, I think you guys have already voted on that. So I’m not sure, you know,
unless you want to reverse yourself, I’m not sure.
MR. VOLLARO-No, but I just want your opinion on it.
DR. HOFFMAN-My feeling is that it’s a better overall plan than the original one. Whether it meets
the legal definition of PUD, I’m not an expert on that. I think it certainly has a number of the
features of a PUD. I’m not an expert, legally, to answer that question.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. That’s it. Thank you very much.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anyone else? No? I think for the time being I’ll leave the public hearing open.
When we tabled this back in September, the two things we were looking for were for them to get
together with the School regarding any proposed easement that they were talking about, and also
some, to correlate with the traffic study that the School was currently doing, I believe it was on
Aviation Road. Yes, no?
MR. ROUND-You asked for the groundwater well issue to be resolved.
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, the groundwater.
MR. ROUND-And work with the School regarding the traffic, the interconnection. The School is
not conducting a traffic analysis of Aviation Road. The School is looking at a campus master plan
and on-site circulation problems that might require them to look at an additional connection to
Aviation Road, and I think they’ve participated to the extent that they can in that discussion, and
that’s this interconnection that’s proposed here, and I think that’s the one Mr. Paltrowitz is
discussing and that they want to reserve future right to provide another connection at the west side
of the School campus site.
MR. MAC EWAN-There’s been a lot of concern, from the inception of this project, regarding those
major intersections, Fox Far m, you know, Potter Road and Farr Lane, on how to mitigate that. I
don’t think it’s the Town’s responsibility, if there’s a potential for traffic impact, to mitigate that.
MR. ROUND-The Town Board, in performing the SEQRA review, issued a negative declaration,
making a judgement on the impacts of traffic associated with this project, and that included, that
original decision was based on traffic analysis of Fox Farm, Aviation Road, Farr Lane, and other
select intersections, and so they made a decision that no mitigation was required to those
intersections. I’m directing my attention to the Board. That’s the judgement that they made. They
did not require mitigation on behalf of the applicant to provide improvements to the Aviation Road
intersections. The Town then initiated a study, and this is the summary I went through with you
back in October, commissioned Stetson Harza to do an analysis and provide recommendations, and
that’s the ones that we’ve talked about are widening of Aviation Road, adding additional turning
lanes to Fox Farm, Farr Lane, adding turning lanes and reconfiguration of Dixon Road. They looked
at other interconnection with Potter Road, and those are some of the things that have been out there
for two years. I’ve got the study in front of me. It’s commissioned and completed in ’97, April ’97.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
The Town has not moved forward with the improvements to those intersections. We’ve had
discussions with the School District. They feel it’s important those improvements are made to
Aviation Road, and that they don’t preclude improvements to their campus. We’ve talked to the
current Highway Superintendent, and we’ve talked to the project applicant. There’s not a clear
direction from any of those sources what those improvements are, or who’s going to participate in
that. The applicant has had discussions with the previous Town Board, and has indicated that they
would, and I’ll let the applicant speak on this part, that they would participate, and the Town Board
has taken a different direction on what they were seeking as participation, and it wasn’t traffic
improvements, it was the current PUD agreement reads that the Town has first right of refusal or
first option on the Senior Housing or community land. That’s the 10 acres that’s there, and that was
chosen in lieu of a financial contribution to traffic mitigation, and I think that’s a pretty accurate
summary of the traffic issues, the SEQRA determination and the Town’s current position on
improvements to Aviation Road.
MR. MAC EWAN-So, to understand this then, if it comes to light that there’s traffic mitigations that
need to be made to that intersection, the developer is putting together, or has put together, a plan to
give the Town land to help mitigate traffic concerns in lieu of?
MR. ROUND-I think, they’re not linked in that fashion, that the Town chose to look at the
optioning of that land, whether it’s for future School use, rather than looking at extracting mitigation
or a fair share portion of mitigation to Aviation Road.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s the MR-5 land. Right?
MR. ROUND-I believe so, yes. So you, the Planning Board is not looking at a traffic mitigation
issue here tonight. I think everybody recognizes that there are existing problems with those
intersections that we discussed, and the Town Board, or previous Board, chose not to pursue request
of funds toward constructing those improvements.
MR. MAC EWAN-Why wouldn’t we be looking at traffic mitigation?
MR. SCHACHNER-Within the PUD you certainly can. I think Chris was referencing elsewhere.
MR. ROUND-Yes. The off site improvements.
MR. MAC EWAN-Clarify that.
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, basically, your responsibility in a Planned Unit Development is to conduct
site plan review, and one of the site plan review components is traffic within the Planned Unit
Development. I would say that within the Planned Unit Development could extend to any
intersection that’s part of the Planned Unit Development, but once you get too far off site, I think
that would normally be something you’d be looking at in your SEQRA review, and you don’t have
SEQRA authority over this project because the Town Board was the SEQRA Lead Agency.
MR. MAC EWAN-So, hypothetically speaking, if we recognized that a project was going to take an
intersection that was a certain level and knock it down to a failing level, by the build out of this
project, then this Board, under its review process, doesn’t have the authority to work with the
developer to rectify that problem.
MR. SCHACHNER-I hear that question being asked somewhat generically.
MR. MAC EWAN-I’m asking generically.
MR. SCHACHNER-The generic answer to that question is you do have that authority. I was
advising you in the context of this specific proposal, which is not your typical site plan review
function, but is within the context of a Planned Unit Development. Typically, you all are the
SEQRA Lead Agency when you conduct your site plan reviews, but here you’re not, and you’re here
operating under not your general site plan review authority, but your site plan review authority as
described in the PUD section of our Zoning Ordinance.
MR. MAC EWAN-And the whole difference is because we didn’t do the SEQRA for this thing.
MR. SCHACHNER-Actually, no, there’s two differences. One is that, and one is because your site
plan review authority, as described in the PUD section of our Zoning Ordinance, is a little bit more
limited than your general site plan review authority over site plans that are not PUD’s.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, and where I’m trying to make a comparison here is when we did Hudson
Pointe. The original Hudson Pointe plan dumped all of its traffic onto Sherman Island Road. We
recognized that, obviously, that was going to have a real adverse impact on the Sherman
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
Island/Corinth road intersection. So we had the developer re-design the project so that the traffic
then came out through the now Hudson Pointe Boulevard. How is this one different from that one?
MR. SCHACHNER-I wasn’t your Counsel when you did that.
MR. MAC EWAN-The difference is, at that time, we did the SEQRA for that. Okay. Is the
SEQRA the whole gist of the thing here?
MR. SCHACHNER-It’s not the whole gist, but if you were the SEQRA Lead Agency, then, then you
clearly had that authority then, no question.
MR. MAC EWAN-All right. Okay.
MR. ROUND-We had this discussion several months ago at a late hour. We also talked about, or
the applicant’s agent talked about that the original PUD and the traffic analyses that were conducted
represented a much larger project, and this is a downsizing of the project, and they characterized the
impacts, I guess, subjectively that the impacts would be lessened to those intersections, and an
important point was signal warrant studies were not met. Those criteria were not met for the Farr
Lane intersection, and then as a part of the original study, so they would not be met as a part of a
reduced PUD density. I don’t know if that, maybe I confused the issue further, rather than.
MR. MAC EWAN-It gets cloudier and cloudier. Mr. Jones, could we get you to come back up here,
please? I’m kind of curious as to a comment that Staff made regarding this MR-5 property, as some
sort of agreement with the Town or something down the road, should it need to be mitigated, the
traffic at Farr Lane and Aviation Road. Did I get lost on that? Could you clarify that for us please?
MR. JONES-I think what Chris said is accurate, but I don’t think they’re linked. The Town, in
November of 1998, appointed a two person Town Board committee to work with Dr. Hoffman and
myself and representatives of the Citizens for Queensbury to see if we could find a means of agreeing
on a project. We met for five months. Part of those discussions involved the interest from this
committee of two Board members representing the Town to uses on MR-5, and the indication was,
that was the focus of the Town, in terms of, not on traffic, but in terms of what support would be
needed from the Town Board for this project. If you recall, the Town Board had voted to rescind its
approvals in May of 1998. That action went to the Supreme Court and overturned, but that was their
focus. They were not asking us for any mitigation measures on traffic. Nowhere in our agreement
with the Citizens for Queensbury or with the Town Committee, only two, was any discussion
mentioned of mitigation measures on traffic. So I would say they were two separate things, but there
is the agreement, which is reflected now, to give an option to purchase to the Town, on the MR-5
property.
MR. MAC EWAN-For what purpose?
MR. JONES-Purposes of recreation, technology, library kind of technology uses, recreation uses,
those kinds of things. The Town would have the option to purchase the property.
MR. MAC EWAN-How long do they have that option for?
MR. JONES-They haven’t told us specifically. In my draft of the PUD agreement, I want to say I
put six months or a year. I don’t recall. It was not.
MR. MAC EWAN-After you got final approvals.
MR. JONES-Probably, and failing that, failing their exercising the option, the only other available use
of the property for the developer was senior citizen housing.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any questions?
MR. ABBOTT-I’m hung up on this traffic.
MR. RINGER-The traffic pattern is a question. I disagree with Mark on that one way street. I don’t
believe that should be a one way street. I think that should be a two way, for several reasons, Mark.
One particularly as an emergency access in and out. When there’s an accident on Potter Road at
Aviation or Dixon and Aviation, there’s no way to get traffic around that, and I’m sure people in this
audience who live there know that in order to get there, you have to go all the way down to Peggy
Ann or all the way up to Gurney Lane, because there’s no connection. By having that a two way
street, you could have that available. I don’t believe that traffic from Indian Ridge is going to
necessarily use Fox Farm Road. I think they’re going to use Farr Lane, or Manor Drive, probably
Manor Drive would be used, because Farr Lane would become the worse road, worse than Fox
Farm. I see the biggest problem there on traffic is coming out of Potter Road at Aviation, not
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necessarily Fox Farm. Potter Road seems to have the traffic coming on Aviation. There are certain
times when Fox Farm, when people are going to work, may present a problem, but for the most part
it’s Potter Road and Aviation and Dixon, and that’s an opinion I have on that two way road or one
way road.
MR. MAC EWAN-Do you have any proposed plans to mitigate any traffic impacts at those
intersections?
MR. JONES-No, and beyond that, the agreement with the Citizens for Queensbury was, in return
for the 40% reduction in the size of the property, the Citizens for Queensbury have not asked, nor
do I expect they will ask you for mitigation at those intersections.
MR. MAC EWAN-Well, that’s a difficult thing, and I understand that the Citizens for Queensbury
played a very key role in how this thing has developed to this stage, but it’s this Board’s approval
that’s going to be hanging over our shoulders for years to come if we miss something here, and I’m
not convinced at this stage, personally, that you’re not going to impact those intersections, to put
them to a D or an F level of service.
MR. RINGER-I think that they are going to be impacted, but we’ve got traffic studies that were
done in ’95 and ’96, and then another one in ’97. ’95 and ’96 said they would not significantly effect
it, and then ’97 said it had the potential, and that was with a full build out. We have five potential
roads in and out of there. We’ve got Manor Drive. We have Fox Lane. We have Fox Farm Road.
We have Gilmore and Owen.
MR. MAC EWAN-How does Manor connect?
MR. RINGER-Manor can come down, out of Indian Ridge, it can come down. When you look at
the plans, people coming out of Indian Ridge, can come down into Manor, and exit onto Manor, and
I think that’s what the people will use, because as Dr. Hoffman said, Farr Lane is a terrible road to
get out of because of Dixon Road coming out, but there are many roads that are available to there,
by opening that up. I only went up to Owen. You can even continue going up, because that can be
all interconnected, all the way up to I believe it’s Pinewood.
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. Okay. I’ve left the public hearing open. We’ll take one more round of
comments, as long as they’re brief, and then we’ll move on.
DR. HOFFMAN-Most of my comments are in the interest of establishing factual information. I’m
not particularly emotionally invested in this, but I do feel that, in the interest of accuracy, there
should be certain points that are clear. The Town Board, in its SEQRA resolution, said that the, they
said in their Environmental Assessment Form that traffic was a problem, but they also said traffic
can and will be mitigated. Okay. So everything, the whole approval process, was based on the idea
that traffic can and will be mitigated. There was one study, provided by the developer, that said there
was no significant impact on the traffic, but when you actually looked at the study, it showed a
deterioration in levels of service to very poor levels at the two key intersections. Harza came by,
which was a Town study, and showed failing levels of service. They then, there was a process of
looking at various mitigations, and if you look over the course of the projections that were made, the
mitigations that were proposed did not provide a long term resolution to the problems, and there is
actually some comment in Harza’s statement that a traffic light would probably be needed at some
point. Now that doesn’t address the issue of whose responsibility it is. It may well be it’s the Town’s
responsibility and not the developer’s. I have no position on that. That’s the Town’s, but to pretend
that there’s not a traffic problem, and that the Town ever said that there was no traffic problem is
completely wrong. The minutes are very well documented that there is a traffic problem, but that it
can and would be mitigated. To date, we have no plan for any mitigation. Again, I just want to
emphasize that any mitigation has to deal with traffic coming, trying to get onto Aviation Road. I
agree that Potter is also a problem, in addition to Farr Lane. The reason why Potter will become
more of a problem is because they will now have cars coming out from Farr Lane at the same time
that the cars are trying to turn off of Potter. They don’t have that problem now. As far as the
question of whether it’s your responsibility or the Town Board’s, again, that’s a legal question, but I
would comment that there is a statement in the PUD section of the zoning code that relates to site
plan review which states that the Planning Board needs to deal with access, and there’s always been
this question as to what the definition of access is. To my knowledge, that’s never been resolved as
to what the definition of access is, in terms of site plan review PUD’s. It’s an ambiguous part of the
zoning code which is one reason why it has to be updated. I’m totally confused. I think Mr. Jones
clarified the situation. I thought that Chris made some kind of comment to the effect that the Town
had an agreement, either formal or informal, to swap traffic mitigation for the senior housing
property. Apparently, that is not the case, and it was never my understanding that that was the case.
I’m not aware of any such agreement. I think they’re two separate issues. If the developer would
like to propose donating that to the Town in exchange for traffic mitigation, I’m sure the Town
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would be interested in looking at that, but I’m not aware that that’s ever been discussed in any formal
way.
MR. ROUND-I think Dr. Hoffman’s correct. We didn’t say that there wasn’t a traffic problem.
What I indicated was that there wasn’t a mitigation proposed by the applicant, as a part of the
SEQRA approval process.
MR. SCHACHNER-Or imposed by the Town.
MR. ROUND-Or imposed by the Town Board as part of the PUD agreement, and I don’t think I
misspoke on that. I did misspeak in that I said a land swap, but they pursue, and that was a
negotiation between the applicant and the Citizens for Queensbury, instead of pursuing funds for
mitigation measures, they sought a reduction in the overall density of the project, and I think that’s
an accurate statement. So I don’t think there’s any inaccuracies out there right now.
MR. MAC EWAN-Reduction in the size of the project as a mitigation to?
MR. ROUND-I mean, it’s difficult. We’re dealing with four years of timeframe.
MR. MAC EWAN-I know, and we’re asked to put a rubber stamp of approval on this thing tonight.
DR. HOFFMAN-It has never been a priority of our organization to request funding for mitigation.
Our primary objective has always been reduction in density and protection of open space, and that’s
been our position. Nevertheless, there’s a problem that has to be dealt with. Whether you deal with
it or the Town Board deals with it or the developer deals with it, that’s something that you guys will
need to sort out, but it’s not going to go away. Again, also there’s this issue of the PUD agreement,
and that has not been signed. There is no agreement that I know of. There’s a draft from a few
months ago which I think needs to be very carefully looked at, and I made some suggestions in terms
of defining what senior housing is, and so forth, which I think deserves another look. I think that
summarizes my comments.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. We’ll close the public hearing.
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. MAC EWAN-Gentlemen.
MR. JONES-At about five minutes of one, it’s my recollection, on October the 19, .when we were
th
all clear thinking and doing our best, my review of the minutes of that meeting indicate to me that at
least three members of the Board, when we asked for some polling or consensus about further
information that was to be developed, other than that which had already been agreed to, three
members indicated a very keen interest in obtaining the School District’s study to give some
additional information with regard to traffic, and at that time, with our traffic engineer present, they
chose to forego the opportunity to seek additional traffic studies from us for the arguments that you
heard, at that meeting, reserving the right, at the Chair indicated, to request further information, but
the thrust was they were looking for the School District traffic study, and we were unsuccessful in
explaining that that evening, but I think it’s clear now. That’s not a helpful document or a useful
document for the Planning Board. It was really an internal document designed for the internal areas
of the School. So, even if we were to get our hands on it and provide it for you, I don’t think it
would be useful to you in making your determination on the issue of traffic on Aviation Road or
mitigation.
MR. MAC EWAN-I wouldn’t be useful?
MR. JONES-I don’t think it would be, Mr. Chairman, but I’ll stand corrected on that. I mean, from
what I understood, it was to study internal traffic and circulation flow within the School District
property and designed to obtain some means of access, additional access onto Aviation Road, but I’ll
stand corrected on that if Larry is still here.
MR. PALTROWITZ-If I may just explain the traffic study from the School. This traffic study is
really an internal document. There are two provisions to it. The first part of it was to deal just with
this access through the Indian Ridge subdivision and whether or not that was feasible or not, and
that report was done with a couple of different options, but didn’t have anything to do with Aviation
Road. The second part of the traffic analysis was a master plan internal document, or an internal
plan for the District. That’s not going to be completed until the end of January, by Vollmer
Associates. So we don’t have that as yet, but it’s my understanding that, the first document I know
doesn’t. The second document, as I understand it, is not going to have information about a study on
Aviation Road, but it’s going to be a traffic pattern for the School District itself.
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MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you. I’ve got a quick question for Staff, regarding I guess our
jurisdiction regarding traffic impacts and mitigation and such. Under Article VIII of the PUD
Ordinance, under Objectives, on Number Five, it says “A development pattern in harmony with the
land use intensity, transportation facilities, and community facilities, and of the objectives of the
Comprehensive Land Use Plan”, and also under 179-58.
MR. SCHACHNER-That’s where you should be looking, B.
MR. MAC EWAN-B2.
MR. SCHACHNER-Correct.
MR. MAC EWAN-The very last line, it says, “The Planning Board may also require such additional
provisions and conditions that appear necessary to public health, safety and general welfare. How
does that tie in? If we recognize that we think that there’s a potential for significant impacts to those
intersections, and they need to be mitigated, does that fall under our review process here?
MR. ROUND-I don’t know that there’s a clear cut answer to that, Number One.
MR. MAC EWAN-The Ordinances are clear cut, why can’t there be a clear cut answer?
MR. ROUND-Jim Martin, when this issue was discussed some years ago, in his position as the
Zoning Administrator, Director of Community Development, gave the Planning Board directions
that 179-58B(1)(a), Adequacy and arrangement of vehicular traffic access and circulation, including
intersections, road widths, channelization structures and traffic controls, that that referred to within
the project limits itself, and didn’t pertain to off site impacts or off site intersections.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, but that doesn’t answer the question I have regarding 179-58(2), which
would lend itself to give the Board the authority to ask for others above and beyond. I just want
clarification, that’s all.
MR. ROUND-Yes. That last one is tough. Again, it reads, and I’ll just put it in context. “In its
review, the Planning Board may consult with Town and County officials as well as representatives of
federal and state agencies, including Soil Conservation Service, New York State DEC. The Planning
Board may require that the exterior design of all structures be made by registered architect whose seal
shall be affixed to the plan. The Planning Board may also require such additional provisions and
conditions that appear necessary for the public health, safety and general welfare”. I think that’s one
of those catchalls that’s designed to catch a, hey, we didn’t think about it issue, and I don’t know if
that relates directly to traffic or the issue at hand. That would be my direction to the Board.
MR. MAC EWAN-Your direction would be what?
MR. ROUND-That that doesn’t relate to the traffic issue that we’re discussing.
MR. MAC EWAN-It doesn’t relate. Okay.
MR. JONES-When the opportunity is appropriate, Mr. Chairman, could I address that issue?
MR. MAC EWAN-Sure. I don’t share the Zoning Administrator’s opinion on that, though. I’ll tell
you that.
MR. JONES-I think, in answer to your first question, whether or not, if this Board concluded there
was a significant impact on the environment, traffic caused a significant impact on the environment,
would you be authorized to do anything. I think on that issue, there would be little disagreement
among the lawyers for this reason. That issue was litigated. The Appellate Division of the Supreme
Court resolved that issue in favor of the Town. There was no significant impact caused by traffic.
Thus, it upheld the neg dec that the Town imposed in August of 1996. So I think actually the courts
have ruled on that issue.
MR. MAC EWAN-Before our lawyer jumps in here, but you just said not five minutes ago that the
EAF form they said that they would mitigate the traffic concerns.
MR. JONES-I didn’t say that. Maybe Dr. Hoffman said it.
MR. MAC EWAN-I apologize. Was that on the EAF form?
MR. JONES-Well, it contained a lot, but the argument was there was a conditioned neg dec was the
legal argument before the court. The Town Board, and maybe I should go get the resolution, but the
Town Board, the language I believe it used, it found no significant impact on the issue of traffic.
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MR. MAC EWAN-But that’s not answering my question.
MR. JONES-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-Did the EAF form say that the traffic impact would be mitigated at a later date,
or words to that effect?
MR. JONES-It considered mitigation measures in determining that there was no significant impact.
It considered those things that the developer put in his plan, such as, I’ll give you an example,
phasing of the project. The phasing of the project was one of the things that the Town Board
concluded as a mitigation measure, if you want to call it that, in concluding that there was no
significant impact, and if there’s one thing that’s clear, the Appellate Division ruled four square on
that issue, in overturning the Supreme Court of this State. So I think in direct answer to your
question, the courts have held there was no significant impact on the environment, visa vie traffic on
this issue.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s true. I’ll agree with you until the cows come home on that one, but within
that form, when they made that there wasn’t a significant impact on traffic, they also made that one
disclaimer that said it would be mitigated if there was.
MR. JONES-Well, all of the mitigation measures were there before the Town Board, in the PUD
agreement. Everything that they asked us was on our plans, and based upon that, and actually that
was the holding of the case, and I’ll defer to Counsel on that, but the holding of the case was that we
had made a series of proposals to the Town Board, designed to mitigate the traffic impact, and the
question before the Appellate Division was, was that a conditioned neg dec, that the Town Board
imposed conditions upon us and then circumvent the SEQRA process, and the court held, no, that
in the give and take, in the public hearings, with mitigation measures are proffered by the applicant,
full disclosure, full public hearing, that’s the natural give and take of the process. For a Town Board
to conclude, at the end of that process, that there was no significant impact on the environment,
taking into account those mitigation measures, that is a lawful issuance of a negative declaration,
which is what happened here. So that’s the only thing of which there is no dispute, is that there is no
significant impact on the environment visa vie traffic, in this case.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Did you want to add anything to that, Mark?
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, I did with Mr. Jones’ first rendition of what he said the court held, but I
don’t need to. This second rendition of what he said the court held is very accurate.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Thank you. Bob, any closing questions?
MR. PALING-My recollection of this is that we were just about beyond the traffic in this case, and it
wasn’t going to be up for reconsideration. The School study, I thought we realized wasn’t going to
impact this by that much, and that we were in agreement the traffic was not a significant negative
factor.
MR. MAC EWAN-Did you ever review the School study?
MR. PALING-No, I’m talking about what we decided at the meeting.
MR. VOLLARO-It isn’t done yet, the School study’s not finished.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else?
MR. PALING-No.
MR. MAC EWAN-Alan?
MR. ABBOTT-No.
MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-My recollection was that Dr. Hoffman was very upbeat and pleased with the
new proposal, and what I’m hearing tonight is not exactly his sentiments from the way I perceived it
a few months ago. Like he still has more issues and concerns, and like Bob just said, I thought we
were beyond this stage, and I did not expect to, I realize this is a very, very important, you know,
we’re supposed to give the approval of, this is the preliminary, and we have to make sure that all our
issues have been addressed, but I am quite chagrined to think that we’re beating this traffic issue
around, and I don’t think anybody’s come up with any answers, or any closure on this, or any
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direction toward that at this point right now, and like Bob said, I thought we were beyond this point,
and I don’t know where we are right now, and I wish somebody would shed some light on that for
me.
MR. MAC EWAN-Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. I think, after listening to Mark, that is our Counsel Mark, talking about the
fact that we’ve had a split SEQRA agency here, that the Town Board was the lead agency, has pretty
much, in my mind, taken me having anything to do with traffic up on Aviation Road out of the loop.
I think it’s because we have a split SEQRA agency decision here, I think that’s the crux of our
problem. That’s what we’re really dealing with, is that this Board did not have SEQRA Lead Agency
there, and I think that probably was an administrative mistake, but having said that, whenever you
split thing like that, and you make one Board responsible, and then another Board has to deal with it,
the second Board is kind of stuck with the previous decision, and that’s the way I see it.
MR. SCHACHNER-Just for the sake of the minutes, I hope it’s clear that when you say that was an
administrative mistake, the Planning Board had the opportunity to seek Lead Agency status at that
time, which it did not do.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s a mistake.
MR. SCHACHNER-Okay. We were just trying to figure out to whom you were casting this
aspersion.
MR. VOLLARO-I understand. I’ve got you.
MR. SCHACHNER-There was discussion about it, but ultimately the Planning Board did not seek
Lead Agency status.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, normally, when the Town Board requests it, we acquiesce. That’s been my,
when the Town Board requests, we acquiesce, most of the time.
MR. SCHACHNER-And that’s what happened then. That’s all I’m saying.
MR. MAC EWAN-Larry?
MR. RINGER-I have nothing further.
MR. MAC EWAN-Tony?
MR. METIVIER-I have nothing.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else? Okay. I’ll entertain a motion if someone wants to put a motion
up.
MOTION TO APPROVE (PRELIMINARY) SITE PLAN NO. 51-99, THOMAS J.
FARONE & SONS, INC./J. BUCKLEY BRYAN, JR., Introduced by Robert Paling who moved
for its adoption, seconded by Larry Ringer:
For Preliminary approval of the PUD as submitted.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
MR. RINGER-I’ll second it, but I’d like some discussion before we vote.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Go.
MR. RINGER-From here, Mark, it goes back to the Town Board, now, to approve the PUD? Is
that it?
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, first you would have your jurisdiction under Final site plan approval.
MR. RINGER-It would be us before it goes back to the Town Board?
MR. SCHACHNER-That’s correct, but you’re correct that it would go back to the Town Board
ultimately for execution of some sort of PUD agreement. My only question in your discussion is,
does anybody feel, and I’m not suggesting you should feel this way. I just want to make sure it
doesn’t fall through the cracks. Does anybody feel that the discussion about the limited access on
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that one area should be any sort of a condition of preliminary approval? I’m not saying it should be,
I’m just making sure you think about that.
MR. JONES-I was going to address that, Mark. I read in Mr. Paling’s motion that, as submitted, the
way I submitted it, so it was conditioned upon our filing the agreement. I think I mentioned that
earlier, conditioned on a filing of the agreement.
MR. SCHACHNER-Is that the Board’s intent in that motion?
MR. PALING-As covered on the print is what I’m going to say.
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, the print doesn’t really encompass your agreement with the District, I
don’t think. Does it?
MR. JONES-No, and I represented to Larry that we have to work out the agreement and file the
agreement. So I guess I’m implicitly making that part of the application here.
MR. PALING-Wow, I can’t handle that one.
MR. JONES-As submitted. That’s the way I submitted it.
MR. MAC EWAN-But you haven’t submitted anything. You said you’ve got the draft right there.
We don’t have it.
MR. JONES-As I’ve submitted it this evening, in terms of the way I represented it to you.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-As described, probably.
MR. JONES-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t feel comfortable doing that, do you?
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, I mean, that’s why I say, I’m not saying you should do this. I just want to
make sure you consider whether you want to make that a condition of approval or not. If you don’t
want to make that a condition of approval, that’s fine. You may not have the same concern that the
applicant and the School District, and in fact, you may ultimately feel that this is a matter that can be
handled strictly between the applicant and the School District. I don’t know. I’m not putting
thoughts in your mind. I just wanted to make sure that that issue was considered before you enacted
any resolution.
MR. PALING-I would just as soon approve it on the basis of what’s submitted in written material,
and I think that that print is sufficient for me. If there’s some exception to this or change later on,
that wouldn’t come to us, if I understand this correctly. If we’re talking about the access only.
MR. SCHACHNER-Well, there you’re talking about access to the PUD. You clearly have
jurisdiction, or lack or access to the PUD. You clearly have jurisdiction over access directly to or not
to the PUD.
MR. PALING-If we did it as the lawyer for the School explained, and it was used for School
purposes, to come out and access their own road, that wouldn’t enter.
MR. SCHACHNER-Correct.
MR. PALING-Okay. That’s the way I’m looking at it, but then it involved the Town.
MR. SCHACHNER-So what I’m hearing, and again, I’m just trying to clarify things so we’re all on
the same page. What I’m, I believe what I’m understanding, but Bob please correct me if I’m wrong,
is that Mr. Paling’s motion to approve the preliminary site plan as submitted does not include any
conditional requirement about limitation or restriction of use of that particular area, despite the
applicant’s offer in that regard. Is that a fair statement, Bob?
MR. PALING-I would agree with that, yes.
MR. SCHACHNER-All right. So that’s his motion.
MR. VOLLARO-And I understand it exactly that way.
MR. SCHACHNER-Okay.
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MR. MAC EWAN-Larry, you second that motion?
MR. RINGER-Yes.
AYES: Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro
NOES: Mr. Abbott, Mr. MacEwan
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. You’re all set.
MR. JONES-Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Board.
NEW BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 1-2000 TYPE: UNLISTED JOSEPH & DEBRA GROSS OWNER:
SAME ZONE: LI-1A LOCATION: 399 A, B, C BIG BAY ROAD APPLICANT
PROPOSES TO SHARE EXISTING OFFICE AND WAREHOUSE SPACE WITH
ORION POWER NEW YORK. THE ADDITIONAL USE WOULD INCLUDE
STORAGE OF MATERIALS ASSOCIATED WITH THE NEW COMPANY AND
VEHICLES. SITE PLAN REVIEW AND APPROVAL IS REQUIRED FOR ALL NEW
USES IN A LIGHT INDUSTRIAL ZONE. CROSS REFERENCE: SP 44-97, AV 56-1997
WARREN CO. PLANNING: 1/12/2000 TAX MAP NO. 137-2-3.22 LOT SIZE: 1.50
ACRES SECTION: 179-26
JOE GROSS, PRESENT
STAFF INPUT
Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 1-2000, Joseph & Debra Gross, Meeting Date: January 18, 2000
“Project Description: The applicant proposes an additional business to be located with the existing
Gross Electric Company. The applicant intends to lease 1738 +/- square feet of office space, 4800
square feet of shop space and portion of the yard for storage of company vehicles and associated
materials to Orion Power. Orion Power is the new owner of the former NMPC electric generation
facilities. Orion proposes use of the site as a service/dispatch facility. All new uses in the Light
Industrial Zone require site plan review and approval. Staff Notes: The location, arrangement,
size, design and general site compatibility of buildings, lighting and signs; There are no new
proposed lighting plans or signs for the site. Since this building was previously used by two tenants,
the site is compatible for the proposed use and the existing use. The setup of the building allows for
adequate parking for both businesses, and the plans denote an area for seasonal snow removal. The
site contains one freestanding sign, it may be anticipated the new company will apply for a wall sign.
The adequacy and arrangement of vehicular traffic access and circulation, including
intersections, road widths, pavement, surfaces, dividers and traffic controls. There is one curb
cut for this site measuring 30 +/- feet wide and the access contains good site distance in either
direction. The existing road currently accommodates other light industrial truck traffic and
residential vehicular traffic. The site contains a lined parking area and an enclosed storage yard and
that can be utilized for internal traffic circulation. The location, arrangement, appearance and
sufficiency of off-street parking and loading; The plans indicate six spaces for the Orion Power
Company use. The site has 15 designated paved parking spaces that are used by employees of Gross
Electric. There are five office employees and two shop personnel. The existing parking layout is
sufficient for both uses. Additional reviewed items: The applicant does not propose any
modifications to the existing landscaping, emergency access or stormwater management plan. The
existing office is landscaped toward Big Bay Road. The storage area is screened with vegetation and
a chain link fence. The previous site plan (SP 54-97) provided a stormwater management plan and
was found acceptable by Rist-Frost Associates. Recommendation: Staff recommends approval of
the site plan as submitted.”
MRS. MOORE-Under Warren County, they indicated No County Impact.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else?
MRS. MOORE-No.
MR. MAC EWAN-Good evening, gentlemen. Sorry for the long wait. Would you identify
yourselves for the record, please?
MR. GROSS-Joe Gross.
ROB EASTERLY
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MR. EASTERLY-I’m Rob Easterly with Orion Power.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Can you tell us a little bit about your proposed project here, gentlemen?
MR. GROSS-When I bought the property, I always rented out that 399B, since I’ve bought it. It’s
been vacant for a few months, and Orion Power has agreed to rent that portion, and I’ve renovated
the office area, made an office area underneath my office area, on the ground level. I think all of you
have ridden out there and taken a look. My office area is the upper level, and that was done on
purpose to do this. This was the master plan, buying it, to put an office underneath there, and as you
can see I’ve done the landscaping little by little over the last few years to accommodate this situation.
MR. MAC EWAN-That 399A building, is that the one that used to house the machine shop, or is the
machine shop still there?
MR. GROSS-It used to be, well, my office was an apartment at one time, and the machine shop is
underneath it, and that out back was its fabrication shop, the B was a fabrication shop. If you
remember I put an addition for storage on.
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, I remember.
MR. GROSS-I put the storage building on, with the idea to.
MR. MAC EWAN-So the machine shop is gone now, right?
MR. GROSS-Yes, that’s been gone since I bought it. It was all gone. When I bought it, the first
thing that happened was the 399B, the dark square, I rented it to the person I bought it from. He
needed to stay there. I didn’t need all the space. So I used the office. I renovated the office or the
apartment into an office, which I currently use. I use the back half of that dotted line for our shop
area, and the front half has been vacant since I bought it, other than maybe some cold storage under
there. I’ve given this to one of the local realtors to work with, and Orion Power was presented to
me, and we’ve been in this deal for quite a few months, and I’ve been going through all the stages
with the Staff, the Building Department. I’ve got a building permit. All those good things done. So
that’s pretty much it, in a nutshell.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. GROSS-I think it’s a good industry to keep these people, as you can read, Orion Power has
bought all the co-generation plants from Niagara Mohawk. I think it’s a great thing to keep them in
the area. It’s good for me and good for the area to keep those jobs in this area, to service all those
hydro plants. The impact of what they’re going to do is so much less than what was there. There’s
no more machine shop. There’s no more, all those oils and abrasives, you know, what’s associated
with a machine shop. Then it went to a fab shop. They’re not going to be fabricating. You’re not
going to have welding and as much smoke that you would get or any carbon monoxides off of that.
So utilizing it for an office space is a pretty low impact, and the back half, utilizing it for a shop area
to store their trucks and service minor equipment, you know, service equipment on a needed basis,
not their vehicle equipment, but their equipment they would take out of a hydro is a much lower
impact than what was there as well. So I’m pleased. I would think the Town would be pleased.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any questions?
MR. METIVIER-Do you have anything else proposed for your offices. I guess I’m confused when
it stated there was, you intend to lease square feet of office space. Was that for Orion?
MR. GROSS-Yes. The dotted line to the east side, the road side. It’s kind of tough making a two
story picture, but they’d be on the first floor, and I’m on the second floor. Gross Electric’s on the
second floor.
MR. METIVIER-Okay. That’s all I had.
MR. GROSS-Orion will be on the first floor, with that glass front entrance.
MR. METIVIER-399A?
MR. GROSS-Because of all the Fire Marshal and the way you want to do it is, my office and my shop
is 399A. The back building’s 399B, and their front office will be 399C. So you can identify the
meters on the building, in case of a fire, and all the doors have, you know, baker light labels on all the
doors, so if there is a fire, they can come and they’ll identify that. So there’s actually A, B, and C.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else, Tony?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. METIVIER-No.
MR. MAC EWAN-Larry?
MR. RINGER-No questions.
MR. MAC EWAN-Bob?
MR. VOLLARO-Orion does most of its work off site I would guess? Is that correct, that’s what
we’re looking at?
MR. EASTERLY-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-And just describe what could happen in the back shop. I mean, is it just
mechanical re-work, electrical re-work?
MR. EASTERLY-It’ll be mostly mechanical, potential for shafts or items of that magnitude.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So it’s basically a disassembly, assembly routine.
MR. EASTERLY-Exactly.
MR. VOLLARO-I have no other questions, Mr. Chairman.
MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Fine.
MR. MAC EWAN-Alan?
MR. ABBOTT-You don’t have any parking shown for 399A.
MR. GROSS-That is the Gross Electric parking. It’s across the front there where the arrows, where
the Staff described it 15 designated spots. That is all lined out. I just didn’t tie it in, but they’re all
lined out.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay. That’s it.
MR. MAC EWAN-Bob?
MR. PALING-No, it looks good to me.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We’ll open up the public hearing. Does anyone want to comment on this
application? You’re welcome to do so.
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
NO COMMENT
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. MAC EWAN-We need to do a SEQRA.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-Is it long or short?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Short. Right here.
RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE
RESOLUTION NO. 1-2000, Introduced by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Robert Paling :
WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for:
JOSEPH & DEBRA GROSS, and
36
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board
action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED:
1. No Federal agency appears to be involved.
2. The following agencies are involved:
NONE
3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of
Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality
Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury.
4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant.
5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and
having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant
environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation
of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action
about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the
Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be
necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by
law.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
MR. MAC EWAN-Just one quick question, just so I get a history on this. The tenant that was in
there prior to this was the machine shop, right? It’s the same building I’m thinking of.
MR. GROSS-Correct.
MR. MAC EWAN-Is that the one that you moved here from Pennsylvania or something like that?
MR. GROSS-Correct.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Does someone want to introduce a motion?
MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 1-2000 JOSEPH & DEBRA GROSS, Introduced
by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption, seconded by Larry Ringer:
As submitted [For additional use of space, etc. with Orion Power New York].
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott, Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re the first site plan approval in the new millennium.
MR. GROSS-Thank you very much.
OLD BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 14-95 TYPE: UNLISTED MODIFICATION PILOT KNOB MARINA
OWNER: SAME ZONE: HC-1A, AP A LOCATION: CORNER OF BAY RD. & RT. 149
THE APPLICANT PROPOSES TO EXPAND AN EXISTING BOAT SALE BUSINESS
TO INCLUDE SALES OF RECREATIONAL VEHICLES (I.E. BOATS, TRAILERS,
SNOWMOBILES, CANOES, ATV’S). THE EXPANSION WOULD INCLUDE DISPLAY
OF ITEMS AND AN INCREASE IN STORAGE AREA FOR SALES MERCHANDISE.
37
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL IS REQUIRED FOR
MODIFICATION TO A SITE PLAN. TAX MAP NO. 28-1-32.24 LOT SIZE: 2.13 ACRES
SECTION: 179-23
JAMES CULLUM, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT; NICK BARBER, PRESENT
STAFF INPUT
Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 14-95, Pilot Knob Marina, Meeting Date: January 18, 2000 “Project
Description: The applicant proposes to increase a graveled area for the storage of boats, boat
accessories, and other outdoor recreational vehicles. The proposal is a modification of approved Site
Plan 14-95. The previous site plan was for the sale of boats and boat accessories. Staff Notes: The
location, arrangement, size, design and general site compatibility of buildings, lighting and
signs; The previous site plan limited the location of display to the side of the building and to the rear
of the building. This also included a limitation of the number of boats for sale to 18 boats. The
applicant has been notified of non-compliance at least twice. The applicant has complied with the
notification each time. The business has complied with all other site requirements with the exception
of the increased storage area to the rear of the building. The adequacy and arrangement of
vehicular traffic access and circulation, including intersections, road widths, pavement,
surfaces, dividers and traffic controls; The business uses one existing curb cut for the property
and a shared access to the northeast with French Mountain Log Homes. The applicant does not
propose to change the layout of the front parking area. Upon a site visit, there appears to be one
access to the rear of the property on the southwest side of the building. The other side of the
building is being utilized to store canoes, trailers, and boats. The proposal is to increase the graveled
area located at the rear of the building area to accommodate boats for sale/storage. The applicant
proposes to increase the number of boat storage from 18 to 40 boats. The applicant proposes to
display in rows with associated travel aisles for customer viewing. The location, arrangement,
appearance and sufficiency of off-street parking and loading; The previous site plan delineated
18 parking spaces for customer and employee parking. The commercial use of the site and the gross
floor space of the building indicate the site would need 27 parking spaces with two spaces designated
as handicap. The applicant does not propose any additional parking on the site. The site could
accommodate additional parking but the proposed expansion does not appear to warrant additional
parking. The adequacy and arrangement of pedestrian traffic access and circulation,
walkway structures, control of intersections with vehicular traffic and overall pedestrian
convenience; The display of items at the rear of the building separates the parked vehicles from
pedestrians’ viewing the boats or other recreational items. The layout of the display area should
discourage vehicle traffic. The adequacy of stormwater drainage facilities; The previous site
plan indicated the stormwater was directed to the rear of the property. It appears this much of this
assumed drainage area has been graveled. The site plan does not indicate any stormwater drainage
improvements to the site and assumes the newly generated stormwater will drain to the nearby
stream and other unimproved surfaces on the property. The Highway Commercial zone requires 30
percent permeability of a parcel. The previous application indicated the site was 46 percent
permeable. The proposed estimated increase in gravel surface would calculate the site to be 19
percent permeable. Since the new graveled area is estimated, a more accurate measurement should
be taken to determine if the applicant needs an area variance for the permeability ratio. The
applicant also has the option to remove a portion of the graveled area to an acceptable amount. The
adequacy of water supply and sewage disposal facilities; There is no proposed increase of water
supply or expansion of sewage disposal facilities. Staff should confirm that the septic system is
designed to be driven over and graveled. The adequacy, type and arrangement of trees, shrubs
and other suitable plantings, landscaping and screening constituting a visual and/or noise
buffer between the applicant’s and adjoining lands, including the maximum retention of
existing vegetation and maintenance including replacement of dead plants; The applicant
proposes no new landscaping, lighting or other vegetation improvements to the site. The adequacy
of fire lanes and other emergency zones and the provision of fire hydrants; The previous site
plan included a letter from the former Fire Marshal Kip Grant. The letter suggested that the
separation distance from the LP tank and the boat should be 10 feet. The same distance was
encouraged for access to the rear of the building for fire fighting purposes. The adequacy and
impact of structures, roadways and landscaping in areas susceptible to ponding, flooding
and/or erosion; The previous site plan indicated the site was next to a stream and to the rear of the
building was wet. The minutes from the previous site plan meeting recommended storage of boats
be kept at a distance of at least 75 feet from the stream. Upon a site visit, there is a visible waterway
adjacent to the graveled area. The parcel is located in the Adirondack Park “low intensity use” area.
According to Town’s GIS system there are no AP A designated wetlands or streams on this property.
The property is not located in a flood zone, it is located in an area that is determined to be outside
the 500 year flood plain. Recommendation: Staff would recommend the applicant update the site
plan drawing with the display layout identifying boats, trailers, canoes and other recreational items to
be displayed. In addition, Staff would suggest the applicant obtain an accurate measurement of the
new graveled area. The applicant would be encouraged to decrease the graveled area surface to
accommodate for stormwater runoff. The new area should delineate the number of boats and other
38
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
recreational items such as canoes, trailers, snowmobiles, etc. This access should be cleared to have
circulation around the entire building.”
MR. MAC EWAN-Good evening. Would you identify yourselves for the record, please.
MR. CULLUM-My name is James Cullum. I’m here representing Pilot Knob Marina, Inc. To my
right is Nick Barber who’s the President and owner of the corporation, and his partner and Vice
President, Mike Smith, is to my left.
MR. MAC EWAN-Are you familiar with the Staff Notes we got tonight?
MR. CULLUM-Yes, I am.
MR. MAC EWAN-Would you like to take them step by step here tonight?
MR. CULLUM-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-The first one says, location, arrangement, size, I think that’s pretty well addressed
there. If anybody on the Board has any questions regarding these as I start going through them, just
jump in, all right.
MR. PALING-Lets go back to that one.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. PALING-It appears that the 18 boat limit was never complied with. Any time I’ve been by
there in the recent site visit, and evidently you’ve been written up twice.
MR. CULLUM-That isn’t true that it’s never been complied with. It was complied with, for the most
part completely for the last four and a half years. There have been a couple of times when more than
18 boats are on the site, but you’ll find that the Code Enforcement Officer counted canoes, of which
there were eight or ten canoes on the site, during one of those visits.
MR. PALING-How many canoes were you permitted to have displayed?
MR. CULLUM-Well, he counted them as part of the 18.
MR. PALING-How many canoes were you permitted to have displayed?
MR. CULLUM-There was no permit for canoes.
MR. PALING-That you were displaying. You didn’t have a permit to display?
MR. CULLUM-That is correct.
MR. PALING-But you displayed them.
MR. CULLUM-That’s correct, although a canoe, of course, is a boat, by definition, but in terms of
zoning and environmental issues, I don’t think it was unreasonable for the owners to think that they
were boats as limited by the site plan approval back in ’95. By boats, they thought they meant motor
boats, 25, 24 feet in length. The canoes were on a rack that held them. They’ve also been placed
inside, but it wasn’t an intentional violation of the.
MR. PALING-Right now, how many boats and canoes do you have out there?
MR. BARBER-Fourteen boats and nine canoes.
MR. MAC EWAN-What’s the difference between a boat and a canoe? I’m lost here. I mean, if our
previous approval said boats, boats are boats, whether they’re two foot long or two hundred feet
long.
MR. CULLUM-If that is true, and that’s a reasonable interpretation you’re making, it’s also
reasonable for someone to think that, as a plaza, for example, you could probably sell boats without
that kind of approval. They didn’t think that they were violating the site plan when they put canoes
out there instead of moving big motor boats in front of the building.
MR. MAC EWAN-Well, when they were notified twice of noncompliance, why didn’t at that point,
the questions start?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. ROUND-Can I interject?
MR. MAC EWAN-Sure.
MR. ROUND-I don’t think the issue is number of boats on the site, 18 boats, etc. The minor
compliance issue that we asked for was always complied with, that was display of boats in the grass
area in front of 149. So, I mean, the applicant hasn’t disregarded our instructions. We asked the
applicant to come in to alleviate us of an occasional reoccurring complaint that boats are displayed in
the area, and upon that, we pulled out the historical records that says 18 boats, and then I think Craig
made a count. That’s not the issue tonight. If I was going to give you guidance on an approval, I
wouldn’t ask you to count boats and make that a condition of your approval. We try to give you that
kind of instruction that that (TAPE TURNED)
MR. MAC EWAN-Bob, did you have anything else?
MR. PALING-Well, I guess what I’m leading to is that I don’t think that your site is very attractive,
and you’re on the corridor that we’re trying to clean up and make an Adirondack type of look about
it, and I’d like to see an organization of the display in the parking lot and some plantings and all to
improve the looks of the site. That’s where I’m headed.
MIKE SMITH
MR. SMITH-It’s very interesting you say that, because Nick is over there full time, and we were
talking about that today. There’s not a week goes by that we don’t have somebody that comes in
there and says how nice that facility it is, how attractive it is. It’s a log building. We were very, very
concerned about litter, of any kind of a mess. We’ve never had complaints from our neighbors.
We’ve never had a complaint about cars. As far as, the biggest day we’ve ever seen there we’ve seen
six cars in our lot. It’s not a high intensity area. We’ve never had a complaint from the County
Sheriff’s about a car being in front of the driveway that shouldn’t have been there. I don’t know
what you would find objectionable. I do find things objectionable like George Ryan down there with
his eight pigs sitting there in front of the Queensbury Country Club. That, to me, is objectionable.
That doesn’t look very attractive. I think we have a very, very attractive facility there, and I think,
haven’t you seen, like every week he gets compliments.
MR. BARBER-Yes. I’m surprised that it’s objectionable to you, sir.
MR. PALING-I’ll see if the rest of the, I’m only one. We’ll see what the rest of the Board thinks.
MR. BARBER-Right.
MR. SMITH-What would you like us to do to make it look better?
MR. PALING-Better organize, your boats, canoes or whatever they are should be organized in a
neater way.
MR. SMITH-We’ve gotten them out of the front of there. Have you seen them lately?
MR. PALING-We were up there recently, but I wouldn’t detect a lot of organization.
MR. SMITH-How much neater would you like them? We could get a level out maybe or a plumb
bob or something.
MR. BARBER-We have them on a display rack.
MR. PALING-That’s not very attractive.
MR. SMITH-What are you talking about that isn’t attractive, the canoes or what?
MR. PALING-The canoes aren’t, I don’t think.
MR. BARBER-Okay.
MR. CULLUM-If canoes are going to be a problem here, I think this company would get rid of
canoes.
MR. PALING-No, I didn’t say that they’re a problem. They could be part of a well organized
display area, and I just don’t think you have that.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. CULLUM-I suppose, and I’m not an expert on this, but I would assume that a rack for canoes
where they’re in order, one above the other, in perfect line.
MR. PALING-Yes, it would blend in very well with a well organized.
MR. CULLUM-And that’s the way they were, and the boats that are on, the other power boats that
are on the site are lined up in order, with space between them. This application is not to go through
this thing from Day One. This building and this site was approved for site plan five years ago, and
all we’re seeking here is an increase in the size where boats that are going to be sold can be placed,
and for approval to use more than 18, to have more than 18 boats placed there, and the idea of the
aesthetics of it I thought would have been decided several years ago, because there hasn’t been much
changed up there ever since. This is an Adirondack building which is distinctly coordinate with the
zoning district and that part of 149, a couple of miles from Lake George. It’s the perfect building for
that. You can’t find a paper out of line up there. This is an orderly, clean place, and to say it’s
unattractive, I can only say I disagree with you.
MR. PALING-Plantings.
MR. CULLUM-Plantings. Well, if plantings would do it, there will be plantings there. I didn’t know
that was required. I mean, this is all new.
MR. PALING-This is all part of trying to get that whole area to look better, to look more
Adirondack-ish, and I agree about the building, and what I’d like to see is a layout for plantings, and
how the parking lot would be on the display area and the parking lot would be laid out.
MR. CULLUM-As to the plantings, the only thing we’re really looking to do differently here is in the
rear of the building where, which would not be seen by anyone, but if plantings are a new item, that’s
something we can address.
MR. PALING-Yes. It’s a new item.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Let’s move along here a little bit. Under the Location, arrangement and
paragraph, it says, “The previous site plan delineated 18 parking spaces for customer and employee
parking. The commercial use of the site and the gross floor space of the building indicate the site
would need 27 parking spaces with two spaces designated as handicap.”
MRS. MOORE-Can I step in for this one? There’s no additional parking warranted, that I can see
for the site. He has his designated parking in the front, and he doesn’t anticipate any more additional
traffic for the site. It’s the same use.
MR. MAC EWAN-Then why is this even in here? Why are you writing it in here?
MRS. MOORE-I’m just providing you the information that the site, he has adequate room to
increase 27 spaces. He doesn’t necessarily need them.
MR. CULLUM-They would never be used, Mr. MacEwan.
MR. MAC EWAN-I understand your position. Unfortunately, we go by this little book here, and it
has certain criteria in there, and a question I guess I’d ask to Staff is that if it’s required of the zone
that he have X number of parking spaces plus handicapped, based on the size of his building.
MRS. MOORE-He has adequate room for 27 spaces. He doesn’t necessarily have to designate them,
and we’ve done that in the past for other applicants.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. He has the space on site, should he need to expand he has them there,
and you’re just suggesting that he doesn’t need to delineate them on the site.
MRS. MOORE-Correct.
MR. MAC EWAN-Just as long as we know they’re there. Okay. That’s doable. Address then for
me the permeability.
MRS. MOORE-Actually, I’ve worked with the applicant and he’s indicated that he would decrease
his graveled area to accommodate the 30%.
MR. MAC EWAN-How much does he have to decrease it by?
MRS. MOORE-Three thousand square feet.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MRS. LA BOMBARD-So what’s he going to do, just chop it up?
MRS. MOORE-He’s going to turn it into some type of green area.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And then put grass in?
MR. CULLUM-Yes, it’s about a 20 foot strip. It’s 160 feet in length in the cleared area behind the
building. So about 20 feet on the west side of that would be, would probably do it.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Staff is suggesting that we confirm the septic system as being able to be
designed to be driven over. What kind of septic system do you have and how do we verify that?
MR. BARBER-It’s been there since we bought the building. Okay. So we didn’t install the septic
system. The previous owner had used it for such, and we don’t have heavy equipment. In other
words, two or three thousand pound boats, four thousand pound boats would be the most, and at
that point, it’s not in an area that’s in a crossroads of what we’re doing there. I mean, most of our
work is on the perimeters, and if you’ll see it as it’s denoted on the plan there, it’s directly behind the
building. So, in other words, when you’re moving a boat on a trailer, you can’t turn that sharp to
really go over that for any kind of traffic or any frequency of traffic.
MR. MAC EWAN-What was the use of the building prior to you purchasing it?
MR. BARBER-It was a gift shop. That was an antique store and gift shop combination.
MR. CULLUM-And it should be probably noted that there isn’t going to be, it isn’t anticipated that
there will be more boats sold out of there. It’s just a place where the boats will now be. Instead of
them having to run down Bay Road to their marina on the lake, and bringing them up to be sold,
now they’ll be able to place them there, but the sales increases are not anticipated. It’ll be the same
amount of traffic, and I believe that the septic system was in the plans when the site plan was
approved in ’95, with the same issue.
MR. MAC EWAN-When this was approved in ’95, I can tell you as a member sitting on this Board,
some of this stuff wasn’t brought to light at that time. So, the questions that are being raised now I
think are appropriate, that we look into it and see if, God knows we don’t want to have your septic
cave in on you because vehicles are traveling across it that are too large for it. Regarding the LP tank
location and the boats to be displayed by 10 feet minimum from it.
MR. BARBER-Yes. If you see where that is now located, that’s not close to any boats.
MR. MAC EWAN-As a matter of fact, I vaguely recall, didn’t in ’95, when we approved this thing,
we asked for that tank to be moved?
MR. BARBER-Yes, we did.
MR. MAC EWAN-You moved it deeper into the lot, didn’t you?
MR. BARBER-That is correct. Yes.
MR. SMITH-He also widened the entranceways.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, and this is for Staff. What does the term the Adirondack Park is a low
intensity use area? Give me a definition on that.
MRS. MOORE-It just indicates that that’s where it’s located in the Adirondack Park. It’s a
designation like the Town’s zones.
MR. MAC EWAN-But what does it mean?
MRS. MOORE-There’s certain associated list of uses that are allowed in low intensity zones.
MR. MAC EWAN-This is one of the uses that fits in there?
MRS. MOORE-I’m not quite certain. I just was reading off what the designation is.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-It’s got to be. There’s lots of boat stores in the Adirondack Park.
MR. ROUND-Our local Ordinance dictates, authorizes allowed uses in that. So this is an allowed
use by that.
42
(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any questions?
MR. METIVIER-Do you get any boat deliveries there? Do the trucks come in to deliver boats at
that location?
MR. SMITH-Yes.
MR. METIVIER-They do. So at some point, you’ll have more boats than at other times?
MR. BARBER-Hopefully toward the end of the season there’ll be less there, but seriously, to answer
you question. We would off load boats there. Instead now what we do, the restriction that we have
now of the 18 boats, we have to take them to Pilot Knob and that is not as conducive to a tractor
trailer as what we have now, and so we’re kind of up and back an extra trip. A boat arrives at Pilot
Knob, comes down to 149, when we have the room for it. The boat is sold. Then it goes back to
the marina to be prepped and delivered. So we’re running around there a little ragged. So this would
help.
MR. CULLUM-By the way, this is not, although this may be just a semantic difference, this is not a
boat storage application. They don’t store boats there, as they do in another facility near the lake
where they have a boat storage facility for 200 boats. This is simply to place boats that are for sale,
place them there for that reason.
MR. METIVIER-I do think, if I might say, that it does look much better now, having the boats in
the back, just because you were really crowding the area. You could never get in there before, even
to park cars. So from our site review the other day, we thought that it looked much.
MR. BARBER-We’ve never had boats on the crushed stone area for, to restrict car parking. I mean,
that would cut our own throats, obviously, if we couldn’t let someone in there to look at a boat or
boats, on the crack slate area, the red and green slate area right there, that’s where we have previously
displayed boats, and we do keep the boats up within about 10 or 15 feet of the building, because we
don’t want traffic behind the building, you know, I mean, we want emergency vehicles and fire
vehicles, something like that, which that’s all accessible. It’s just that we don’t want people
wandering around out there at night with their cars like you would drive through a car lot or
something like that, because that just invites trouble.
MR. CULLUM-The access areas between the boats and the proposed back clearing will dead end.
So there won’t be a way for vehicles to get in there and drive around.
MR. RINGER-Currently, you have a permit for 18, and the Staff Notes say you plan to increase it to
40. The 40, does that include the boats, the trailers, the canoes, the ATV’s, and the snowmobiles?
They’re all separate? So you’re going to have 40 boats, and then the ATV’s and the snowmobiles and
the trailers?
MR. BARBER-The ATV’s and the snow machines are inside.
MR. CULLUM-They’re all inside.
MR. BARBER-I mean, except for, if you went up there right now, you’d find one of the customers
dropped off this evening, and that’s on a trailer outside.
MR. CULLUM-The trailers for the snowmobiles would be on the outside, but they would be
counted as part of the 40. I’m asking, the 40, what are the 40 going to comprise?
MR. BARBER-Boats.
MR. RINGER-Boats, okay. That’s all.
MR. VOLLARO-In the area that’s laid out as approximately 160 by 160 feet, that’s where most of
your pre-sales, not storage but your pre-sale boats are going to be located. Now they’re going to be
coming up from your marina. Some of them?
MR. BARBER-No, typically they would be shipped and dropped off at one point, yet.
MR. VOLLARO-By the boat manufacturer?
MR. BARBER-Correct.
MR. VOLLARO-Okay. He’s going to come in with a truck trailing a boat, or several boats, perhaps.
He won’t make a trip with one boat.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. BARBER-Well, that happens, yes.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, but for the most part, if you order boats, he’s going to bring boats in, maybe
two or three at a time, behind a truck, pickup whatever.
MR. BARBER-Right.
MR. VOLLARO-What I’m really driving at is you were able, on this site plan, to delineate the
absolute location of the septic field as being 80 feet from the line. What I’m recommending here is
that that septic field be delineated somewhere with corner posts, perhaps, so that the truck that
comes in, I mean, if I were making the delivery to your 160 foot, and you said to me, put them out
back, that’s what, I’d probably drive right over that septic field.
MR. BARBER-Okay.
MR. VOLLARO-Inadvertently drive over it because I don’t know where it is. I think you’ve got to
at least, this is from my view, identify it so that that doesn’t happen. Because I don’t know how
much cover is over that field, or over that tank, and incidentally, this is the septic field itself. This is
the drain field, not the septic tank. Is that correct? Now you know how septic fields are built.
They’re built with laterals, and they’re built with PVC piping. If you get too much weight on them,
you’ll collapse some of those laterals, and then you’ll be out of gas.
MR. BARBER-I understand.
MR. VOLLARO-So I would recommend you delineate those fields so that somebody knows where
they are.
MR. BARBER-Okay, and just if I can add one thing, while we’re on the subject, about truck
deliveries on the property. Those truckers call us 30 minutes out from when they’re going to arrive,
okay. They do not get in the parking lot without one of us right there. That’s a company policy, and
the simple reason for that is such that we don’t want a trucker to bump a boat or something like that
without our knowledge. So, you know, we’re happy to delineate whatever we’ve got to do with the
septic tank, but in answer to your question further is there’s a man with that truck all the time.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but let me ask you a question, even today, when you do it, do you say to
yourself, now make sure I guide him around that septic field?
MR. BARBER-Yes.
MR. VOLLARO-You do?
MR. BARBER-Yes, no question. There’s no question, because there’s only three of us that unload
boats. Because that’s a very serious exercise when you’re unloading a $30,000 boat.
MR. VOLLARO-I understand that, yes.
MR. BARBER-And we will usually put something there, if we know we have boats coming, such that
like an empty snowmobile trailer which weighs 200 pounds, all right. It’s also a very sharp turn, if
you come around that back of that building, to get to that septic system. So it’s, I mean, we can
delineate it. That’s not a problem.
MR. VOLLARO-It looks to me, if this is scaled, it looks like you’ve got 40 feet between the back of
the building and the beginning of the septic field. That doesn’t look like a very sharp turn. I can see
a truck coming right in going right across that field without any problem at all.
MR. BARBER-Okay. Well, we can delineate that, you know.
MR. VOLLARO-I think that’s to your benefit. I’m just trying to protect you from getting a
collapsed field.
MR. SMITH-We don’t want our septic system to be destroyed, so we keep a very close eye on it.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. It’s not going to be a big imposition to delineate its position, I don’t think,
and I don’t have any other questions.
MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy?
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MRS. LA BOMBARD-I think it’s a great spot. Keep your canoes out. I think they enhance the
Adirondack theme, and what out for your septic system, and I want one of those boats. I think it’s a
very attractive place. I go by that place on my way to the golf course or up to the lake probably six
times a week, and I have never had any problems with traffic in and out, or trucks in and out of that
place. The only problem I have is that I just turn my neck too much and always strain to see what
you’ve got in the lot.
MR. BARBER-Stop in and we’ll give you a tour.
MR. ABBOTT-Just, obviously, you’re not going to have snowmobile trailers and boats in there
pretty much at the same time, I mean, max out two different seasons. So just delineate somehow the
40 spots are boats and/or trailers and I think it will be fine. I don’t think you’d want 40 boats, plus a
bunch of snowmobile trailers. I don’t think it’s practical.
MR. BARBER-I would just like to respond to that now. The problem with that is, we have to buy
our snow machine trailers at one time. Our manufacturer is in Iowa. Those have to be delivered at
one time on a tractor trailer. We may get 25 snowmobile trailers on one or two deliveries, depending
on the trucking. So if that shows up August 1, with 25, and keep and mind, also, they’re stacked, all
st
right. The primary unit that we sell is eight and a half feet wide, ten feet long. That’s a standard two
machine trailer, but we may have 50 of those come in, and they’re stacked up, and you could walk by
them and not even almost notice them, but if those 25 are counted as units, and we’ve got ten
canoes, we’re in a bind, you know. Maybe we could say 40 boats and a maximum of so many trailers,
or something like that, but I don’t think we could restrict ourselves to 40 pieces at one time.
MR. SMITH-And bear in mind that most of the year this isn’t even an issue. We’re just trying to
protect ourselves. I mean, most of the year, you’re talking probably about 20 or 30 units. I mean, it’s
just that we don’t want to come back down here again next year.
MR. BARBER-Or, I mean, I hope you understand our sincerity in that we didn’t try to say that
they’ll never notice 15 canoes. I mean, we’re not trying to pull any fast ones here or anything like
that. We honestly never thought those would be considered as boats, and we want to run a nice
business, and we want to run a clean and neat business, but we don’t want to hassle the zoning
department either, or the code enforcement people.
MR. ABBOTT-I’m just trying to determine, what they’re asking for is to increase the gravel area for
storage of boats. I’m just trying to figure out where the.
MR. SMITH-Not storage. They’re boats that are displayed.
MR. ABBOTT-I’m just reading what’s here in front of me. I understand the difference. So, Chris,
to go back to your direction, are you looking for an approval without a number attached to it?
MR. ROUND-I’ll defer to Laura. I haven’t been involved with the project specifically, but I would
avoid that kind of restriction on a site. That becomes very troublesome to both the applicant or the
enforcement process. It’s simple to identify a violation, but it really serves no purpose, and I guess
what are we looking to do? You’re looking to try to keep the site orderly, provide proper access to
the site, etc. So if you designate a display area, what’s in there, as long as you’re maintaining an
orderly site, and you have safe access to it, I don’t think you’re going to have a problem.
MR. ABBOTT-What mandated the 18 boats in the original site plan review?
MR. ROUND-I don’t know, and I’d ask one of the previous Board members.
MR. SMITH-I can tell you why, because the concern was it was a new and different use for the area,
and actually I’m the one that came up with the 18 boats, because we only had so much space. I
never thought about the fact that eventually we’re going to grow, and I thought, well, heck, you
know, they’re going back here. They won’t care anyway. Maybe it was ignorance on my part, but the
issue initially was we don’t want boats up in front of that place, and we don’t want 25, 30, 32 foot
boats sitting all over the front of the building, it looks cluttered. We wanted it to be nice and neat
and so the line was drawn. It was drawn kind of like, if this is the building, you can see there, it’s
kind of a little bit of an angle out, and that’s where that gravel area goes. With Nick, he and I were
thinking, we never gave it any thought that there was any issue behind it. Sometimes you go 100
miles an hour and maybe you should think about things like that, but when we went back in there,
we never even gave it a thought that that would frustrate or bother you people. If we thought the
issue was out in front. Because once before they came up, but they said you have a boat on a trailer
out front. Well, we thought, well, a boat on a trailer from our minds wasn’t hurting anything, so they
asked us to move it back and we did, and then what’s his name came over here this fall and
complained about the canoes and we moved them back, and then then we said, well, we’ve got to
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
work this thing out, so what do you want? Well, first of all, let’s not have any boats out there, and
then let’s sit down with you folks and say, you know, what do you want versus what do we need.
MR. ABBOTT-All right. So you’re saying your boat display area is going to be strictly in the back, in
the highlighted area?
MR. SMITH-It’ll show the same angle as it does. If you’re sitting on the porch and you’re looking at
the road, there’s a slight angle of that gravel, and that was what our original agreement was, and it
shows that on there, just so that from the roadside you can get a little bit of a view of those boats,
but the issue originally with these boats was never to be in front of there, which you’ve been adamant
about, so we pulled everything back.
MR. ABBOTT-The boat that’s there now was there Saturday, was parked right behind, I believe,
your pickup truck.
MR. BARBER-Right. That’s the line that we usually use, and we have used since the day we moved
in. It angles from the porch to the roadside sign. Okay. That angle right there is the one that was
laid out originally, and then the same takes place on the other side. The cracked slate that we have in
there goes on an angle southeast.
MR. SMITH-It’s just a slight angle. It’s shown better on the big map you folks have. This is the
small one. It’s pretty obvious if you look at it.
MR. ABBOTT-And there were trailers in front of the building on Saturday.
MR. BARBER-Those are customers that had dropped machines off for service.
MR. ABBOTT-Okay.
MR. BARBER-If you went there this morning, there were none. Right now there are two, and that
happened during the day. Those will go to the shop tomorrow morning,
MR. ABBOTT-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-You don’t service the snowmobiles or jet skis there?
MR. BARBER-No.
MR. SMITH-We have no interest in doing that.
MR. BARBER-And while we’re on that subject, just one other thing I forgot to mention earlier. The
boats that we get in have no gasoline in them. They’re not prepped there. We may wash and wax a
boat there or something like that, which we do to just keep the roadside dust off, and so on, but it’s
not, you know, God forbid there was a forest fire. We’re not going to sit there with 40 boats full of
100 gallons of fuel and have a major problem. That’s not the case.
MR. SMITH-If you came up to our marina, you could walk into our shop at any given day and eat
off the floor. I mean, we have everything that you could have as far as for waste oil or for hazard
waste, for everything you could have, and people kid around with us all the time about how clean we
keep that shop, and we try to keep that the same way, and I think Nick’s point is, we’re never going
to be over there changing the oil or doing a lube job or whatever. We don’t do any of that. So as far
as in that area there, there’s never going to be any service whatever done.
MR. ABBOTT-Just as long as we are all on the same page as far as where the boats or where the
equipment, boats, trailers are going to be displayed. I’m all set.
MR. PALING-I’m still hung up on this, and I guess where the snowmobile trailers were parked is
part of my problem on this, and the approval was for boats, and boats are not a snowmobile trailer,
by any means. I think my basic contention is that we should, if this were a car lot or something, we’d
be down their back to improve the looks of it, in terms of plantings, and organization, and I don’t
see why we should have any different kind of criteria here, especially with the location. If I indicated
the building wasn’t right, I apologize. I don’t think I did. The building is fine. It fits in with the
Adirondack atmosphere, but I do think there could be something in the way of plantings and all to
spruce up the site, and most everyone that comes in here gets this thrown at them.
MR. SMITH-Don’t you ever notice the amount of money we spend on grass and evergreens in that
place?
MR. PALING-Well, I don’t know. I guess I haven’t.
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MR. SMITH-You better take another look. I’m sorry.
MR. BARBER-The front, there six shrubs across the front, global something or other. I don’t know
the name exactly, that border the porch, and those are in mulch and slate.
MR. PALING-At the porch.
MR. BARBER-Right at the front edge of the porch, okay, and then out at the sign, there are eight
more shrubs with mulch and cracked slate in a railroad tie crib that we made to go around the sign,
initially. That was sufficient at the time that we originally applied. Now if that’s changed or
modified, then we’ll be happy to do what we need to do. We’re not here to argue about those kind
of things. If everybody has to do it, we’ll do it.
MR. PALING-Okay. Well, it’s hard without, just looking at this print, to recommend, but, all right,
if I’m alone on it, fine, but that’s the way I feel.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, you know what you can do, you can put, like when May rolls around,
get some nice planters and put them on either side of your steps, in the front, with petunias and the
nice, and some, you know, the geraniums and the whole thing, and put a couple of maybe planters
on the porch or something like that.
MR. SMITH-We could do that. Did you ever see our place in Pilot Knob? The money we spent on
flowers up there?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes. Very nice. But I don’t think if you put them down too close to 149, it
might be a hazard for the ingress’s and egresses, yes, but I think if you just put them around your
place, I think that’s what Bob’s looking for, and that would, and I think you do it anyway.
MR. BARBER-Yes. What we do on the, if you remember right in front of the porch stairs, there’s a
cement path.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Right.
MR. BARBER-Okay, on either side of that, on the two steps that go down this path, we put flower
baskets, and then on the corners of the path that’s out there, two whiskey barrels.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-I thought you had something like that, right.
MR. BARBER-I mean, I hope that’s in compliance. If it’s not, then talk to us. I mean, I think the
place looks, you know, presentable.
MR. RINGER-What would be the maximum number of boats you could fit into 160 by 160?
MR. CULLUM-If you take an average of 24 feet, at about 10 feet wide, or eight feet wide, you’re
talking about 200 square feet, 160 by 160 is 25,560 feet. So you could fit a lot of boats in there, with
those dimensions.
MR. SMITH-Plus this whole area.
MR. CULLUM-Yes, but he’s just talking about the 160.
MR. RINGER-I was just trying to get a number for you, a good number.
MR. SMITH-This is in addition of the original area of 18 boats that was approved.
MR. BARBER-I guess, in answer to your question, if we are allowed to put 40 boats out back, plus
the original 18, we’ll be fine with boats. I mean, if we need to exceed that, then we’ll come back and
see you.
MR. RINGER-I’d rather say 50, and not have you come back than 40, but whatever.
MR. BARBER-Well, that’s fine. That’s fine with us.
MR. RINGER-I’d like to have a number in there, some number, but not necessarily a number that
you can’t live with.
MR. BARBER-Well, why don’t we say 60 on the total property. Forty plus eighteen is fifty-eight,
sixty on the total property.
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. MAC EWAN-I think before we get to that point, I’d like to open up the public hearing, if
there’s any comment here. Do we have anymore questions from Board members? Okay. I’ll open
up the public hearing. Does anyone want to comment on this application?
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
FRANK RONK
MR. RONK-Good evening. We’re Mr. and Mrs. Ronk. We live behind where the boat company is.
We own the property behind them. I’m not sure that I understand whether they’re asking for an
increase of what they already have or what they’ve already done. I’m a little bit confused about that
part. That’s one of my concerns. There’s an enormous amount of activity. We own the access road
that runs off from Bay Road, that goes behind that property, and we see an awful lot of activity out
there with survey markers and out through the woods all the way to the access way. It looks like
there’s plans to clear cut an awful lot more timber out there. The amount of timber that was cut
there the last four, five weeks, probably closer to like three months, we used to be able to look out
our back porch and see woods, and now all we see is boats, and we don’t know.
MR. MAC EWAN-Where specifically, your access road is off of 149?
MR. RONK-Our access road is off of Bay.
MR. MAC EWAN-You own kind of like that long flag shaped lot?
MR. RONK-I own that great big long strip of property there, and that access road is 30 feet wide,
runs the whole length of that.
MR. MAC EWAN-And that area that they’re surveying is like that little triangular piece of property?
Is that the area?
MR. RONK-Well, you’ve got a map there. I don’t. So I don’t know what you’re looking at.
MR. RINGER-Look at the map and show us where your property is.
MR. MAC EWAN-It’s right here, Larry. Right there, that one. Is that your parcel right here?
MR. RONK-No. My parcel is the parcel right here.
MR. MAC EWAN-That parcel. Okay.
MR. RONK-There’s an access road that runs the whole entire length of my piece of property all the
way down. It kind of goes off on a little bit of an angle. Stranahan owns this lot right here. Dave
Stranahan. I own this piece right here. There’s about eight and a half acres right here.
MR. RINGER-Where would that be on here? Here’s his building here.
MR. MAC EWAN-It’s too far over. It’s only on this site location map.
MR. RONK-My road actually, that access road is like right here. They have a boat currently stored at
the back end of that lot right now that’s like 65 yards from my property line.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. RONK-So I’m trying to determine, are they asking, are they going to cut more than what
they’ve already cut?
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes. Okay. Anything else?
MR. RONK-Of course, we’re also wondering if they have intentions of using the access road to gain
entrance to the back end of that. I don’t know if their property has the right of way to that access
road or not. So that can be a sticky. We understand that they have snowmobiles and four-wheelers,
and we’re wondering if there’s going to be testing of these vehicles on the premises or where will
they test them? Will there be test drives given or etc.?
MR. VOLLARO-Are you talking about the ATV’s?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. RONK-Yes, and the snowmobiles, and we don’t know about a buffer zone. Was there
supposed to have been a buffer zone on that property? I mean, it was completely clear cut, right
straight back.
MR. MAC EWAN-Is your property zoned residential? I’m assuming it is, right?
MR. RONK-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else?
SUSAN RONK
MRS. RONK-I have a couple of questions. One of the statements that was made, I’m Susan Ronk.
One of the statements that was made, I wasn’t clear. They were talking about decreasing the west
side of their property, and I’m not sure what is west. Is that the back? And how much farther back,
like my husband said, and one of the things that was also mentioned is about the stormwater and the
drainage and that there was no wetlands. There is a marsh out there, not only the stream, there’s a
marsh, and every spring we have ducks, it goes from on Stranahan’s property onto ours. There’s
quite a large area that is wetlands, and it is on the maps, and we have ducks out there that nest every
spring, as far as frogs and other water fowl and stuff like that. It isn’t, I don’t think, overly
populated, but there is a marsh out there. Another thing is the impact that the expansion will have
on the residential property that’s there. We purchased our property at the same time they did, the
same year, in ’95, when they were expanding, and it’s very nice. We’re very happy with the
businesses around us. They do keep it up, you know, and everything else, but our concern is the
impact it’s going to have on the residential. We bought eight acres, and we have the access road.
There’s several acres that go on this access road, and we’re hoping that it will be expanded some day
as residential, not as business, obviously. If these boats are right up to this Stranahan property, I
guess it doesn’t concern him, he’s not here tonight, but if it’s up to his property that he was going to
sell his residential four or five years ago when he was talking to us, he was selling it as residential, is
someone going to buy this property as residential? And what’s it going to do to this access road? Is
that going to impact, you know, will businesses be able to move in onto this access road? And I’m
sure they could purchase the property and expand and how far on to this access road can they
expand? Like my husband said, will they be able to use this little dirt road that we maintain, that we
landfill and put stone on and we plow it, we pay to have it snow plowed.
MR. MAC EWAN-Is it your access road?
MRS. RONK-No. It’s really Stranahan’s, and in our deed, we have legal right or access to get to our
property. It was his property. We bought the property from Mead, and she had something in her
deed for access into her property. The other thing is the noise, like my husband said, from the
ATV’s. There really isn’t any noise now with the business that they have there. We’re concerned,
like he said, with them testing. Everybody wants to ride an ATV. If they’re going to buy it, are they
going to be out in the front riding around the parking lot on these ATV’s?
MR. RONK-Up and down the access road. We don’t know what’s going on.
MRS. RONK-Where are they going to test drive these ATV’s?
MR. MAC EWAN-And they have rights to this access road, as far as you know, as well?
MR. RONK-I would assume.
MRS. RONK-We don’t know.
MR. RONK-From the stakes that are in the road, from the surveyors, they’ve surveyed right straight
back, and there’s stakes driven in the access road, and I mean, there’s orange ribbon all over the place
out there. So my assumption, and I’m only assuming, I don’t know, that they do.
MRS. RONK-The other thing is lighting. Are they going to put in big lights all the way out into this
parking area, this boat, we don’t want to call it storage area, but it’s what their current sales
merchandise area. Is there going to be big street lights? How are they going to conduct, and hours?
MR. RONK-There’s boats there now. The closest one is like 60, 65 yards from, more like almost
100 yards from my house. That’s one of my original questions, and I’m asking you is, are they
asking to make the lot bigger than it is now?
MR. MAC EWAN-No, not at this point. We’ll definitely get that clarified, though. Okay. Anything
else?
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(Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 1/18/00)
MR. RONK-Those are our primary things that we wanted.
MR. MAC EWAN-We’ll get all the questions answered. Thank you.
MRS. RONK-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anyone else? I’ll close the public hearing.
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. CULLUM-I can’t answer all of the questions as well as Mr. Barber can, but let me try to get rid
of, dispose of a few of them in the interest of time. The survey markers are survey markers placed
there by your surveyor?
MR. BARBER-Right.
MR. CULLUM-There is no intention of going any further beyond those markers. As a matter of
fact, there’s no intention of any further cutting whatsoever. The markers are property line markers.
MR. BARBER-Yes. There were some boundary line pegs missing, and when we went to cut, we
wanted to make sure we were within where we should have been. So we had it surveyed. Dickinsen
and Associates up in Lake George surveyed that and it just gave us a boundary of where we owned
and what we didn’t own.
MR. CULLUM-It isn’t an expression of an intent to go on someone else’s property. As I understand
it, and I’m 99% sure of this, the owner of Pilot Knob Marina has no interest in that road, has no
right to that road, and has no intention of using it, the roadway mentioned by these neighbors. That
is not part of any plan or any intention whatsoever. How about testing ATM’s?
MR. BARBER-As far as snowmobile testing and so on and so forth, that’s, we have our shop at Lake
George, and that’s where we do our work, and that’s the end of that. We don’t have plans for demo
rides or any of that kind of stuff. If somebody, you know, comes to pick up a machine, for instance,
and wants to ride it around the building or something like that, not a snowmobile necessarily, but an
ATV or something to load it onto a truck or something, there may be someone driving an ATV, but
we don’t plan on sponsoring or having promotions, demo rides for Saturday afternoon or any of that
kind of stuff. That’s just not.
MR. MAC EWAN-If someone comes in and is interested in buying an ATV, do you let them ride
around the parking lot or something like that?
MR. BARBER-Yes.
MR. SMITH-That’s in the front of the building, and she had a question about the lighting, too, Nick.
We have no intention of putting anymore lighting along the back there. I understand the concern,
but we, as far as like putting up big high lighting or anything, we don’t ever intend to do that. Right?
MR. BARBER-No. .
MR. MAC EWAN-On this cutting of trees and stuff, have you cleared right to your property line?
MR. BARBER-No.
MR. CULLUM-There’s quite a buffer there, actually.
MR. MAC EWAN-Just be advised that there is a 50 foot buffer required in the zoning between
commercial and residential zones.
MR. CULLUM-Okay.
MR. MAC EWAN-So if you go beyond that 50 foot.
MR. CULLUM-As to, Mr. MacEwan, the water situation.
MR. MAC EWAN-The marsh.
MR. CULLUM-The marsh that the neighbors are talking about is not on this property.
MR. MAC EWAN-And there may very well be a marsh, but what this Town is looking for is
anything that’s delineated as an APA or Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction.
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MR. CULLUM-There is no wetland.
MR. MAC EWAN-And there is a certain acreage required.
MR. CULLUM-In any case, any moisture is on the opposite side of the subject property. I hope that
these answers respond to their concerns about the impact on the residences. Some of their concerns
were probably justified in asking, but they aren’t real concerns.
MR. MAC EWAN-To the nitty gritty, how many additional boats, what’s the total number of boats
that you’re looking to want to display on this site?
MR. BARBER-Sixty.
MR. MAC EWAN-Sixty total boats?
MR. BARBER-Just for round numbers. We had 18, and we asked for 40. So that would be 58, and
if we could put 60, that would just be a good round number.
MR. MAC EWAN-So you’re asking for 40 on top of the 18 you already have now, not 40 total.
MR. BARBER-That’s correct.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s not how that reads, but that’s okay.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, they delineated the area where they want to put the boats, and if you
have big huge monster boats you’re not going to be able to fit 60, but if you have smaller runabout
boats, you’ll fit more.
MR. BARBER-Correct.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-So the point is, we know the area, so you can just put as many boats on there
that you can display effectively.
MR. SMITH-You can’t put them too close together.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-That’s what I’m saying.
MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t know how you could put that as a form of approval. I mean, what you’re
just saying, if they’re looking for a total number of 60 boats to be displayed.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-They asked for 40 more, right. Okay, 60.
MR. MAC EWAN-Sixty total boats.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, no more than 60.
MR. BARBER-That’s fine.
MR. ABBOTT-Do we want to go down the road of the number of boats, or the area in which
they’re displayed?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-But this is what I want to make sure that this is the area. This is the area.
MR. BARBER-That 160 foot square behind the building.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes.
MR. BARBER-So that’s where we’re asking for 40 additional.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Right.
MR. ABBOTT-Boats will be up to this point.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, but that’s where they’ve been so far anyway.
MR. BARBER-Correct.
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MRS. LA BOMBARD-So as long as they don’t go out of that area, and you don’t cut any trees down
outside of that area.
MR. BARBER-That’s precisely why we surveyed this summer, so that we didn’t cut something that
was in error.
MR. SMITH-And to keep a buffer zone.
MR. PALING-I’m either going to abstain or vote no on this, and I’ll probably be the only one, but
I’d have to re-visit this site and reconsider the whole thing before I could vote, Mr. Chairman.
MR. ABBOTT-I’m in favor of wording the resolution in such a way that we designate the display
area, and not keep it to a number of boats. The line that’s delineated as 37 feet from the porch to the
property line on, it would be the west side, and the line that’s delineated as 43 feet from the porch to
the property line on the east side, from there back be the display area. I’m fine with that.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-I kind of feel the same way Alan does.
MR. VOLLARO-I go along with Alan the same. I don’t want to put any restrictions on the number
of boats, because it can’t be enforced. It’s an enforcement problem to begin with. So I would just
like to delineate what area is going to be used for display of your boats, and that’s it. I don’t think a
number of boats has a damn thing to do with it, to be honest with you.
MR. RINGER-I can go along with Alan, although I would like to see a number because I could see
200 boats or 300, I wouldn’t want to see 200 or 300, but either way I could go with it.
MR. VOLLARO-They couldn’t handle 300 boats back there. They couldn’t move them around.
MR. SMITH-We’re more than willing to agree on a number of boats. I could go either way. I’d like
to see a number, but.
MR. METIVIER-I agree with all of them also, with an area. I know what kind of boats you sell. I
know how expensive they are. I can’t see you carrying 60 boats, but that’s my own personal opinion.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Right. That’s the way I feel, too.
MR. METIVIER-I mean, no floor plan in the world would house 60 boats, but then again you never
know.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. If someone wants to put a motion up, then, we’ll entertain it.
MOTION TO APPROVE [MODIFICATION] TO SITE PLAN NO. 14-95 PILOT KNOB
MARINA, Introduced by Robert Vollaro who moved for its adoption, seconded by Alan Abbott:
That sales merchandise will not be displayed in front of the building at all, [the display limits are
defined on the plan as the line labeled 37 feet and the line labeled 43 feet] and the Planning Board
has determined that there is no significant change in the site plan modification and further finds that
there is no sufficient change in the original SEQRA findings.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mrs. LaBombard, Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Abbott
NOES: NONE
ABSTAINED: Mr. Paling, Mr. MacEwan
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re all set, gentlemen, good luck.
MR. BARBER-Thank you.
NEW BUSINESS:
SITE PLAN NO. 2-2000 TYPE: UNLISTED MICHAEL & CHRISTINE BREDA
OWNER: DONALD SOKOL AGENT: JARRETT-MARTIN, LLP ZONE: NC-10
LOCATION: 340 AVIATION ROAD APPLICANT PROPOSES TO UTILIZE A
PORTION OF THE EVERGREEN PLAZA FACILITY (4,560 SQ. FT.) TO OPERATE A
DAY CARE CENTER. THE PROPOSED USE WOULD INCLUDE CONSTRUCTION
OF A 1,200 SQ. FT. PLAY AREA, A SEWAGE DISPOSAL SYSTEM AND ASSOCIATED
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SITE WORK. DAY CARE CENTER IS A TYPE II SITE PLAN REVIEW USE IN THE
NC ZONE AND REQUIRES PLANNING BOARD REVIEW AND APPROVAL. TAX
MAP NO. 91-1-2.3 LOT SIZE: N/A SECTION: 179-25
MICHAEL & CHRISTINE BREDA, PRESENT
STAFF INPUT
Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 2-2000, Michael & Christine Breda, Meeting Date: January 18, 2000
“Description of Proposed Project: The applicant proposes to operate a 4,560 square foot day care
facility. “World Class Kids” in the existing Sokol’s Plaza building. The proposed day care will have
no more than 66 children ranging in age from infants through five years. The applicant proposes an
upgrade to the site septic system to accommodate the use, an outdoor recreation area and no
additional parking facilities. Staff Notes: The location, arrangement, size, design and general
site compatibility of buildings, lighting and signs. The building was constructed in two phases.
The larger (eastern) portion was constructed in 1985 and the current market was constructed in 1960
according to the assessment records. There are currently five tenants and one vacant space. The
existing uses include a hair salon, a pizza operation, a liquor store, bank and a grocery market. Each
of the existing tenants has a roof like sign, it is anticipated the proposed day care center will have
similar signage. The area is currently lighted with pole lights near the road and security lighting near
the rear entrances of the tenant’s. The applicant intends to have a sign that reads ‘World Class Kids”
and no additional lighting is proposed at this time. No exterior changes are proposed to the site
building. The adequacy and arrangement of vehicular traffic access and circulation,
including intersections, road widths, pavement surfaces, dividers and traffic controls. Three
access points from Aviation Road and an undesignated area from Dixon Road service the site. The
lack of access control on Aviation Road is problematic. The delineated spaces on the site define the
traffic circulation control. The applicant has indicated a drop off/pick up policy will be explained to
parents; parents are to park in the Plaza parking spaces and bring or take children into/from the
lobby/waiting area. The location, arrangement, appearance and sufficiency of off-street
parking and loading. The site does contain 80 spaces on the Aviation Road side, it is estimated
that the paved area on Dixon Road near the day care can accommodate 11 additional cars. (Note:
The applicant’s parking requirement calculation uses the entire square footage. The Town’s parking
requirements uses the gross floor area for calculation. Therefore, the assessment records indicated
the Plaza, including the market, contains 16,566 gross floor square feet. This would calculate the
entire site to require 83 parking spaces for commercial use. The site parking needs appear adequate
for the proposed use, however, monitoring of the site may be required. The adequacy and
arrangement of pedestrian traffic access and circulation, walkway structures, control of
intersections with vehicular traffic and overall pedestrian convenience. The Plaza provides a
continuous covered sidewalk for pedestrian access to each of the tenant’s front entrance. The Plaza
also has a defined fire access lane that is to be used for travel only with no parking or loading
occurring in this lane. See the drop off policy proposed above. The adequacy of stormwater
drainage facilities. The stormwater drainage facilities will not be altered by this project. No
changes to the site are proposed. The adequacy of water supply and sewage disposal facilities.
The Plaza obtains water from the Town, the applicant has anticipated constructing new sewage
disposal facilities as shown on the plan. The adequacy, type and arrangement of trees, shrubs
and other suitable plantings, landscaping and screening constituting a visual and/or noise
buffer between the applicants an adjoining lands, including the maximum retention of
existing vegetation and maintenance, including replacement of dead or deceased plants.
There are no new proposals for landscaping or vegetation screening. The adequacy of fire lanes
and other emergency zones and the provision of fire hydrants. There are no proposed
alterations to the existing emergency accesses to the Plaza. The adequacy and impact of
structures, roadways and landscaping in areas with susceptibility to ponding, flooding
and/or erosion. There are no proposed alterations to the site that would impact areas susceptible
for ponding, flooding, and/or erosion. Recommendation: Staff recommends approval of the
application for a day care center with no more than 66 children with the following conditions: 1.
The applicant forwards a copy of the day care license (as issued by NYS) to the Planning Office prior
to a final Certificate of Occupancy and a copy of the Policy for pick up and drop off of children. 2.
The play area be enclosed and have two accesses. 3. The play area fence height be defined. 4.
Determination of the number of maximum employees at one time. 5. Determine if there will be a
company vehicle for off site children transport.”
MRS. MOORE-That’s it.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s it. Good evening. Would you identify yourselves for the record, please.
MR. BREDA-Michael and Christina Breda.
MR. MAC EWAN-Would you tell us a little bit about your project.
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MR. BREDA-We’ll we’re looking to open a day care facility. We’re from Queensbury, and we’re
looking to open a day care facility, and we came across this location. We live right down the street,
off West Mountain Road, and we’ve been thinking about a project like this for a while, and came
across this location, and went ahead with it. We think it’s a great location, and the Town of
Queensbury does not have too much quality day care. We have three children, eight, five and a ten
month old, who will be going to this facility.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Anything else?
MR. BREDA-Not unless you have something to add? No?
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any questions?
MR. PALING-Yes. Tell me about the play area that’s on Dixon. That’s a high traffic road. How
rugged is your fence, and how high and that kind of thing?
MR. BREDA-I plan to put a five foot vinyl chain link fence around the play area, and also I wanted
to put a guardrail, a pressure treated guardrail around, especially on the parking lot side, around,
between the fence and the parking lot.
MR. PALING-A metal, a wood?
MR. BREDA-A wood guardrail, like six by six pressure treated lumber.
MR. PALING-How about on the street side of that?
MR. BREDA-I can certainly put one there also. I haven’t gotten into that.
MR. PALING-Do they have to meet any kind of a standard, by any DOT or anybody to protect
where kids are playing so close to the road?
MRS. MOORE-Not that I’m aware of.
MR. PALING-All I’m trying to do is to be sure that that’s rugged enough, that if a car sideswipes it
or something like that, with children playing in there, there’s an obvious fear.
MR. BREDA-It’s 30 feet off the road.
MR. PALING-It is 30 feet from the road.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-It is. That’s three quarters of an inch.
MR. PALING-Okay. That’s 30 feet from the road. That’s a pretty good distance.
MR. BREDA-No, I’m sorry. I’m wrong. The play area is 30, 30 by 40. That’s right.
MR. RINGER-I figured it was 13 feet.
MR. BREDA-That’s correct.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-What’s 13 feet?
MR. RINGER-The end of the play area to the road was 13 feet.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, then this scale is wrong.
MR. MAC EWAN-No, the scale’s accurate.
MR. PALING-What I would like to see, then, is some kind of rugged barrier on the street side of the
fence.
MR. BREDA-Okay.
MR. PALING-And that’s my only real concern. Do they need a company vehicle? I see that’s in
Staff Notes.
MRS. BREDA-No.
MR. PALING-You don’t need one.
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MR. BREDA-Queensbury busing.
MR. PALING-Okay. That’s all I have.
MR. MAC EWAN-Alan?
MR. ABBOTT-Obviously I share the same concern, closeness to the road. In the detailed drawing
of the rear parking area with the fenced in play area, between the enter and exit sign, is that going to
be raised curbing, where the word “walkway” , is that raised curbing, or, because right now at almost
any point behind those, that strip mall, you can pull in there. There’s nothing that delineates enter or
exit. What are you doing to?
MR. BREDA-Yes, that’s going to have to be some curbing or raised blacktop to enter and exit. As
far as the walkway goes, that’s almost level with the height of the door sill, plate. So that would just
be blacktopped, that walkway.
MR. ABBOTT-I was wondering if there was any extra protection, like a curb between the road and
the play area. There doesn’t seem to be. The other concern I have is the drop off and pick up. The
traffic that, you’ve got the parents crossing the major thoroughfare of that mall, to bring their kids in
the front door. Any thoughts on that? Is there a crosswalk delineate. I mean, like at the Hannaford,
for instance, there’s crosswalk areas and stop signs and stuff. Any thoughts of that?
MRS. BREDA-Yes. In the morning, when parents are dropping off, the parking lot will really only
be utilized for the people coming to drop off, simply because all of the other places are closed except
for Sokol’s on the farther end of the mall. The parking lot itself is not that large. I don’t know if we
could actually put the walkways there to delineate it, but it’s something that we could look into, if
that’s what you would want.
MR. ABBOTT-Because it gets nuts there in the afternoon. That’s really more of the concern, in the
morning it’s.
MRS. BREDA-Right. The morning, I think, would be okay because it’s really going to be, and the
parents drop off sporadically. You have two or three come. They kind of come in clusters, but, yes,
maybe in the evening it would be, simply because the other establishments are open and there may
be more going on.
MR. BREDA-That’s why we tried to designate the first two rows on the eastern, right in the corner
there. We’re going to designate those as the parking spots for the parents.
MR. ABBOTT-Exclusively?
MR. BREDA-No, unfortunately we can’t make it exclusive, but in our policy, and there is the
walkway right on the corner by Lorraine’s Hair Salon, Number One. That’s all sidewalk there.
That’s what we were trying to accomplish there.
MR. ABBOTT-I was just, in thinking about the play yard and what you had to work with there, the
only suggestion I had is if he puts the play area at the end of the building, where the existing
driveway is going to cease to exist, I guess, and the dumpster over there. That’s the only thought I
had, in terms of making it better protection for the kids playing out there. That’s all I have.
MR. PALING-Dixon Road should be a 50 foot wide road, but on the scale to here it isn’t 50 feet.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it’s 50 feet, including the right-of-way, but the driving surface is probably
closer to 24.
MR. PALING-But then if you bring the 50 foot, I mean, bring 25 feet.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, either side of the centerline.
MR. PALING-Yes. Wow, it looks, if you bring 25 feet from that center line.
MR. VOLLARO-It gets pretty close.
MR. PALING-You’re very, very close to the, it looks like there’s only a few feet to the edge of the
road.
MR. VOLLARO-From the play area.
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MR. PALING-Yes.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Boy, I’ll tell you, I must be looking at this really closely, because to me the
distance from the edge of the playing field to the edge of the road is wider than the edge of the road
to median.
MR. PALING-But the edge of the road isn’t shown accurately, Cathy.
MR. VOLLARO-That’s only driving surface. You’ve got to measure 25 feet.
MR. PALING-Twenty-five feet from the centerline back to the play area enclosure, and, wow.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, I’ll tell you, that is an issue. My God, our whole purpose is for the safety
and well being. I mean, all you need is one kook coming down that road, and you could have three
teachers in there with the kids, and that car could just veer off, and there’d be no protection at all.
MRS. BREDA-And that road is very narrow there toward that end, but it can very easily be moved
to the end of the building, like you had suggested, and then move the dumpsters over to where we
had proposed the playground, the play area.
MR. PALING-But it would be on the same line, I would think. Over here? Okay. Either that, or
you could turn it at right angles, from what it is right now. In other words, put the 30 foot.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-That’s where it should go.
MR. PALING-Yes.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-I mean, it looks nicer where you have it proposed, but, boy, I’ll tell you, all
you need is one car.
MR. PALING-As long we can resolve that problem, I’m all set.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes. I think that that would work out very, very well, and I think that, I have
one question, as far as, in the afternoon, you know approximately what time the parents are coming
up to their children. Do you have them bundled up and ready to go, or do you have the parent park
the car, get out, and the parent gets out of the car, and then does the parent put the child’s wraps on,
and then picks up all their papers and then talks and asks you everything went during the day?
MRS. BREDA-Yes. These are young.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes. I know, that’s where you’re going to run into big time congestion in the
front.
MRS. BREDA-Well, parents pick up at very different times. Based on some of the other centers,
picking up and dropping, I mean, dropping off, yes, I mean, parents really are staggered. Between
four and five thirty, a lot shift workers and parents are not really working very standard hours these
days. It really varies, that we have noticed in the center where we used to have our children, the
Childtime Center that closed, and that’s kind of one of the reasons that we wanted to pursue this was
that picking up was very varied. I would say the same thing with dropping off.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, I could see that dropping off wouldn’t be any problem in the morning,
because it’s pretty quiet, but, boy, I go in there at that time, five o’clock in the afternoon, and, boy, I
have my eyes looking all, like peripheral vision like crazy, because I’m just so afraid I’m going to get a
fender bender in there, and there’s people going all different directions. So I kind of thought people
would start coming about four and pick up until about, what, sixty thirtyish?
MRS. BREDA-We’ll only be open until five thirty. So it will be four to five thirty. So, I have to say
that parents really typically want to get home. They come right in, they sign their kids out, and they
go. I find that more talking happens in the morning. There’s instructions for the day, what’s going
on, what’s going to happen. In the afternoon, they kind of grab their work, sign their children out.
They’ve got older children they’ve got homework to do. Their tired. They’ve worked all day. They
really do pick up and go. So I don’t know that congestion will be that much of a problem, but it will
be a good half an hour of, or forty five minutes to an hour of really coming and going.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, our Town needs something like this.
MRS. BREDA-Desperately.
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MR. VOLLARO-In moving the proposed outdoor play area around to the end of the building, is a
good idea, with one exception, that you’ve got the septic disposal system that’s in there, that looks
like a leaching field. You just want to make sure, are you going to put a slab or something down on
the ground? What’s going to be on the ground underneath this play area? Is it concrete or is it, what
are you going to do with that?
MR. BREDA-No. The play area has to be either wood chips or sand. So if we did move the play
area to the corner, and it was close to the leachfield there, the septic system, we’d have to re-do the
septic system and instead of having a leachfield, do the tanks like the other two systems are.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes. You’d be putting yourself into a lot of expense if you try to move those fields
around. I can tell you that.
MR. PALING-There’s also no setback over there. The property line is right there.
MR. ABBOTT-There’s no setbacks where they are. What’s the requirements for setback?
MR. VOLLARO-This is the property line right here? Yes, it is.
MR. ABBOTT-Yes, the dotted line.
MR. BREDA-I think that’s 30 feet from the building.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but you can’t put that structure right on the property line. So moving it to
that corner is going to give you a significant smaller play area than you had in mind.
MR. BREDA-What if I proposed this, in the up top where we have the parking lot for the
employees, in front of the play area, where the word “walkway” is, have a, like a railroad tie plantered
structure, say three feet high, with dirt and plantings in front of the play area there, and also between
the parking, the parallel parking spots and the road, along that whole area there.
MR. ABBOTT-Well, the concern is at the edge of your play area, between the play area and the word
“walkway”, the dotted line that is the property line. So you’ve got to be within your property line.
MR. VOLLARO-Probably have to be setback somewhat as well. Unless you get a variance.
MR. ABBOTT-Well, as it’s drawn now, they would have to get a variance.
MR. ROUND-It’s strictly a fenced area, and there’s no setback for fences, just like your back yard.
Your back yard’s a play area. There’s not enough setback requirement. Concrete slab doesn’t
require. That’s not an improvement subject to setback requirements. So they wouldn’t be subject.
It’s only when you build an actual structure that’s something with a wall and roof.
MR. PALING-So a fence can go to the property line?
MR. ROUND-A fence can go to the property line.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, it’s a question of what size is that play area going to be, and is it going to
interface with the septic field.
MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t think the issue really is, to us I don’t think it really matters how big it’s
going to be on the side of that building, as long as it doesn’t go over the property line, and number
two, I can’t imagine that the play area would infringe on the septic system because the.
MR. PALING-You don’t want your kid playing over a septic field.
MR. MAC EWAN-That plan just went down the tubes. On the side of the building right there is all
the electrical and the gas hook ups for the building.
MR. RINGER-It says it on the drawings.
MR. MAC EWAN-When you look at the picture of it here, it sheds a little bit different light on it.
MR. BREDA-Couldn’t that be boxed out, with a fence, couldn’t we fence?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, I have a suggestion. Go back to where you have the play area now, cut
it in half, and bring it over and get rid of a couple of parking spots. In other words, have it so that
it’s, you take away, I don’t know what the distance is, in other words, you’ve got it going like this.
Chop that off and make it go this way, and then you’re going to be off the road another 15 feet.
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MR. PALING-Or else just turn it at right angles. Have you got room to do that?
MR. VOLLARO-That’s what Cathy’s saying.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-That’s what I’m saying. Just keep the same square feet. Yes, just turn it
around, just make it.
MR. PALING-And then if you could put up one of those steel barriers to the street, then I think it
would seem okay to me.
MR. MAC EWAN-What do you mean, steel guardrail?
MR. PALING-Yes.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-You could put the guardrail out farther, you know, closer to the road part.
MR. MAC EWAN-This is a question for Staff. What’s the reasoning of having the extra parking out
back?
MRS. MOORE-Just providing that he has enough parking for the site.
MR. MAC EWAN-Well, isn’t that incorporated within the Plaza?
MRS. MOORE-That’s included.
MR. VOLLARO-The 80 spaces that’s up front is not enough?
MR. RINGER-Sometimes that Plaza gets pretty busy with Sokol’s there and the bank and the pizza
parlor and the hair salon. When they’re talking their pick up times, you’re looking at the busiest time
on Aviation Road is your pick up time, between four and six, or four and five thirty.
MRS. BREDA-Yes. Drop off won’t be a problem, but pick up will.
MR. RINGER-Pick up will be a problem. Drop off will be a problem only with traffic on the road,
not in the parking lot itself. I live up that way, too. So I’m familiar with that.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-But, you know, though, so many people, they hate using those parking spots
that are farther away. Those are always vacant.
MR. RINGER-Well, they’re vacant, Cathy, but now you’re looking at someone taking a two year old,
having picked up grandchildren at day care for the last four years, I know what it is to grab a kid by
the hand and walk him through a parking lot.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-You’re right, but I’m saying the other people that are there to use the stores
and stuff, it’s not that they’re not going to have any parking spot.
MR. RINGER-No, no, but it does get filled.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Definitely.
MR. RINGER-It’s not a good parking lot. It floods, and it does all kinds of things. Have you gone
to the State yet for licensing? I mean, we’re talking about this play area. They don’t have any
restrictions as to closeness of the road or anything like that?
MR. BREDA-No. I hate a State guy up probably two months ago, and he looked at the facility. He
loved it. He gave me some ideas as far as planning the inside, and he didn’t stipulate anything.
MR. RINGER-You showed him the play area?
MR. BREDA-No. He knew exactly where it was going, but I don’t know if he knew how far,
exactly.
MR. RINGER-We’re spending a lot of time on it, and I’m just wondering, you know, we could
spend all this time on it and the State could come through and say, wait a minute, you can’t have that
that close to the road anyway.
MR. BREDA-He knew where it was going, but I can’t say that he knew it was only 13 feet off the
road.
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MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, I’ll bet if you turned it around, got rid of a couple of parking spots, put
up a good barrier there, you’d give yourself 15 more feet off the road.
MR. RINGER-I do feel that there’s going to be some problems with the pick up, though, that those
hours and that Plaza does fill up at that time, and the traffic on Aviation Road, but.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Aviation Road’s a busy place.
MR. METIVIER-How many employees?
MR. BREDA-Eleven employees.
MR. METIVIER-What do you plan to do in the play area with the concrete or the cement black top
that’s already there?
MR. BREDA-Where the play area is proposed now, there’s no black top. It’s just dirt and sand.
There’s actually a little shed on there that has to be moved, but that area is dirt right now.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-When we were there, we walked on all black top, and I said, what are they
going to do, chop this up or. We were over too far.
MR. BREDA-I’m in construction and I have a little machine, and I have access to all that. I’m a
mason contractor.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-So when do you propose, if this goes through, to start?
MR. BREDA-Hopefully end of April, beginning of May.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And then open it for the fall?
MR. BREDA-No, opening in May. I was hoping to start construction as soon as we got all the
okays.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And it’s air-conditioned in there, for the summer.
MR. BREDA-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Well, we’ll open up the public hearing. Does anyone want to comment on
this application?
PUBLIC HEARING OPENED
NO COMMENT
PUBLIC HEARING CLOSED
MR. MAC EWAN-Any additional questions or comments from Board members?
MR. VOLLARO-I think we all have to determine whether we agree with spinning that building 90
degrees.
MR. MAC EWAN-Play area?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-I’m all for it.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, that makes sense.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-But we’ve got to be definite and figure out how many feet it’s actually going
to be off the road.
MR. VOLLARO-We could specify that.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-What are the dimensions of that play area now?
MR. BREDA-I believe it’s 30 by 40.
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MRS. LA BOMBARD-Thirty by forty. Okay. So that’s 1200 square feet.
MR. PALING-It still could be 30 by 40, perhaps, as long as there’s room enough for a guardrail.
MR. ABBOTT-That would give you another 10 feet off the road.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-So just literally turn it.
MR. VOLLARO-Yes.
MR. ABBOTT-And within that 10 foot area, you’re within your property line, you would put the
guardrail, what you want to do with it, whether it’s a metal guardrail or a pressure treated planter or
whatever you wanted to do would be good.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We need to do a SEQRA. Long or Short?
MRS. MOORE-Short.
RESOLUTION WHEN DETERMINATION OF NO SIGNIFICANCE IS MADE
RESOLUTION NO. 2-2000, Introduced by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption,
seconded by Robert Paling:
WHEREAS, there is presently before the Planning Board an application for:
MICHAEL & CHRISTINE BREDA, and
WHEREAS, this Planning Board has determined that the proposed project and Planning Board
action is subject to review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act,
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT
RESOLVED:
1. No Federal agency appears to be involved.
2. The following agencies are involved:
NONE
3. The proposed action considered by this Board is Unlisted in the Department of
Environmental Conservation Regulations implementing the State Environmental Quality
Review Act and the regulations of the Town of Queensbury.
4. An Environmental Assessment Form has been completed by the applicant.
5. Having considered and thoroughly analyzed the relevant areas of environmental concern and
having considered the criteria for determining whether a project has a significant
environmental impact as the same is set forth in Section 617.11 of the Official Compilation
of Codes, Rules and Regulations for the State of New York, this Board finds that the action
about to be undertaken by this Board will have no significant environmental effect and the
Chairman of the Planning Board is hereby authorized to execute and sign and file as may be
necessary a statement of non-significance or a negative declaration that may be required by
law.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott, Mrs. LaBombard,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
MR. MAC EWAN-Does someone want to introduce a motion?
MRS. LA BOMBARD-I’ll make a motion to approve Site Plan No. 2-2000, Michael & Christine
Breda, With the following conditions: That the applicant forwards a copy of the day care license, as
issued by New York State, to the Planning Office, prior to a final Certificate of Occupancy, and a
copy of the policy for pick and drop off of children. That the play area be enclosed and have two
accesses, and that we move the play area to make it, instead of 40 going out toward the road, over by
30, we make it go 30, and then going over by 40 feet, keeping the same square footage, and, three,
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the play area fence height be defined, and I think we should also put in there that you have some
kind of a guardrail.
MR. MAC EWAN-Steel guardrail.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-On that outer boundary there.
MR. MAC EWAN-On the Dixon Road side.
MR. BREDA-Does it have to be steel, or can it be those, you know, did you ever see the heavy duty
pressure treated, I believe they’re like six by eight, and they’re lag bolted together.
MR. PALING-To what kind of posts, the same?
MR. BREDA-Yes, the same posts, three feet down into the ground, or three and a half feet down.
Just because I have access to that.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. We can say that a guardrail on the Dixon Road side be made of pressure
treated posts, six by six, and designed lag bolted and anchored with six by six posts.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay.
MR. PALING-And would run the length of the play area on the.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Along Dixon Road.
MR. VOLLARO-I’d like to make one more stipulation, that, it’s in the same area as this play area.
That the side of the play area that faces Dixon Road, we should have a minimum of 15 foot from the
road right-of-way. So that gives them some latitude, as to how they want to build that. Because 30
by 40 may, we’re going to spin it 30 by 40, but the 30 foot side may not give them still enough
clearance. It looks like it’s about 10 feet.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, that’s what I said. I agree with you on that.
MR. VOLLARO-I would like to see that that we have a minimum of 15 feet from the side to the end
of the right-of-way.
MR. MAC EWAN-That’s a good point.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes. I think that’s an excellent point. See, in other words, if we just spin it,
instead of going 40 up and 30 across, if we just go 30 up, we might not have a minimum of 15 feet
from that point to the right-of-way of the road, and Bob feels that a minimum of 15 feet is really
necessary for the safety. So if you don’t, then you’re just going to have to make it longer across
Dixon Road, and make up for your square feet there.
MR. PALING-There’s also, there’s a distance within the 25 feet, there’s a distance of 10 feet there
that isn’t paved.
MR. VOLLARO-That isn’t paved.
MR. PALING-But that’s Town. You want another 15?
MR. VOLLARO-Well, the Town could invoke, and tell me if I’m wrong here, the Town could
invoke that they’re going to make that a 50 foot road.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes.
MR. PALING-That’s right.
MR. VOLLARO-So, I want to be 15 feet from the end of the right-of-way.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, and they’ll plow into there, as we all know.
MR. MAC EWAN-No markers.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And also no markers. Number Four, determination of the maximum
employees at any one time, and, five, to determine if there will be a company vehicle for off site
children transport. Is that for like field trips?
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MR. RINGER-They aren’t going to have a company vehicle.
MRS. MOORE-You could amend that to omit number three, four, and five. The fence height was
already defined as five feet, and they already defined that maximum employees was 11 at this time,
and he already indicated there will be no company vehicle for transporting children.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-I missed that. Okay. Thank you, Laura.
MRS. BREDA-And we brought that drop off policy that you just listed.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. You can give that to Staff.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. You can give that to them. Okay. So we don’t have to worry about
that.
MR. BREDA-Could I just add something? If the play area isn’t going to work out by turning it and
staying 15 feet, what if, is it possible to put the play area on the side of the building, and then enclose,
you know, fence around those utility boxes against the building, so that is not accessible to the
children at all?
MR. VOLLARO-The photos we have.
MR. BREDA-I could stay off the building five feet with the fence, and then from there to the
property line and all the way to that three foot door, and the new door that’s going to be put up.
MR. MAC EWAN-But then your playground area would be covering, going right through a
crosswalk, or sidewalk.
MR. BREDA-Well, I could take that out.
MR. MAC EWAN-The whole length of the sidewalk is coming out?
MR. BREDA-Yes, just as another option.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Is that because you don’t want to lose those parking spots?
MR. BREDA-Well, both, actually. We’d like to have the parking spots. We don’t want to lose too
many spots for employees parking, and I kind of agree, and I like the play area on the side of the
building anyway. I know the utilities are there, but they can be fenced off so the kids can’t get at
them.
MR. ABBOTT-Any utility work that would have to be done, replacing meters or electrical stuff. I
don’t know if five feet’s going to be enough.
MR. VOLLARO-He’d have to be well away from this wall. You’ve got a lot of gas meters down
there.
MR. ROUND-Could I suggest that if it’s modified that significantly they come back and gain that
approval? It would be a relatively minor modification, but it’s very difficult to deal with it on the fly
here tonight, especially given the utilities and the other considerations.
MR. MAC EWAN-I’d rather go with what we’ve got.
MR. BREDA-Okay.
MR. PALING-If you did that, you wouldn’t have access to the play area from the inside of the
building, and you don’t have it on the other one either, do you?
MR. BREDA-Yes, there’s a door here.
MR. PALING-The door’s on the outside, though. You don’t stay inside the building and go out.
You go out of the building into the play area as it is in the print.
MRS. BREDA-The way it is existing here? Yes.
MR. BREDA-Yes.
MR. PALING-Okay. So it doesn’t make any difference that you can’t go directly in?
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MRS. BREDA-No. Either way, we could go directly there.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, Cathy, just summarize that motion.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay.
MOTION TO APPROVE SITE PLAN NO. 2-2000 MICHAEL & CHRISTINE BREDA,
Introduced by Catherine LaBombard who moved for its adoption, seconded by Robert Vollaro:
With the following stipulations: That the applicant forwards a copy of the day care license, as issued
by New York State, to the Planning Office, prior to a final Certificate of Occupancy, and a copy of
the policy for pick and drop off of children. That the play area be enclosed and have two accesses,
and that there must be a minimum of 15 feet from the play area to the right-of-way of Dixon Road,
and that along the side of the play area that’s bordering Dixon Road, that there be constructed a six
inch square, those six by six posts (barrier made out of wood, like a guardrail), that will run the length
of Dixon Road, is on the same side as the play area.
Duly adopted this 18 day of January, 2000, by the following vote:
th
AYES: Mr. Vollaro, Mr. Ringer, Mr. Metivier, Mr. Paling, Mr. Abbott, Mrs. LaBombard,
Mr. MacEwan
NOES: NONE
MR. MAC EWAN-You’re all set.
DISCUSSION ITEM:
GLENS FALLS CITY SCHOOLS, NEW RECREATION FIELDS
JON LAPPER, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT
MR. LAPPER-For the record, Jon Lapper, Jim Miller, Tom Nace. Tom MacGowan, the Chairman
of the City School District is here, as well as my partner, Larry Paltrowitz, who you’ve already spoken
with tonight. This is for an athletic field complex for the Glens Falls City Schools, that will also be
available as, essentially, a park for the residents of the Town, as well as for the neighboring residents
of the City and we’re all so pleased and excited with this project that we stayed awake until this hour
to present it to you. We will be submitted for next month formally, but we wanted to come before
you informally to just discuss it and get some ideas. This is a concept drawing. We will be finalizing
it before we make our final submission. We invited all of the adjacent neighbors, a week ago, to a
meeting last Tuesday at the Middle School, heard all of their comments. The Supervisor was there,
as well as Tim Brewer, recently of this Board, and he stood up and gave us some ideas about some
changes that he’d like to see in the buffer area. After a lengthy meeting, really, with the residents, we
went through our presentation and answered a lot of questions, they really felt, it seemed that they
were pretty satisfied, with a few minor exceptions, and really that was buffer issues that we’ll talk
about, and we think this is just going to be a real nice addition to the Town, instead of perhaps a
residential subdivision, which would be another approved use on this site. The City School District
is badly in need of athletic fields, and this is a 38 acre parcel that is close enough to be accessed by
going from the High School complex up Grant Ave. and the Grant Ave. Extension. I guess it would
be good to have Jim walk you through the site. Some of the main high points are that we just want
to have pedestrian access on the Grant Ave. Extension, so that we don’t have school kids walking
along Sherman Ave., and at the same time limiting the vehicular access only to Sherman Ave., so that
we won’t have people driving through the existing residential neighborhood and impacting the Grant
Ave. residents, and we think that that’s the best way to design this.
JIM MILLER
MR. MILLER-Thank you. For the record, I’m Jim Miller. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the
site. We’re bounded on the entire west side by the Northway, Sherman runs across the bottom, and
then we’re surrounded by residential areas on the east and west. This is a residential area where
Barber Avenue, Ripley and Grant forms a loop, and this is, Grant extends straight down across
Western to the High School, and then we have Griffing and Coolidge to the north, and what we’re
looking to do is maximize the number of fields we can have. We’ve been working with the athletic
director at the school district to come up with this plan. What we’ve got is basically seven spring
fields, will include la crosse, softball and baseball, and there’s going to be six fall fields. There’s going
to be three soccer fields and two field hockey and one area designated as a practice area. Obviously,
we’ve had to overlap fields to maximize the use. What Jon was talking about is we’re proposing a
pedestrian only connection from the school up Grant Avenue, into the property. We have a 50 foot
wide property that abuts on the corner of Grant. This is primarily going to be used for after school.
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Kids will be coming to the fields to practice. We’ve kept all of the vehicular circulation off of
Sherman. We’ve proposed two access points. This is the beginning of the overpass over the
Northway. Here’s where Northway Lane comes in where the storage buildings are. We have one
access point to the west, and another one off set, this is Veterans Road, to create a loop around the
property, which would facilitate busses coming in. We’re providing a bus drop off area, visiting
teams come in, we have an area for three to four busses, and then a parking area, keeping all the
vehicular access close to the south. There’ll be a field house which will be restrooms, a concession,
maintenance and storage. It’ll also provide some kind of, some of it will be open for shelter, and
that’ll really be the hub. We’ve tried to take all of the actions, that activity, and keep it as close to
Sherman as we can, away from the residential areas. There’ll be eight tennis courts, which are located
along the east, close to access from the neighborhood. It’s also close, so residents can come in, have
direct access and parking, right along those tennis courts. All the fields will be accessible off of the
trail system. We’re developing trails back, most of this is going to be, there’ll be some varsity play,
but there’ll be a lot of modified JV. So we’re looking at all movable bleachers. There won’t be any
large, like the main football field will still stay down at the High School site. They’ll still use the East
Field site. So, you know, this isn’t intended to be a major spectator field, none of these. One of the
issues, what we’ve done is there’s some wetlands on the site. They’re Federal wetlands and they run
along this portion of the site, and there’s a band that runs along the north, and actually we’ve ended
up using a lot of that, you know, we’re going to stay out of it. So it becomes buffer area along the
residential areas. The only area where we have to take some wetland is where we come in to the
property, in this area, and we’re under a third of an acre or so will be within a Nationwide permit to
do that. So it’s a minimal permit process to accomplish that. We’ve maintained the minimum buffer
of 50 feet. There was some discussion the other night from some of the neighbors. Obviously, they
would like to have more. There were pros and cons whether we want more woods or more clearing,
and we’re looking into that, and the other issue dealt with drainage. Right now the entire property d
drains to low areas down through the wetland and down into what we’ve shown as practice area, and
we’re just developing the drainage and the stormwater management, which we’ll be submitting next
week to you, but the concept generally is, there’s about a one percent slope, generally, across the
entire site, if we graded it flat, but what we’re basically going to try to do is grade it almost like a wash
board, where the fields will be crowned, creating low areas between the fields. It’s shallow to
groundwater here, anywhere from two to four feet. So we can’t use deep infiltration, like drywells.
So we’d have to come up with shallower systems, but the idea is to trap the water in low areas
between the fields, so we’re hoping that will actually decrease the amount of water now that sheets to
this lower area, which was a concern with the neighbors. We’re in the process of studying some of
the runoff from the paved areas and the tennis courts, and it’ll better address that. One thing we
have found out, there is a catch basin located at this point which connects to a City storm drain
down on Western Avenue, and Tom Nace is going to be working on that to see how much capacity
there is in that and how much we can use that, but we do have a positive drain from that point.
Other than that.
MR. RINGER-None of the fields are going to be lit, the tennis courts?
MR. LAPPER-The tennis courts will probably eventually be lit, if not at first, but that’s something
that we see as positive for the residents in the area to use them at night when they’re not being used
for the School.
MR. RINGER-How about the neighbors? How do they feel about it?
MR. LAPPER-There’s no house, if you look at the lot that’s right next to where the tennis courts
are, the house is right next to Sherman.
MR. MILLER-That’s all vacant.
MR. LAPPER-That’s pretty much a vacant lot, and they’ll be designed to minimize impact.
MR. RINGER-That storm system that you were talking about the City owns, doesn’t that do all of
Broad Acres and come down through Broad Acres down Western Avenue and feeds into the Canal?
MR. LAPPER-Yes, as far as we know.
MR. RINGER-That’s a pretty huge line. It seems like you could give most of your stormwater to.
MR. LAPPER-Tom’s already started to look into that.
TOM NACE
MR. NACE-We’re just getting started, so I don’t have all the facts yet, but before we just dump water
into that, we’ve got to verify that there’s capacity available that’s not already used.
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MR. RINGER-I don’t know that much about it, but I know it feeds Broad Acres, and it dumps into
the Canal, and then it goes right down there across Western, through the back yards there on James
Court.
MR. NACE-I think we’re still going to try to emulate what happens on the site now, to provide a
storage and a slow metered outlet.
MR. LAPPER-But the fact that there is that outflow available is certainly positive.
MR. MAC EWAN-Any other questions? I’ve got one. What’s the buffer between the baseball field
closest to the Northway and the Northway itself?
MR. MILLER-Right along in here?
MR. MAC EWAN-Yes.
MR. MILLER-I think we’re about 50 feet from the pop foul post, but one of the things that happens
along here. If you’ll recall the Northway, they came back after the original construction and they
purchased an additional 100 foot buffer strip themselves, and if you see the outer line, that’s the
fence along the Northway. That was their original right-of-way. So they have a 100 foot buffer right
along there, and then we’ll probably, we won’t have much there. We actually only have another 25
feet or so there, and this is much higher. This comes up about five feet higher than the field, before
it drops back down to the Northway.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. So there is a 100 foot buffer there already.
MR. MILLER-That’s right.
MR. RINGER-That’s a softball field or a baseball field?
MR. MILLER-This is baseball. We have baseball here and here, and these two are the softball.
MR. RINGER-And they’ll be playing varsity baseball there or they’ll stay over to the other place?
MR. MILLER-Well, they’ll probably stay over at the other place, but they have, I think they have a
modified level and they have a JV. They may even have two modified, and plus the varsity, but
these will also be used for practices, too.
MR. PALING-On the east side, those are three houses.
MR. MILLER-Right here? Yes.
MR. PALING-Yes, and are there any complaints from them?
MR. MILLER-Well, they had some concerns, and they, actually, this was an area that they asked
about increasing the amount of buffer. The other concern they have is this is now a low area in here.
So a lot of the water drains and ponds here in the spring, especially when there’s frost in the ground.
So those neighbors were concerned about the buffer and about the drainage.
MR. PALING-The only thing you’re doing that’ll effect permeability are the tennis courts and the
parking lot, nothing else will effect that?
MR. MILLER-No, it won’t. I say it won’t, I guess some people could argue that by grading it and
putting it closer and mowing the lawn and things, we could increase the runoff, but I think we’re
going to more than compensate the way we’re going to create those low areas. Because now, you
know, there’s a little bit of a ridge that runs here. So some of this comes down into this wetland, but
it’s pretty much a straight shot comes all the way into that low area now. So what we’re hoping to
do is intercept that, so we can minimize what drains down to that low area.
MR. MAC EWAN-Is the parking lot going to be paved, or is it going to be like crushed stone, gravel
kind of thing?
MR. MILLER-Well, the problem with, because we’d probably have to plow that just for emergencies
ins the winter, and have access into the building, and it’s always difficult to maintain gravel. We’re
showing it all as paved. I guess there’s going to be some discussion probably when we get talking
about budgets what happened, because actually one option may be, some of it may not all get built
right away. Some of it could just be grass and used as overflow, but I think what we want to do is
come before you as if it’s all paved, and if we back off from that for some reason, we can.
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MR. PALING-Now this property is in Queensbury.
MR. MILLER-That’s right.
MR. PALING-But it’s going to be Glens Falls High School usage?
MR. MILLER-That’s right.
MR. PALING-What use does Queensbury put it to?
MR. MILLER-It’s open to the public, with the exception of when the School is using the facilities.
MR. MAC EWAN-A curious question. A conversation we heard with an application earlier tonight
regarding the School. How is this subject to our Zoning Ordinances? Schools are historically
exempt from that.
MR. LAPPER-The simplest way to answer that, with respect to this project, is that this project is
being donated to the City School District by the Morse Foundation. So that the actual project
applicant, although all of the design details are being done by the School, to accommodate the
School’s needs, the project applicant is the Morse Foundation, which is a private charitable
foundation. We had contemplated that question, before putting this together, and felt that the most
appropriate way, before we even go to the decision as to how to handle this, was we were going to
come before you on a conceptual basis, even if was non-jurisdictional, because wanted to have the
public hearing. We wanted to include the public and to get your comments, and then after speaking
with Mark Schachner and then ultimately determining that this was going to be done in the name of
the Foundation for the application, it just seemed that this was both legally and most appropriate the
way to handle it. So here we are.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay.
MR. LAPPER-We figured you don’t have enough on your plate.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-Now did the Morse Foundation just donate the land or are they doing all the?
MR. LAPPER-The land is under contract, and they’ll be purchasing the land, once we get the
approval, and donating it to the School District. Before they donate it to the School District, they’re
going to be making improvements. As to whether they’re going to do all the improvements right up
front before it’s donated or not, it really depends upon what the budget is going to be for all of the
work, which is mostly the cut and fill grading.
MRS. LA BOMBARD-And the tennis courts.
MR. LAPPER-And so it may be that, what we’re showing you for the approval is the full build out.
It may be that it gets built out in stages because of financial considerations, but we just don’t know
what it’s going to cost to build yet. So we don’t know the answer to that, but that is what plan is that
everything there will ultimately be built either in one stage or in a number.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Any other questions?
MR. VOLLARO-Yes, I just have one, I guess. Looking at that total plan, all of the fields are going
to be laid in relatively flat to play ball on, I would guess, and I’m trying to visualize where you’re
going to put, you say you’ve got two to four foot to groundwater, roughly. I’m just trying to visualize
where you’re going to put these low spots, and when you do get them in, if you can fit them in there,
obviously, the water won’t sheet in this direction, but what are you going to do with the water that’s
in those low spots? How are you going to channel those out?
MR. NACE-They’re going to have to be channeled either in swales to the next low spot down. The
whole site has a gradient, as Jim said, of about one percent from one side to another. So the fields
will sort of be terraced going down toward the east, and then low spots between them where we can
will connect them with swales to the next east one.
MR. VOLLARO-And if there’s enough capacity in that line, you’re trying to essential channel the
water (lost words).
MR. NACE-Channel the water to eventually get there, but give it plenty of time to soak into the
ground as it gets there, because this is all going to be relatively flat.
MR. VOLLARO-Two to four feet isn’t going to be much. It’s going to be soggy.
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MR. NACE-Well, the soil itself is not clay, it’s not silty. It’s fairly sandy soil. It’s got a high
groundwater table. So it’ll soak into the surface, but once we get down to the lower end of the site,
we do want some sort of an outlet there, and it looks like that’s going to be feasible to be able to
keep it from ponding the way it has in the past, but it’ll have to be a slow metered outlet. So that we
don’t overload the existing system.
MR. VOLLARO-Well, you’ve got enough channels there, probably, to run it, just looking at the way
you’ve got it laid out.
MR. NACE-In some places it may take a culvert to do that, but we’ll try to keep it on the ground as
much as possible.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything?
MR. PALING-The original concept would be to light the tennis courts. If later on you decided to
light the fields, does that have to come back before us? Is that a Planning Board thing?
MR. LAPPER-I think the answer would be yes. That would be a site plan issue.
MR. PALING-I would hope.
MR. ABBOTT-We’ll if it’s been given to the School at that point, and the School has it, I would
think.
MR. VOLLARO-I would think we’re out of it if it’s owned by the School.
MR. LAPPER-Your Counsel has different ideas about that, but we’re not concerned, because the
goal at that point would be that we’d want to minimize the impact on neighbors. I mean, it would
just be done to be done correctly. So whether we come and talk to you or not, it’s no problem.
MR. SCHACHNER-I think for right now all we should say is that it depends on who does it and
when they do it, and we don’t need to cross that bridge right now.
MR. MAC EWAN-Sounds like a plan to me. It’s planning at its best.
MR. MILLER-One of the things we’ve tried to do is layout the most active fields farthest from the
residential areas. So if the School decided to come in and light some of the fields, it would more
likely be some of the soccer fields or one of the baseball fields and the softball fields. So all those,
you know, we’ve located farther away from the neighbors.
MR. MAC EWAN-Okay, and you’re making application for next month?
MR. LAPPER-Yes.
MR. MAC EWAN-All right. Thank you very much.
MR. LAPPER-Thanks.
MR. MAC EWAN-Anything else? I’ll make a motion to adjourn.
On motion meeting was adjourned.
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
Craig MacEwan, Chairman
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