Planning Board - Regular Meeting

We're all in the same boat.

We are, we're hanging in there together.

Oh yeah, I know.

Oh.

So it's six o'clock. So we are going to call the meeting to order. So welcome to our planning board meeting. It's July 7th, 2026. I am Grace Gaylor, chair of the board. I am here with two of the other board members. I'm trying to get the names right. So that means I'm good. So we are going to start today. It's a very short agenda for today. We're going to start with a conditional use permit and then we have a development plan review. Those are the two items on our agenda for today. So first is the conditional use permit, project number CBP 2026-12, the location at 369 Madison Avenue. So if we have anybody here on behalf of that, and they can come up and talk about their project, you get about 10 minutes to let us know about your project and what you're planning to do. And you have a helper.

So my name is Marcin Petrovsky. And so we're going to do like the two units over there, so we try to change for three units.

Okay.

Do you have a presentation?

I believe so.

Okay. So it looks like there's the project location. So you're at 369 Madison Avenue? Correct. Okay. And so do you have a box? Yes. There you go. So where are you looking to do the third unit? In the basement?

In the basement, yes. This full basement is like pretty much like more than seven foot, so.

Okay. We have the four beds in this. Okay. Yeah, let's take a look at that. So it looks like it's a one bedroom.

You're trying to... Yeah, it's like one bedroom and like the big space of the living room or the dining room, whatever.

So you're doing a joint living room, dining room space.

Yeah.

Yeah. I see what you're doing.

So you're moving, so where it was before, you're moving... Basically the work is just on the first floor and the basement.

The top floor is already set up, so... Because the situation over there is in the basement was just the kitchen, no bathroom. And on the first floor was... Just the kitchen, no bathroom.

Okay.

No, just the bathroom, no kitchen, I'm sorry.

Okay.

So it was like in the basement we have to add the bathroom and in the first floor we have to add the kitchen.

Okay. So what I'm understanding is that the prior owner may have used the basement in the first floor

Like the ones, yes, correct.

Like a duplex, and then the rental was on the top floor.

I believe so, yes.

They are, each floor has the entrance on the back, so.

Okay. But talk a little bit more about the fire. She just mentioned there was a fire.

Yes, but the owner buy this after fire. So it was already under some construction over there, on this area. But the main fire was on the hallway. Hallway and the top floor kitchen. It was not like structural damage, nothing like, even not like the sheetrock, the first layer of the wall was like just the smoke.

Oh, so it was a lot of smoke damage.

Yes. And some like, there's some furnace, stuff like that.

Okay. So it doesn't, do you have anything else you want to add to?

Not, no. All right. So it doesn't like... Was the only one question would probably was not set up to this application was the garbage. And this is what we got like on the front as we can, because I think I was, I wasn't able to like upload to that today for the...

So can you go back to the plans? So where would the garbage be at?

On the front. On the right side, when you look on the .

Oh.

So those are the .

And the correct is on the sheet .

OK.

The full correct is the one.

Thank you. Yeah. That's what it looks like .

at the very beginning, I guess.

Yeah, at the beginning.

There's some little guys over there right now.

So the trash will be behind the fence?

Yes, yes, yes, yes. But we can move the fence or do something like whatever is necessary. But it's space already over there.

Since there are no comments, no written or public comment, any members of the board have any questions?

All right, so I'm going to turn it over to the staff

Okay, so it's tied to action and no further action is required. And the property has two stories, 19 feet, has a frontage on Madison Avenue and it's classified as a wedding townhouse. We sent out the county reference and the recommendation was received on June 1st. and it defers to local consideration. And after the analysis, we found that the neighboring property block has multiple 18 three-unit dwellings, 18 two-unit dwellings, and single units and multi-unit dwellings.

Code compliance review standards.

The first and most important thing is to make sure that the minimum lot coverage is over 1,150 for IP area and the lot in question is above that and the conversion cannot exceed three units so that's maximum number of units it has and it has three stories to accommodate that. And lastly, since they are making changes to the exterior and their hair, due to fire, so the staircase is being changed and it is visible from the right-of-way, they do need to get a certificate of appropriateness for the repairing of the exterior fireplace and then some repair for the windows and doors on the exterior side. A fact found that it is consistent with the provisions of U.S. law and it's not a random fact that there are a lot of three-unit communities and a lot of residential areas in the neighborhood and it is consistent with the objectives of the whole industry and it does have a good number of stories to accommodate all the units. we have the information about the refusal now so that shouldn't be a problem apart from that street parking can be accommodated to put in for additional vehicles so that will be taken care of and in the interest of public convenience and general respect of the surrounding open-ended community so it should be a desirable service

So can we get a motion to approve the conditional use permit with the condition that a certificate of appropriateness application must be approved prior to the issuance of a building permit for any exterior work on the property? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Motion carries. So congratulations, you have your permit.

Thank you so much.

You know, just keep an eye on the condition that they have there. Okay? And if they're planning staff, they can definitely assist you in questions. No question about that. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So the next item we have on our agenda is 10 Corporate Woods Drive. It's a development plan review. Project number DPR-2026-22. May I ask who's representing corporate?

Yes, my name is Brody Smith. I'm an attorney at Von Schoeniken King.

You're Tyler Garrity with Creighton Mating Engineering.

So, on a full disclosure, I'm general counsel for NYSTEC. We are a client of Von Schoeniken King, and we also have a, what should we call it? we're renting leasing space from Corporate Woods in that property. It should not affect here because both of those things do not have any effect, but I'm just putting it on the record for full disclosure.

Can I clarify that the landlord of your company does not own Tidyport? It's a different ownership.

Okay, thank you.

Well, thank you for giving us the opportunity to present to you today. As I said before, my name is Brody Smith. Tyler Garrity is here to my left. And my plan is to give you an overview of the background of this project. The procedural background is a little bit interesting because this project is located on the border with the town of Colony. So I just want to provide that background. And then I'll turn it over to Tyler to answer any technical questions about the project because his firm, Creighton Manning, are the engineers that designed it. So the application is for two different forms of relief. One, development plan review pursuant to 375-505 and a parking waiver pursuant to 375-405. This property is zoned MUCI. It's known as 10 Corporate Woods. Its current use is as an office building and a parking lot with some landscaping. There are two parcels involved. The Albany parcel is 12.3 acres, and it includes the office building and some of the parking. The Town of Colony parcel is 7.2 acres and is used for the remainder of the parking lot. By way of history, this building was originally approved and constructed in 1982. At that time, it was 150,000 square feet. And at that time, the arrangement between the two municipalities was that Albany would issue the building permits and Colony did the site plan review. The Dormitory Authority did the Seeker. It was expanded in 2002. That expansion included 143 new parking spaces and 43,000 square feet of office space. The town of Colony at that time consented to having the city of Albany do the site plan review and all the approvals. The project that is before the board here today involves an increase in the number of parking spaces to a total of 559. That is a net increase of about 110 parking spaces. There would be about 33,000 square feet of new impervious surface. The total now is about 235,000 square feet. So on the basis of a percentage, it's not a significant increase, about 8%. The process that we followed is originally we came to staff here for a technical review committee comments on December 11th, 2025. We then went to Colony in January to ask for their consent to allow Albany to be the reviewing agency. Over the next few months, there were questions and answers back and forth with the town of Colony. They asked for more specific site plans and landscaping plans, which were provided. I appeared before their planning board last month where they approved a resolution 5-0 deferring all approval authority to your board for this project. The waiver is asking for a 44 parking space waiver. The limit based on the square footage of the building is 515 parking spaces. The proposed number of parking spaces for this project is 559. The reason for asking for this waiver and wanting to add those additional parking spaces is because our client is hiring additional people and has already hired additional people. So the increased number of staff in the building necessitates this redesign of the parking lot in order to provide enough parking for all the employees. In addition, screening has been included in this plan to mitigate any potential visual impacts to neighboring parcels. This isn't an existing office park. It's not an urban setting in the sense where I think there's a lot of incentive to limit parking spaces.

I understand it obviously in that setting, but this isn't that.

There's not a lot of good alternatives to the waiver considering that the main mode of transportation to Corporate Woods is vehicular. The waiver is not significant. I think I mentioned before that it's only about an 8% And so I don't think this would have any kind of noticeable impact to the neighbors, which are other office buildings in Corporate Woods. In terms of environmental impacts, new stormwater infiltration systems are proposed in the design. There'd be two new infiltration systems, one on the left and one on the right. In the drawing that you're looking at there, if you go a little bit up, Also, there's a net gain in terms of tree plantings. There'd be a total of 47 trees planted as part of this project. That's about 10 trees net gain, including 21 new blue spruce that you see on the left, which will be on a berm as you enter the property and I think will be the most significant visual feature from the point of view of Corporate Woods and represents, I think, quite an upgrade in terms of aesthetics. for this property. I will stop there and turn it over to Tyler. If there's any technical questions, I'd be happy to have him address the board, and if you have any other procedural or legal questions, I'm here to answer them.

Yeah, would you like to run through the design a bit? Sure. So I think most of the development is limited to the northwest call it near a corporate woods drive we were really looking in terms of space it's pretty limited for any sort of expansion so one of the things we looked at you can see the existing parking is kind of east-west on that left side so what we're doing is kind of rotating 90 degrees put the drive aisles north-south and it allowed us to expand a little bit to the north there and then utilize that existing drive aisle and then I'd say the new pavement would be off to the left there near the landscape berm, and that kind of gets us an extra row of parking along there. That's kind of the main development area, and then as you can see on the right side there, a little bit of reconfiguring the parking. There's an existing drive aisle used to get to the rear of the property, so we're going to strike that, keep the existing edge of pavement, and then just kind of shift those islands over to the left. So we'll replant trees in there and everything. It kind of keeps the same configuration, just shifted a bit. And then a couple other spots there on the lower right, just adding a few more rows of parking just to pick up additional spaces where we can. And then with that added total parking, we're also adding one more or two more ADA spaces there at the front entrance. I think that's kind of the extent of the parking. And then as mentioned, stormwater, We'll be up in the front there in the parking area, some subsurface chambers. Landscaping, you've got the islands throughout the parking areas, not exceeding 20 spaces in one row. And then there's a little bit of pavement striping there on the main drive aisle, just kind of transitioning between the parking and the actual drive lane. I think that's kind of it from a development standpoint, but let me know if you have any questions.

I do have a couple. Can you go back to that one and can you pull it up a little bit? So a couple of questions. So I'm assuming where this baseball triangle is, that's the best way that I can describe it. That's going to be, that's your entrance? Baseball triangle, sorry. Down at the building and you see you have it.

Oh, okay, so the L in the building is the pedestrian entrance.

Yeah, it looks like a baseball triangle. Sure, sure, yeah. If you don't get it, that's fine. I'm on an island by myself. But yeah, so that's the front?

Correct.

Okay, so you're putting the ADA spaces up in this front island here?

Yeah, so there's already, I believe it's seven. Okay. And we're just striping one more spot and then delineating two additional media spaces. Got it. In that same row. Those were standard parking. We're just going to stripe them. Oh, okay.

So you're not doing any extensions there? Nope.

That's just paint on the existing pavement. Okay.

So now if you go up a little bit, all the way at the end, you see where you're coming off of the main road? You take that right, and then you have those islands. You have the small one on the left and then three big ones. Will that be it? a way of ingress and egress into the parking lot in addition to the main road that you currently have here?

Yeah, so you're saying up on the top there? Yeah. Yeah, so that'll allow anyone that kind of circulates through the middle of the parking lot, starts going up those drive aisles. If they don't find a spot, they can at least go out and move back around. But I think predominantly that most of the circulation is going to be on the lower, near the entrance. Most of the employees coming in on those. Yeah.

No, because I'm just looking at that because during, you know, your main time, going in and out of those type of drive-outs can be curious, especially coming off of that main road. But I'm not saying how you can get around it without Yeah. To like pull the islands in a bit. Yeah, so they don't, so see people can go around and come back up and go around and come back down. I just see it, I just see it just people, people becoming precarious. That's all. I don't know.

I think most of the circulation, like you're talking about coming and going from the site, I think that's mostly at the boulevard entrance there from what I understand. So I think there's going to be less, you know, traffic

So you think they're going to come up here and not go down there?

To get into the site, yeah. And then that way that northern kind of drive aisle is mostly open for the most part, and then anyone in the site can kind of circulate.

I went and drove it to get a sense of it, and yeah, people are coming and going out of that. Where the green belt is, that's really what's used.

And that's down at that end. That's not a thoroughfare, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so really only going into that road anyway to get to that.

Yeah, there's no trail track. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. And then those new spaces are behind the building, right?

Yeah. On the bottom right, yeah.

I don't know if anybody else has any questions.

I have a really, not intentionally nitpicky, but just for a clarification. On the application I'm looking at, it says 553, and you said 559 spaces.

I saw that, too. I've got 559 on the drawings, so I'm going off of that. I think it may be some early narrative. I think you're right. I think in one of the early narratives it did say 553, but I believe 559 is correct. I think 553 is the latest. Oh, am I right about that?

That's what we were going with. Okay, I stand corrected.

Yeah, and it doesn't impact my opinion one way or the other, but we want to make sure that what we have is accurate.

Yeah, I think that's right. It should be located.

Okay. Yeah, what I have may not be the latest. Sorry for that.

Any other questions?

All the additional plantings are out on the northwestern? Yeah, whatever orientation we get. Top left.

That's where the 21 blue spruce outside. There are additional trees. If you look at the new dry vials, there's two trees on each one of those. So here I can point if you want. Yeah, if you go back up a little bit. So like where there's new, you know, islands in there. So there's additional trees besides that. the 21 up front that are just throughout. They add up to another 23 or so trees.

You said there was net gain?

Net gain of about 10 trees, because we're losing trees where that new pavement is, so it comes out to net gain of about 10, depending on what you count as a tree.

And no plantings on the southern end of that? The reason I ask is I'm just looking at the environmental resource map that DEC has for wetlands and species and things like that, so I was just curious since you're adding new in that.

I don't think there's plantings on the bottom right part of this.

No, in the rear of the property there's nothing. There's a lot of utilities as well, which makes it tough.

If you pull out to the satellite too, if you go to the right, it's pretty There's a lot of existing vegetative screening. There you go. That's all woods down the right side there, so it's already just all trees.

Got it. Just out of curiosity, the water board, seeing it's aware of the development. application? Because Water Department commented on their behalf. Great. So I think most of you are looking at the stormwater, you know, redesign. Any other questions?

I'm looking because I'm sure it's in here somewhere, but just the extension of the parking lot, we still have the ability for emergency vehicles to turn in and out of the parking lot. pushing the parking spaces out so far that then the access and turning radius is?

Yeah, I'd say it's that the main drive aisles are all maintained and then actually even with the scraping that kind of adds even a little more width there on that north-south aisle. There'd be really no need for them to surgically turn away on the left side, but yeah, the main access is maintained.

And I wasn't here in 1982, but I have a feeling the reason for that second driveway up top was fire access, two points of access.

Yeah, if you look at it, it's pretty wide from straight in. It looked like we did have somebody for public comment.

So, Nancy Carey. Hi, I represent the adjoining property owners.

Can we switch out?

Yep.

And can you please I wanted to offer the records to Jamie and your animals, and you have three minutes.

Fancy carry, free liberty way, all thing you are. I represent the adjoining property owners. I came tonight, I registered in case I had additional comments on the storm water, which would affect the adjacent properties. But I'm satisfied that what they have presented is going to work, and I no longer have concerns Thank you. You're welcome. We appreciate you coming.

All right. So staff. So a lot of it is kind of repetitive of what Brody and Tyler said, but coming from the staff report, there's obviously the same building by your state retirement. with the spaces, and as was mentioned, they're expecting growth and expansion, so they'll be internally doing some rehabilitation and then externally accounting for that with more parking spaces. As Rory mentioned, the town of Melanie passed a resolution in June to defer all review and permit to the City of Albany Planning Board, so we've had that communication. And as we also mentioned, the parcel is basically fabricated with the municipal boundary. We referred to Albany County Planning Board. It's obviously very close to I-90 and meet that threshold. So they did include these recommendations and advisory comments to notify the town of Colony with all the prior notices, which we did prior to their recommendation and which has been satisfied as we did get that resolution approved. And then they had an advisory comment that the applicant should incorporate EV charging stations in the parking lot to support electric vehicle use and sustainability goals. So advisory comment, I think we did talk about it briefly in our technical review a while ago. So if there are any existing charging stations or if there's any proposed use of that on the plan. It's obviously a permitted use in the design district in both the city of Albany and Columbia. There's an overall improvement in service area increase Although quite minimal, it's obviously well below the 60% maximum allowable. No work within the right-of-way is expected. There are three curb cuts, as we saw and as we discussed. They are all in the town county, but no changes are expected. A lot modification to consolidate is also, you know, improbable because the municipal boundary goes through the property. In other circumstances, where it was two property, two parcels, under one building or one use, we would require a lot of modification, but not in this case. The minimum number of off-street parking spaces is exceeded, as we discussed, so they have submitted a waiver request for review by planning board, maybe review that proposal letter, and then that action will be taken, you know, the later date when action is taken on the project as a whole. There's a few kind of just minor notes in the staff report for the CME to address. Just note any existing bicycle parking spaces, if there are any, and again, identifying existing or proposed to be capable spaces, as well as the snow storage area. You can kind of assume generally where that is, but it doesn't seem to be identified within the plan set. There is some information on the landscaping, but a planting schedule with number, size, and species type will be needed for review by our arborist. in the Department of General Services. When you're classing that action as unlisted because it's an expansion of the existing parking lot, it doesn't meet the 500 space threshold. It's not a new 500 space parking lot. The part one of the FEF was submitted with application materials and will provide the parts two and three for planning board consideration when final action is recommended. The project is not funded by other state agencies. We just kind of talked to the applicant of whether New York State's retirement is considered a state agency or not. But no other state agencies are involved in the review of approval or funding. So we don't recommend that court review is required. We haven't heard that from other state agencies. So I feel pretty confident in that. So no action has been made on Superior at this time. The project has been referred for departmental comment, and DGS provided comment in mid-June. Water is still under review, and then the engineering department did approve the project in late June. Because there's still the outstanding water comments and just kind of minor site plan, it's time to defer approval until those comments have been addressed. So, you know, not too much longer. I think this will come back pretty quickly, but just in this time, it's not ready for approval.

Any other comments? All right, so we need a motion to defer this developmental, sorry, I wanna make sure I say it right. So we defer the developmental plan review until all the departments have made their appropriate comments. Do I have a motion? all right so we're deferred for now and then it'll come back onto the agenda yeah okay all right thank you thank you

So the other business item, which is kind of like . Our third practice is that planning staff . Once any outstanding conditions have been satisfied, or if there aren't any conditions, then we'll just fix them and pass on to the permit.

That's our practice.

a lot of two planning board chairs included the planning board chair signature that we just put on there. To take away any liability or minimize any kind of risk of signature and just having a signature, we're proposing that we change that policy to just having the chief planning official, which is Brad, our director, essentially take that role. That's what he does for the minor government interviews, so it's not good if they don't come to the planning board We already have that as a stamp, so we can just kind of carry that forward. And we're already doing a stack that we took in turn, but no changes have been made to pay for approval, an actual stamp approval. If there's questions you're concerned about that, you know what I did today, however I want.

Yeah, I can give you the background as to where this came from. It's my fault. So as an attorney, I have an ethical obligation to make sure that my signature on documents is things that I review, so on and so forth. So I can't just give them a stamp of my signature. I have to make sure everything is reviewed to make this process go a little bit faster. This was the recommendation, and that's the basis for it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I hope you remember that.

to apartment diversion .

He worked for months to satisfy that water condition, and it got in the plan set, and he needed the permit within 20 minutes. So it would be pretty difficult to try to get that in person. This was discussed with council over a couple months, too. So I was not here, but we did address this with her

So that being said, do we have a motion to designate the chief planning official to affix the final signature and stamp to the final plan set that has been certified by planning staff as conforming to the board's approval without any further action from the board. To add to that, any determination by staff that a submission does not conform in a material respect shall require referral back to the planning board for review. I'll move to second it. All right, we'll probably move to second it. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. All right, we're all set. So motion to adjourn. So moved. All right, we are adjourned at 6.36, 8 p.m. We are not starting this day over.

So, all right, thanks.