Planning Board - Regular Meeting

The May meeting of the Troy Planning Board will come to order. Would you stand, please? We'll have a pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you. We'll call the roll. Member Scully?

Here.

Member Dickinson. Present. Member Schufeld.

Here.

York.

Here.

Peter Keogh, present. First item is adoption of the meeting minutes from April meeting. Is there, if you had an opportunity to read them, there's a motion.

I'd like to make a motion that we accept the minute meetings of April 2026. Second.

I second that motion.

Thank you, sir. Any discussion? All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no. The motion carries. Next item on the agenda is a review of proposed changes to Chapter 285 of the Troy City Charter regarding zoning regulations. So, Cody, do you want to comment on that? Sure.

I'm not sure how we would like to handle this. Do you want me to, is this our public hearing or are we just going forward with these recommendations? How do you want to handle this?

I think we can, you can explain what the recommendations are.

I think your mic's off. Pardon? I think your mic, you know.

You can explain what the recommendations are that we can open it up to the public and then you can make any motion that you deem appropriate.

Okay. All right. Um, the planning board subcommittee assigned to review the proposed amendments. to Chapter 285, and these are the recommendations that we are suggesting. On Section 2, 285.15 , we recommend that the numerical threshold in Section H be amended by striking 10,000 square feet and replacing it with 7,000 square feet, consistent with the intent of the proposed ordinance and under H1, 2, and 3, they remain unchanged. The cannabis dispensary, which is section three in the resolution, ordinance number 48, The proposed amendment strikes the P designation for cannabis. During our review, the subcommittee examined whether this change is justified. We note that cannabis dispensaries are subject to distinct state level requirements that do not apply to liquor stores or other retail uses. We looked at the Office of Cannabis Management requirements about their outdoor signage. They can't have neon lighting, vehicle capabilities, depictions of cannabis or cannabis products, and use of commercial mascots. What our question was is if we followed the state law and codified that into code or the zoning ordinance, why would we have to ask them to have a special use permit? And we didn't know why the request was made for a special use permit for cannabis. I don't know if Mr. Morrissey could answer that.

I hesitate to speak authoritatively on that. I was not the original author of these amendments. I think the concern was that to make sure that cannabis operations fit within neighborhood and that requiring a special use permit would give another layer of regulation and control.

Okay. Okay. All right. So we just thought that if they were required to use a special use permit solely to be in compliance with state law, we thought that without a special use permit, it would reduce unnecessary paperwork for the applicants, avoid repeated SUP renewals. And our SUPs renewed every year.

They can be, but they can be granted conditionally or temporarily or permanently. Okay.

All right. So we just thought that without a special use permit, it would make the process clearer for both the applicants and the staff and still give the city the oversight it needs if we adopted the state laws as they read. So... The subcommittee has no further recommendations regarding section four, five, six, and seven of the resolution and ordinance. And we just respectfully submit that these recommendations come before the full planning board for discussion and possibly public discussion on it. Does my members have anything?

Well, first, I'd like to thank the subcommittee for their efforts on this. It's a bit of a challenge. I think you've kind of summarized and broke down the issues very easily. And I think at this point, you know, I'd like to move to make these recommendations available to the full council. And it's kind of like they're going to be the last authority on this. Is that correct?

They are. I wonder if you might want to open it to public discussions before you make your motion.

Absolutely.

I mean, it's not required, but.

Yeah. Any other member want to comment on it first?

I think Tony did a fine job.

You don't want to expand upon her remark? He's tired of hearing me talk.

I'm good. I read it. I think I agree with what was said. Okay.

Brett KenCairn, Or is there any member of the public here to speak on this proposal.

Brett KenCairn, Yes.

Yes, there we go. All right. Just, I think we wanted to say that, I think the, oh, sorry, sorry, Stephen Maples, South Troy. Just want to say to the subcommittee, I think y'all have done a very fantastic job. I think your recommendations make a lot of sense. addressing the issues. I do think like not necessarily that there needs to be any action today, but just one piece of, I think, due diligence that should be, that should happen either as part of this process or part of the city council process. The city has never produced a GIS map to show all the various buffers that are in the law to confirm that it's not overly restrictive, that we're not buffering out every possible place where cannabis could be sold. So I think that's just sort of a due diligence thing that should happen at some point, like I said, either of this process or the city council process. And then I'll just bring up the living fence issue again, that it's because that's not explicit there. I think they're very valuable socially, environmentally, aesthetically, any number of ways. I would just love to see that codified, that it's an acceptable form of fencing. But that's just sort of my own personal preferences. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Steve. Thank you. Is there anyone else who'd like to speak? Okay, thank you. So back to board discussion. Anything further? Anyone?

So I would like to make a motion that seeing as though we've discussed this and we would like to send this to the Tri-City Council for their subsequent action to see how they feel about everything.

Second? I'll second that motion.

Okay. Any discussion on the motion? I will call the roll. Mr. Scully. Aye. Ms. Dickinson. Aye. Mr. Shufelt. Aye. Mr. York. Aye. I think I'll vote aye. Well, I was going to abstain because the committee has done so much work on it and so much in depth and I was absent for the some period of time there and not able to get on top of it as much as I could have. But since you guys have spent the time on it and you're recommending it, then I'll support it also.

And I find no problem with that only because we're not the last decision that's going to be made. So however the cards fall, they're going to fall.

I'll vote yes. So it was unanimous.

Thank you.

Thank you again, subcommittee, for your hard work on that. Next item on the agenda, PLPB 2026010, 2231 15th Street. How are you doing? Identify yourself for the record, please.

Yeah, hi. Kyle Inks from ME Studio Architects. So we are back with some revisions based on some feedback we got. Well, first of all, the project is proposed to convert an existing abandoned or not abandoned, vacant photography studio, soon to be vacant, to four apartments, 10 bedrooms total. And there was some concern about and possibly for providing some on-site parking. The previous proposal had three parking spaces, but sacrificed quite a bit of green space, which brought up concerns about drainage. And so the new, can we get the plans up here, or is that... So the new proposal shrinks down the parking quite a bit and still allows for two parking spaces, which I think satisfies that concern. There was also some concerns about snow collection area, which now with the reduced parking space or parking pavement, I think that that's been addressed. There was a concern about the bike rack being on 15th Street. And so we've relocated it to the side. And those were the main concerns. Previous comments or comments we've had recently about concerns about the curb cut being too wide Right now, it's showing a 24-foot curb cut with a 20-foot wide driveway. We're happy to shrink that down to 12 feet wide, just given the way that the parking driveway works out now. I think that that would be fine. We are working with DPU and the DEC on providing an engineering report for the sanitary use. And I think that those were kind of the main issues. So here you'll see that new two-car driveway. We have it shown at 20 feet wide. We're proposing to shrink it to 12 feet. And you'll see adequate space there for snow storage. The bottom right of the drawing, you'll see the new proposed bike rack. And I guess I'll leave it there for any questions.

That parking, the two parking spaces, is that it's not going to continue out the west side into the alley or anything, is it? No. So one guy's got to move for the other.

Yeah, that's right. So will the parking spot be just for one apartment so one car knows what the other one's got to do or anything like that? It doesn't seem like it's going to work, to be honest with you.

You know, I think that... I think it would require coordination amongst the tenants. And, you know, I would, I would presume that one apartment would, would sort of claim those two spaces. And so they would at least, you know, it would go to one family essentially. So they can, they can coordinate that.

Can I, can I ask you, I don't know anything about this, but is there a reason why the spaces couldn't be side by side instead of front to back?

I don't.

Be kind of tight against the building, probably, right?

Yeah, I'd have to check the. I mean, we certainly couldn't do it if we proposed shrinking the driveway, which has been a concern about the curb cut itself being too wide. I'd have to see. Yeah, I think a typical parking space is nine feet wide. It feels like it could be a little tight, a little awkward, but I suppose that's a possibility, but we would need to keep the width of that driveway.

Well, I mean, I was just wondering about that, but I guess I might as well get into my concern here. I understand. I think it's a good thing that you were able to get some additional green space because I don't think One additional parking space is going to answer my problem, and that is, I just don't think, it's a lot of bedrooms for two parking spaces, you know, and I have done some business up there on 15th Street and on the side streets, and it's always difficult to find parking there and to put 10 more bedrooms, which could be 10 more cars. uh, on that corner, I think it's going to be really difficult for the neighbors there. My thoughts.

Yeah. Uh, I can tell you that the owner doesn't anticipate one car per bedroom or what it's worth. And there's four apartments. Um, very likely I'm sorry. The owner wouldn't anticipate 10, like one car per bedroom.

I know, but it's possible, especially, um, I mean, it could be more than that, but I just think realistically it's going to be more than two and probably a lot closer to 10 than two.

Multiple cars per apartment, you're saying? Yeah.

I mean, this doesn't look like it's going to be a family setting with two adults and a couple of kids in these apartments. It's going to be probably college students, most of whom will have cars. even though they can walk to college, assume they have cars. And so if there's two students sharing an apartment, they're probably not sharing a car. So that's my thoughts on it. What is that going to be, two bedrooms and three bedrooms?

Yeah, two, three bedrooms and two bedrooms, yeah.

I just I don't know. I just don't know if it's fair to the people that are are living there now, you know, to put 10 more cars on their streets there. But this is my thoughts on it. I don't know. I don't know how anybody else feels. I haven't had a chance. Yeah. Board members about it. And I don't know if there's anything you can do.

Yeah, I mean, I can give you my my thoughts on it. I Well, you said 10 more cars in the street. So if we provide the two spots, it would be eight, assuming that it would be 10, which I think is an overestimation. I've been to the site several times. There are about six spots that sort of it's on a corner lot, right? So there's six spots that take the perimeter of the site. I've never seen that used, to be honest. It's always empty. I've been to the site multiple times. Luckier than me. Yeah. You've tried to park at that corner. So, you know, I'm here representing my my client and her interest in this in this in this project. And she feels very adamant that the 10 bedrooms is right for this. And it's what makes the project feasible.

Sure. Is Miss Lloyd going to. be the developer and owner of this project or is somebody else no she would she would be selling to the new owner yeah yeah so well I mean you don't have any solution to that right unless you reduce the bedrooms yeah I don't I yeah I don't have a solution other than I

I think that 10 cars is an overestimation of what would be used there.

That's right. It's just a guess.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. I know others. Yes.

I had noticed last month that, like you said, there was three parking spots and they were going this way, not front to back.

Yeah.

And it was a bigger curb cut. But for this, you're going to need a variance for off the... Will they need a variance to have that parking as close to the front?

Yeah, we will need to get a variance for that. We're on the... the board for that, for the, for the zoning variance. Okay. Yeah.

I too have a slight problem with there being front to back parking, which is probably nothing that we're supposed to be involved with as far as the parking, because they're not even

under 10 bedrooms and under they don't have to supply parking am i correct we don't we don't have parking in general in our code we can request studies if there's concerns about it but there's not like hard minimums okay kyle I think you have a 20-foot wide driveway shown there. Is there not a reason they can't park parallel? I mean, that's two 10-foot spaces.

Yeah, and I mean, in all fairness, so two answers for that. There was some concern that the driveway was too wide in general and it was creating too wide of a curb cut. Um, as drawn here, I suppose with an eight foot wide parking spot, you could get to side by side. That is true. Um, uh, you know, obviously it would be a little tighter, you know, you'd only have a foot on either side.

So I think it's, um, I mean that green space can also be interesting as well. Right.

Right. You're saying inched out the other way? Yeah. I think that we could do that. If that satisfies the concerns of the board, I think we could look at having them side by side. For what it's worth, if we did that, I think that that would exempt us from needing the variance because we could keep the cars outside of the setback.

Yeah. I don't love the idea of vehicles playing shuffling on 15.

I mean, if you have an emergency or something and nobody's home and they've got their car parked in the back and you have somebody in the front, you're basically screwed.

Yeah. I mean, I, I, that's fair. I think in this case, I think, I think in this case, the, It would likely go to one apartment.

Even routinely, even in an emergency situation, I think it's going to turn into one parking space because somebody's not going to park the car in there and be trapped in there, so they're going to park on the street.

Or problems between the tenants. You don't want that.

Right.

What are the existing conditions with the photography studio with regard to parking? What was there before you're drawing here? Yeah, just on-street. It's all on street?

All on street, yeah.

So they have no parking on site?

No on-site parking, no. No. If you go to A1.1 But nobody lived there, right?

No. Here?

Yeah. PB Harmon Zuckerman, You will see PB Harmon Zuckerman, Actually, yeah, you see the six PB Harmon Zuckerman, Spots around the site.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, Um, PB Harmon Zuckerman, Street have any restrictions on parking up there at all. You can just park out there 24 hours a day.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, I think there's secret street cleaning.

PB Harmon Zuckerman, Once a week Christians

Probably once a week.

That's three hours. Typical, yeah. Afternoon.

Alternate side, usually. I think if someone comes to campus in September, parks their car, and leaves it until December. I recently had a guy. Making up a space. There's no rotation.

I recently had a student come in and said he couldn't move his car because he was out of town for a month.

Right. Right, whereas all the rest of the world is moving their car. Yeah, I mean that.

He was young. Shouldn't be streets that allow that from the city of Troy's perspective because of street cleaning and other maintenance. There's almost always parking and not cleaning. We'll look into it.

Big cleaning once a week, street cleaning.

Well, but also, you know, the idea of parking in front of the post office, the restriction might be 10 minutes, whereas parking in Second Street might be two hours.

This has a 9 a.m. to noon Thursday, no parking.

No parking. That's just the restriction. Yeah, what I'm saying is that, you know, you can just leave the car the rest of the time, and that prohibits other types of rotation of parking. you know i i'm not saying we've we changed the parking up there i'm asking the question but you know yeah in other words somebody moves in there isn't probably going to move their car a lot if they walk to campus yeah is that fair to everyone i don't know yeah

I mean, I don't want to speak for the rest of the city, but I think it's a reactive situation where if there were complaints that came in, it'd be something we looked at, you know?

I have a couple of questions.

So you said you're going to rent out to students, you said?

I think that she would likely rent to students and to families or, you know, I'm not sure that she's narrowed it to students per se.

If it were to students, would you, what's your plan on occupancy? Would you be limiting the occupancy to one student per bedroom?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Well, who would be making that rule? Are you representing the current owner or the future owner?

I'm representing the future owner, the potential developer. And is that coded for student rentals? I know from talking with her and from other properties that she has that when she rents to students, it's one student per bedroom. Yeah, and I can... confirm that with her primary business is student rental would you say um i don't know that student rentals primarily is what she does i think she you know she has some student rentals i think she also has some just regular rentals um but she is an experienced developer nothing against student rentals they need a place to live two students but they need a place to live too but they do live differently than and or sure um to that concern i i think that um she could ask the students to to make sure to not leave their cars you know stationary for too long and that can be just a kind of written into the lease agreement

to help with that concern. Or that they just need to be aware that there is the street cleaning. The signs are posted. So I don't know that it's her responsibility to tell them that, but you could just make it a point that those cars are going to need to be moved.

Right. I meant to Jim's concern about them leaving for summer break and leaving their car stationary for too long. It won't be there.

Well, yeah, that's fair.

That's fair. Leave it. Leave it in the parking lot. Yeah, that's fair. Or even, you know, to leave for a week and, you know, to, you know.

So I'm looking at, so just for instance, one of the first floor apartments, it's got three bedrooms. Then it's got a living room. The living room, I think, is the smallest room out of the four, the three bedrooms in a living room. Would that somehow turn into a bedroom as opposed to a living room? Just to just to rent more.

I want to chime in real quick because I need to make sure that the board stays steady with their review. The board has the right to ask questions, of course, but its jurisdiction is the exterior of the building. The building's proposal is a multifamily proposal. And while it's in a popular student location, there's only a presumption here being discussed that the target audience for the tenancy would be students. So I just want to make sure that we stay on track with what we have purview over and jurisdiction over. And that's all of the exterior features of the project.

Well, and the impact of the project on the neighborhood. Of course.

Yeah, you have every right to ask questions. It's just if you're making a determination or a motion based on the interior of the space, then that would be outside of your jurisdiction.

But I think that it's fair to assess the likelihood of even more than 11 people living there.

There's a couple instances here where that living room could be made a bedroom. And, you know, talking about the impact on the neighborhood, I hate to see it turn into an animal house.

Right. Understood.

And that's why I'm asking the question.

Yeah, that's a fair question. You know, I was told to provide a living room that can, you know, also serve as maybe an office or auxiliary room. To my knowledge, that's not the intention. Just given the size of these apartments, I think the living room would be crucial to having the space work.

If it was just looking at it, if I had to live there, I probably would take that partition wall out and open that living room up to the kitchen and just make it more spacious and utilize that little bit of extra room back into the kitchen for furniture or whatever the case may be. I thought of that too.

Okay. Yeah, I think that's a fair recommendation. I do think that there had been a discussion about having the living room and particularly in an apartment like this where you're trying to get some privacy, somebody could be in the living room and have some measure of privacy from what's happening in the kitchen. If they're studying or in their office or watching TV, but I will definitely bring that up to my client.

Okay, well, is there any other concerns other than parking?

No, I think I would like to see the two parking spots be side by side, not front to back. If you can do that and have a little less green space to make that doable, I would be much more happy with that.

Sure. Yeah, I think that's reasonable.

Kyle, have you applied for a curb cut?

No, not yet. I was just going to say, Kyle, you should apply for a curb cut application through my office. This doesn't need to hold up the application, but we've got to work out the curb width and make sure we have a clear walking path through there. You might want to think about narrowing up the width, is my first thought, and then kicking it out in two stalls. It sort of forces people to pay more attention to backing up too. It keeps them a little bit further away from that building while they're backing up. So do we just work out some of these details?

Yeah, sure. I'm going to agree with Chris on that as well. I'm sorry. I said I agree with Chris on that.

So my question is, so what is the concern about the width of the curb? Is that a pedestrian safety issue or what's there?

Yeah, I mean, there's just general standards for it, but in this particular scenario, I just don't like how close the north side is to the existing building where the entrance point is. Also, you don't want to encourage people reversing full speed out. You want to make it sort of difficult for them to have to take their time. Also, you don't want to encroach into other on-street parking spaces as much by having wide curb cuts. So there's multiple goals of narrowing it. And then again, you also, in terms of grades, we have to take close looks there to make sure that the main pedestrian walking path remains ADA accessible and is unaffected.

So when you said how close it is to the north end of the building, is that currently or if they make it side by side?

I would not change the actual curb cut width necessarily in either configuration. I think either way, they should narrow up the driveway to like a center aisle or southerly aisle to force people to sort of reverse more cautiously. That's a busy street.

Any other questions before we ask the public to comment? Okay, thanks. We'll see if there's anybody else.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Is there anyone here to speak on this proposal?

Hi, I'm Jim Gulley. I'd like to say something. Sure, go ahead. Okay. I've seen a lot of projects come through Troy. And the one thing that I always get worried about is when you create an over density in an area that traps the flow of the regular life around it. And I know this gentleman is trying to put those four apartments, 10 bedrooms. And I think you could have anywhere from eight to 12 cars or eight to 12 people in that building beside any time they might invite friends over. So I think that that's a problem that we have throughout the city is that there's a lot of really over-densified projects that we put out there and create these havocs, that corner will consistently have, if that's approved the way it is, will consistently have cars around it, which might stop other businesses or other, other places from having any, anybody else have to place a park. And it's a very busy area. I would hope they'd all be on bikes, but nobody can guarantee that. And nobody can guarantee there'll only be one person in a bedroom, especially if you're running out to college kids. But, um, I don't know. I just think it should be reworked and de-densified a little bit to make it a comfortable fit for that neighborhood instead of trying to, you know, shove 10 pounds of activity in a five-pound bag. And the parking, backing out on 15th Street, I'm not, I don't know about you guys, but I would never want to have to do that. But that's just my feeling. That project can always be reworked. I presented so openly, but I'd just rather tell you my feelings on another project, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity to at least speak my piece. Thank you very much. Sorry to bother everybody.

Thanks, Jim. Thank you. Appreciate your comments. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, go ahead.

Hi, everybody. I'm just going to, there we go. Steven Maples, South Troy. I think the project's fantastic. I think the densification is a great thing. It's literally a positive thing for our community. It's also pretty much the standard for that area. So a lot of the hand-wringing I don't understand. It's pretty standard for most of that area throughout the city. I think there's, from a transportation planning perspective, from my own personal career, my professional career, yeah, I agree that there's no worry here. My observations of this corner for the past two months, I think I've seen it parked up once, and it was only during the afternoon period, and after that, It's a ghost town. So I just don't think that there is any concern there. And densification is a great thing. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? So Kyle, I think the... since i don't think you that you have any opportunity to add parking then the other option would be to decrease the number of occupants or bedrooms or something like that but then i assume that there's a an economic issue here that you have to hit a certain quantity of bedrooms in order to make it work right that's correct that that's what i'm getting from my client that

if we can't get the 10-bedroom approval, I think it's just not going to work, unfortunately. But I agree that I do think densification is a positive thing. It's not so black and white. There are concerns, but densification is good for business.

I understand that. It's good for everybody except for the people who are living a comfortable life there now and don't want to have it disrupted by the loss of their parking. So I understand the whole densification thing, too. And I agree that cities work better when they're fairly dense, not a lot of big, open, empty lots full of trash. So I don't know. I hear you. Anybody else have any other questions? Nope. Okay, well, thank you. I guess we'll open it again to board discussion. We will go to a consultant. A consultant. Anybody else from the public to speak? We'll close the public hearing. You can have a seat. Thank you. Folks, what's your pleasure here?

I get just a comment on the densification issue, whereas I think there's parts of the city where I would agree. In the inner city or downtown where it's flat is different than the college area where it's mixed family, single family and multiple family homes. You know, downtown, we're looking at additional dwelling units to use carriage houses because the demand is high to live there. And people are used to having 50 people within 25 feet of you. So this is a different neighborhood, but I'm not familiar so much with 15th Street. And so I'd like to defer to the rest of the council on this or the rest of the planning board.

Well, you know, I'm not in favor of imposing a lot of costs on people who are trying to do a project, but I think one option is we could ask for some kind of a study for the parking up there. Is that correct? Would we have that authority? Yeah.

Yes.

I don't know if you... Again, I think you're more familiar with the street.

I'm not, you know, I've probably been on 15th Street a few times in my life, so I don't know.

Well, I do go there fairly often and to this particular business, you know, quite a bit this spring. And I never really found parking easy there.

Again, you know, I think it is because of the different type of neighborhood. For example, in downtown, we're getting 10,000 to 15,000 people for the farmer's market. They all find a place to park. Yeah, if they have to walk several blocks, it's different walking up there several blocks, I believe.

Yeah, and it's different going once a week as every night trying to find a place to park.

When you're going home, right, yeah. Yeah.

So I'm interested in having a transportation demand management plan. Would the board feel more comfortable if it had something like that, I guess? Mm-hmm.

Does it resolve any of their concerns or not? Speaking out loud, my concern is that they are adding two spots where there was

None. It doesn't mean there's adequate, right? I truly don't know off the top of my head. 11 bedrooms where there were none. Yeah, well, that's what I'm curious, what the demand is of a commercial use versus a residential use in terms of cheap parking.

At least in recent years, and I think this is probably true forever, is basically you went there by appointment. So they didn't have 10 people coming at the same time. They had one person coming at a time. So I don't think that that probably was a big issue back then.

Even... I'm sorry, go ahead.

I'm sorry.

No, go ahead.

You know, I... I don't want to belabor this too much more. It's a concern for me, but I don't have a sense yet if the board has a concern. And if there's a sufficient number of board members who have a concern, then I need to know what their options are. And I think it appears that the only practical option would be to have some kind of a study of the demand up there. And if there's not adequate parking as it is, do we want to make it worse? And if we don't want to make it worse, what can we do? That probably will kill the project, probably. So I guess I still want to hear more from the board.

My only thought is, with what you may want to request, you don't know what kind of... You don't know who's going to be renting, and you don't know how many cars are going to be there. So it's really not going to tell you what the parking issue is going to be until you have the people in the building.

Yeah. But there are standards, I think.

There are assumptions that they can make, I believe, in order to come up with a plan that will give you some parameter.

Well, again, we just take a straw poll. Does anybody else have serious concerns about the parking?

Living where I live and the degree of density that we have, an example would be a new building called The News was rehabbed, and they have a wonderful gate and an underground parking space. And subsequently, I found out 40% of the people in the building don't have cars. And I see people that are 21 years old that don't have their driver's license, and it stuns me. True. You know, I got my motorcycle license, my truck license, my car license on my birthday, I think, you know. 16. 16. So there is a difference. idea, I think. But the big thing that concerns me is that, you know, this is a single family home residential neighborhood as well, as it is a college mixed use neighborhood. And so, you know, when this is a change of use, we're going from a commercial studio, which was by appointment to something where people are going to be living in that building. And so, you know, applying, you know, obviously, you know, one of the comments was putting too many people in the building. Another comment was like, hey, density is good. To me, density is good in a certain area. If I owned a single family house on 15th Street, I'd feel the other way. So I don't know if it comes down to us saying, here's what you need to do for parking, because parking is a different issue than it was 30 years ago or 40 years ago. There's no requirement for some of the new buildings in downtown to have any parking, even though they've had transportation studies done. You know, second in Congress, for example, there's no parking at all. And, you know, the whole mindset of it is different. But this is a different neighborhood. And, you know, it's just, okay, if we went all the way down 15th Street and converted all those houses to single-family houses, people would be upset and they'd lose equity in their house. And, you know, so it's tough to balance, I would say. And I don't have an answer. Tony?

How long, if we had requested... What are you calling it? A traffic management study?

It's called a transportation demand management plan. Transportation. It looks at everything like the bus route and, you know, accessibility for bicycles as well.

How does something like that take for them to receive? Days, weeks, months?

I mean, months if you want the full package with traffic counts and whatnot. If you... want to make a recommendation that's restricted just to parking use that can be potentially, you know, reduce the burden of reporting. But the whole package, I mean, yeah. Engineering consultant, traffic counts, you have to get out there and look at all the available parking spaces and then write up a report.

Any idea of the cost of a study like that? Range?

I'm sure... People in the audience could respond to that, but I mean, I would think between $1,500 and $5,000 for something of this size.

It's probably not a lot in the scope of the whole project, but I don't like to impose costs on people if it's not... Do you want to give any...

So they're also still working on their stormwater... and sanitary plans. I believe they have Hershberg and Hershberg engaged on that. Would, are you saying you would find it beneficial if they found room to return, how many spaces were first outlined when this came through? Three. Does that make you feel better if they fit three or four spaces, or is that what else, would that also be a concern in terms of now you have sort of, you know, half a parking lot next to the site? I just- I don't know if you want to give any indication of how you feel about that.

Well, my thought is meeting them halfway, if we can. I think the fact that you just said earlier that there might be an opportunity to reduce green space and maybe... maybe that helps with with more parking because i've been up there a bunch and there are businesses there and parking is always an issue at least every time i've been up there and that's quite a bit i don't know that that's going to change by having this um you know these 10 potentially 10 new cars or you know these families here so I'm not sure that... I don't know what the study is going to show us other than that there's always been a problem with parking there. So I don't think there's any discovery there. I think if they can squeeze another space out of taking away some green space, and as you mentioned, narrowing that curve cut, making people have to be cautious when they're backing out, I think it's worth... worth doing that um otherwise i don't know how the project can if we're gonna we're gonna kill it here for that uh i i just don't see how that works going forward i you know i believe in the densification thing too it's a good thing so one thing that the the applicant has referenced the six parking spaces around the perimeter of the premises right and uh

A study might give you a better, I mean, you have one party say that those are never parked, and another party say that there's no parking whatsoever up there. I mean, a study might give you a better idea of that, if that was, whether or not they were, how utilized they were, I guess.

Except RPI is off as of like today, so...

Right, so there's seasonality with that.

Google Earth is done in the summer the past three times, and there is parking based on summertime whenever Googler photos were taken in the area. So it gets probably a different scenario during the school year, I'm sure. I know from experience.

If we're digging into the parking issue, you'd probably get heavy into it in a lot of the developments here. You know, the future, you know, is going to be a little bit different for a lot of people who choose not to spend a lot of money on a car. You know, it's become $1,000 a month plus gas now. As a college student, I'm like, nah, I'll do a scooter or one wheel or any other way. So we don't know exactly whether gas is going to be $5 or $10 a gallon, but that would have an effect on the number of automobiles up there. Obviously, I think my thinking is that everyone should walk, you know. But, you know, people have cars and they're going to park somewhere. And if these people aren't parked there, it's a city street. People can park there. And my bigger concern, frankly, on the whole project is the effect on the overall dynamic in the neighborhood. What happens to the neighborhood if we keep putting, this is another one on 15th Street. We've had another one on 15th Street before that was way too much. We all kind of agreed that, wait a second, the numbers weren't working on that for the neighborhood. And so, you know, those are my feelings on it. It's overall, I mean, what about the next one and the next one and the next one? We're going to have the same issue with cars and everything that gets developed into single family, into college student or residential multifamily up there. So... Do we think ahead and use this as a project that we should set the tone for the neighborhood up there? I don't know. Do we have the authority to do that? I don't know. It's an impact. You have the authority to ask for clarification, ask for studies, ask to say, hey, what's the impact here? Just our conversation shows that there is an impact. you know, and observationally. And also some correspondence we got. You know, people were, some neighbors are real keen on it. So, yeah, it's a tough one. You know, I don't know where to go.

Okay. Could we just ask for a parking study? Yes.

Yes, you can.

Okay. Okay.

sure so what I would say to the parking study is I wish that that would have been requested the first time we were here this has been we're on a time my client is on a timeline to close this property the seller of the property is really anxious to have this sorted out and so i would agree i don't know what a parking study is going to show that would really change i you know i don't know i'm asking that the parking study is really going to going to make this process much more difficult on our end and might actually delay it such that the seller loses the opportunity to sell the property, which she's anxious to do.

Kyle, let me ask you a question. Do you think that the economics of the deal with Ted Bendrom's charging students a certain rate by semester is really the issue here? If this project was... a three-family or a single family that was family, not multiple units, we would have an issue even if they had six cars in that family?

I don't understand the question.

The impact on the neighborhood is what I'm talking about. The impact on the neighborhood, the car situation is a symptom. The truth is that there's 10 bedrooms and maybe it doesn't work with 10 bedrooms. Because I guess we all don't know. There's a question, why is there 10 bedrooms? Is it an economic problem? Could this get to where you need to be economically without 10 bedrooms?

I can tell you that Again, I'm not running the feasibility study on it economically. I can tell you that my client feels very adamant that she needs 10 bedrooms to really make this work. What I would offer in terms of the character of that neighborhood, though, number one, most of the buildings in this general vicinity have off-street parking. And several of them are multifamily. Several of them are student housing. This building by no means would change the character of the existing neighborhood, nor would it really, I think, create a parking issue, given that most of the buildings have off-street parking. So respectfully, I understand the concern. I understand the comments. I think that... I really feel like the concerns are... are not taking into account the existing conditions of this neighborhood. I'm on Google Maps right now, and almost every other building, if not most of them, have off street parking. So we've provided a similar condition with the two spots. But yeah, I don't get the impression that there's more single-family homes than there are multifamily.

I should correct the record that this is a mixed-use one to the edge. To the west is a two-family zone, and there is a single-family zone to the south. But in the immediate vicinity, it's mixed-use one, two-family.

Just my opinion, I do not... They have six parking spots, probably three in the front, three on the side on Eagle. I could probably work with the fact that you put your three parking spots back in, shorten the distance to come out so you don't have such a huge curb cut to slow down traffic, as Chris had mentioned. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know how anybody else feels.

they may in fairness run into issues on the stormwater planner because of that because of putting the third parking spot back in potentially doesn't mean there's not some other designer revenue that could offset whatever loss and green space that comes from it like underground attention or something of that nature so There's, you know, there's almost always some solution. It just, it can be, can have costs, right? I don't know. That's their, got a Pershberg's looking at that. He might know at this point, but I don't have enough information to understand how.

We are working with the engineer to provide a dry swell. Can we, yeah. Can we, yeah. Can we take an honest look at that and assuming that we can actually have the engineering side of it pass through with the three spaces and we would provide three spaces and if not, we'd have to do the two spaces? Can we get an approval based on that sort of approach to it?

I think if you do any kind of approval tonight, it would have those conditions anyway, because we're not there yet. Right. So we are changing the parking, the curb cut, we've said that is going to be the narrow curb cut narrower. So I mean, those would be conditions anyway. So and it would eliminate the need for variance if we're changing that parking configuration. Is that right, Chris? Is that what we're saying?

The parking configuration as it was presented tonight, I believe, needs the variance.

It needs the variance now. If it's stacked like that, yes. Yes. So it would change that configuration so it's like narrow and then wider.

It may not need the variance. It may not need the variance. Unless it triggers other ones.

Right. So then we would be down to the sign-off and the utility requirements, which would be a condition. And, you know, obviously application for the curb cut. Right. So that's what would have to happen even if we were to do any kind of motion to approve tonight.

Yeah, I just, I don't think, um. The 3 spaces versus 2 spaces could easily be a cost thing and not something that's black and white. So. There's condition you would need to establish a subcommittee of 2 members to meet with them and. And that side, if it's acceptable. You don't like coming in.

Do you have something?

I just, what I was talking about earlier, I feel a little more warm and fuzzy if I knew that 10 bedrooms meant 10 people, 10 students, whatever the case may be. And you bring up, you know, just bring up life safety aspects of it. Now that you got 10 bedrooms, now that turns into 16 people. Yeah. students, I mean, whatever they do, you know what I mean? But God forbid, and one means of egress, you know what I mean? I don't, I'm not, never was happy about one means of egress. Never, never felt warm and fuzzy about that. I mean, I understand code. You got to have egress windows. You got to have, you know, fireproof sheetrock, blah, blah, blah, the whole nine yards. You got to live up to the codes. But I just don't want to see that place be overpopulated.

Yeah.

I mean, that worst case scenario is you got, you know, you got you got 10 bedrooms, you got 14, 16 people who knows. I don't know.

Yeah, that's that's fair. I mean, I I can only speak for myself, but I do know this potential developer on this. I've worked with her in the past. I know that, you know, she's she runs a tight ship and, you know, she's been doing it. know she's very professional about it and and she has good tenants and she takes care of her property and you know she's she's very on top of it um i if that you know are there any rules on my question yeah i mean

Again, our main purview here is more site plan related. And I think you can bring up concerns as they relate to parking and the logistics of the building. I think that's absolutely fine. But I also think we have to trust in the building permits process, code enforcement process, and, you know, international building and fire code as it relates to to these types of things quite frankly you know the trust the enforcement not saying it's always there but are there any requirements with per square square footage per person or anything like that with respect to occupants yes yeah i mean the fire code and building code have all all sorts of yeah yeah the bedrooms have a minimum size um

For the bedrooms, if that's what your question was.

Is there anything that prevents a living room becoming a bedroom?

In the building code, I mean, if the building permit set is reflecting that it's to be used as a living room, then it's a living room. If someone sleeps on the sofa because a friend comes over one night, but... As far as we're concerned as architects, when we submit to the building department, we're showing that that intended use of the space is for a living room, not a bedroom. we're certainly invested in that being the case, you know, because we have to design that room accordingly.

So to see all this enforcement again, there was issues there and felt overcrowded. The codes went in there and saw that there's people living at a, order then. I mean, that's where you have to trust the enforcement. It goes the other way too. I mean, applicants can come in here and they could lie in the other direction and say there's only six units here and have the secret plan, right? Like that's what can happen if you start to, I don't want to say over-regulate, but we want to.

The CO is based on the minute plans. Okay. Yeah. All right. Right.

Right.

All right. So we have a motion.

application that it needs. You can ask for more information or you can take a vote or you can discuss conditions.

Right? The application has to be collected. I think this is a public hearing.

Yeah, we already did complete this. But they can still ask for more.

You can ask for more. You can ask for, you know, the conditions or further plans or it's up to you really how you want to, how you want to proceed.

Well, my point of view is that I don't think it's an insoluble problem. So I don't think that I was going to be able to come up with parking and, you know, substantially more parking. So I guess we just have to decide if, you know, we're comfortable with it. I mean, I told you, you had a proposal there in some sense. Yeah.

Well, if they can get the three parking spots in without having a problem with their...

So are these conditions that you're proposing to...

So if we said we want the condition that they have the three parking spots with a smaller curb cut, but then what happens when...

I don't know if we're capable of issuing that kind of mandate because we have to understand how that looks on a site plan to ensure vehicle maneuverability and drive safety. And how would you get three parking spots? With a 12-foot wide drive entrance, you're talking about like a bottleneck. expanding into a a you know three adjacent stalls um two it seems is fairly doable um based on what i've seen in the measurements that's provided uh i i can't speak to whether or not three can be um it's not to say that i can't but there are three there originally right but the entire lawn was gone right and they're up against uh a model being run to determine cso consideration And groundwater retention. So, you know, and those are standards as well that are important for the, you know, the engineering department and public utilities as well. I think the applicant has attempted to try to find a balance, but I can't say definitively whether or not the board should condition a third parking stall when we don't quite frankly have like the dimensions available to us.

I think that two side-by-side is probably the best case scenario that Stack Parkins has got to cause a lot of fights.

Yeah.

I can assure you that we'll take an honest look at it. I would imagine if we could fit the three spots and also be okay as far as the groundwater retention, the developer would prefer to do that. It benefits the project. So what I can offer here is we would do the maximum number of parking spaces we can there, three being the maximum, given that we can still sort of satisfy the groundwater retention issues that we have.

Yeah, I don't think you can condition it because, again, as Eric just explained, but if it's in your favor, and it may even be in the applicant's favor because more parking is attractive to renters, then I think it's a small enough modification of the plan for me to sign off on whichever direction they go. But it would be hard to enforce, quite frankly. So it would take some mutual trust with the applicant.

So we can ask that they try and put in as many parking spots as they can without causing problems with the runoff and all the other things. And if not, can we say that we would like the two parking

parking spots but we would also like them side by side and not stacked no they'll need a variance for them stacked if they go that direction and you can definitely formally motion to the zoning board that you're against that record that variance being granted okay so there were jim you had a condition too i think that Well, they have to meet these issues. Right. Yeah.

What was that, Jim? So it had to do with the curb cut as well, which is referring.

Yeah. So correct me if I'm wrong, but you're saying the building permit. not be issued until city engineer sign off of the curb cut application and the cso permit documents correct okay where do we stand here we have a motion on the table there yes i make a motion that we do what we just said Does anyone want to articulate that site plan approval based on those conditions?

I second that motion.

Yes. Prove the site plan with those conditions.

Yes. I make a motion that we approve the site plan with the conditions that we just stated. Two conditions.

I second the motion. A second time.

Further discussion?

No.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say no. Motion carries.

Thank you.

Thanks so much. Appreciate it.

All right. At last, right?

The next one. That'd be the worst.

Next item, PLPB-2026-0022, 885 Fifth Avenue.

Good evening. Mr. Chairman, members of the board, my name is Roger Keating. I'm from LaBella Associates, civil site engineer, here representing the applicant for 885 Fifth Avenue. We were before the board last month, and during that process, there were a number of items that came up as it related to our application being complete. I'll just do a real quick overview, Mr. Chairman, since you weren't here last month. This is the gas station that's located at the intersection of 5th and 125th Street. It's in the process of being redeveloped here as... a gas station convenience store with a food service operation. The aerial that you see here is kind of a more recent aerial depicting where the building, the gas station canopy is located. And it's a good indication of the surrounding area of what is out there today. You can see it's a highly paved area and the applicant is looking to redevelop and do a number of improvements to the site here as we move forward for him to get open. The site plan that we have prepared There's a number of improvements surrounding the property. Most importantly, creates roadway definition along Northern Drive here along the lower portion of the site. Helps redefine that intersection at 5th. Creates the definition along and This has got multiple names to it, guys. I'm not really sure what it ends up being called. Some of the lists is Turnpike. It shows up a couple different ways. But regardless, we'll use the west side of the building as the reference here. We create some road definition along that side as well. And we've reconfigured the access in and out of the project. We've worked closely with Chris Marini here, the city engineer. We've gone out and worked on some site visits about how our access and reconfiguration of the intersection here would work. And we're proposing two access points here. There's a pickup window lane in the rear of the building. gas station canopy located here. So we will be also doing a couple of other improvements. So as we've been working with staff over the past several weeks, a number of items have changed and been added to the plan. We work closely with staff about getting crosswalks redelineated along 125th Street as the pavement markings there are no longer. We've extended the sidewalks along 125th Street so we can create this new node at 5th and 125th. Parking's been readjusted such that we've created, we had variance items listed last month about parking being adjacent. to sidewalks so we've made sure that we created those grass strips between the the parking spaces and the sidewalk um notably 125th street there was a proposed access point we thought well there was there's currently today there's there's two access points along 125th street today there's two curb cuts As part of the new plan, we had shown keeping the one closest to the intersection of Fifth open as a result of our site plan revisions and working with staff. We've since closed that location, so there's no longer going to be any access onto 125th Street. It'll all be based upon the side roads. Snow storage has been added to the plan. The area where the dumpster has also been reduced to the side here. There was some discussion about maybe we would do deliveries and such there. We're going to focus on bringing the deliveries to the front door with the large striped area out front so we can limit some of the activity on that side. Bicycle storage will be on that side of the building adjacent to the dumpster. A couple other items of note. When we were before the board last month, there was a lot of discussion regarding the lighting. So we've prepared a lighting plan. We've been revising that as we've been going here moving forward. But the key takeaways is we went back out to the site. We looked at the building lighting that's been installed today. It's more of a floodlight that's out there now. We're going to remove those lights. We're going to use a wall pack, which has much greater downlight versus the angled light. If you look at Street View or any of the photos of the site, you'll notice that all those are turned up at like a 45, so they're forward-throwing lights. We're using downlit lights mounted to the building. And our lighting plan has been revised even since we've last shown it to you just to even get the lighting levels even down further. Should be noted, we're also reducing the canopy lights. So there's existing canopy lights that are in the gas station. So gas station canopies, anywhere from 20 to 30 foot candles is what you typically will see underneath the gas station canopy. Minimum standards can go down to about 10. That's where you kind of draw the line as it relates to that. So we're swapping those lights out to bring that down to the average looms average for candles down to around 10 underneath the canopy. There was a number of variance requests that were proposed previously. We've worked really close with staff here at the city to get those variance requests down through revisions of the site plans. A number of items that pertain to the canopy system. It's been determined that we're not going to need those variances. So those have been pulled from the application. And... I think that hits almost all of them, trying to rattle them all off the top of my head. If I missed one, I'll pick it up in our question to comment section. But with that, Mr. Chairman, members of the board, I'll turn it back over to you and staff for any additional comments or questions.

Board members, questions?

On your streets and traffic related variances, you still have your drive-through service window, which Does not tickle me too much. Do we know what your hours of operation are going to be? 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.? Yeah.

6 to 11, for the record.

So the one variance is saying that with your drive-through service window, you need it more... more space for cars, am I correct, Eric? So that you're not meeting, you would need a variance for that.

We would need a variance for the number of cars stacked. The city's code indicates 20 feet per car or stacking. Off the top of my head, Eric, you can correct me if I'm wrong. As such, we have shown general car stacking on the site plan as it pertains to how someone would address the pickup window. Again, it doesn't have the ordering boards or anything like that on these. This is strictly that when your meal is ready, you'll get notified that your meal is ready for pickup, and then you would come to the pickup window at that point. So not necessarily a conventional drive-through with order boards. You're not going to be ordering at that window. You'd be only picking up. But the variance request would be for two spaces on the stacking.

Roger, can you confirm the width or excuse me, the length of that drive aisle?

I can, Eric.

I went through the scale, and it looked to be about 68-ish.

And if it is, we can adjust that. Bear with me.

I would just ask your ZBA application form probably should seek the relief.

It's a little over 60, Eric.

Okay. If you're going to... If you're insisting on... tempting your fates with the ZBA, then you would be seeking relief of the footage. Oh, okay. So not the number. The car length minimum for this particular use is six.

Okay.

Duly noted.

Okay.

So can I just ask, you're doing all mobile stuff? And then you're going to tell them the time that they can come pick up their food after they order it? Once it's ready.

Hello, everyone. First of all, it will be ready. They will get a notification once it's ready. So they can't, it won't tell them a time. They will be notified once it's ready. So once they're notified that it's ready, then they can come up and pick it up. But if they come up before that time, there won't be anything available for them.

There won't be.

There won't be anything available for them. So they can't just come ahead of time and wait for the order. They have to get notified first for them to come and pick it up. So once you order on the app, you get a notification like a text message that says your order is ready with the order number. You pull up to the window and you ask for that specific order number and it gets handed to them and they drive off.

So is there... are they going to stay home and wait for you to tell them? Or are they going to come there and sit on site waiting for you to tell them?

This is for convenience. They could be possibly home. They could be driving from work. They could be picking up their kids from school. They could be at practice that i mean i don't know or they may show up and sit there and wait for it but they can't show up and just wait in that line because that has to be available for other people yes where yeah correct yes yeah correct it's like the uh cell phone line at the airport correct could come there yes yes yeah i see we're going with this and yeah i would think that having some type of operations plan would support the idea of doing a

mobile order pickup window right like in terms of organizing the order in which the vehicles pull up to pick up their their orders so they're not out of order. So there's some control.

I would like to add something to the board. The reason why we're doing all of this is to give people convenience and time. It's to give people convenience and time. We would never... do it in a way where it would cause people to just wait in line or to cause inconvenience for them. So we assure you that this is going to be very smooth and convenient for them where they just pull up to the window, pick up the order and go. That's the main reason why we did this whole concept is for convenience.

Chris does make a point. I go up to the window, my order's not ready. Somebody comes up behind me, two cars behind me, and their order is ready. I mean, what do you do?

How does this work? Yeah, I mean, if you pull up to the window and you show them your order number and it's not ready, then they're just going to tell you, drive off. We don't have anything for you. You know, you can't just wait if you don't have a specific order number.

Drive around the block?

I mean, I don't know. I don't know where they're going to go. I mean, people are usually, they do this to buy time. People that would use this are people that are They have time management and they they want to do this because they have a certain amount of time that they want to that they have to do this. So they're just going to do it to buy themselves time. They wouldn't just do it to for no reason to wait in line.

No, I understand.

Yeah.

So you certainly wouldn't have somebody came up too early and their order wasn't ready. Would you tell them to pull over in the front? We would deliver it outside to you or.

Yeah, probably where we'll tell them, hey, listen, it's not ready. Come back. You'll come back when you get the notification. It's that simple. Once you get the notification, just come back.

I think in the last meeting you mentioned that the food was not prepared here. It was brought from another location to this location. So doesn't that create the potential for more opportunity for delays to happen? Like if your food isn't

wherever you're preparing it and then you're transporting it to the this location doesn't that present the opportunity where you may have to do that more often than not no i mean the only thing that would come from a different location is the raw materials so raw materials they get delivered once a week twice a week you know and then things take they're just takes five to ten minutes they'll be making they'll be making the sandwiches in the facility

So I thought we asked about this last time about a kitchen being in there.

He was wrong. Okay. You have a fryer later?

Yes. Is that a yes? Yes. What was the question again? Sorry.

Do you have a fryer later?

Yeah.

Deep fryer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Regular fryer. Not a deep fryer. Yeah.

My understanding is the food is prepared on site.

Yeah. Originally, when we talked about this at the last meeting, it was that it was being brought from another location to there.

Yeah, I think at the end of the meeting, he did clarify that he was going to need all those things to operate a kitchen. A kitchen, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, as far as what we're looking at here is like, Oh, well, it looks like we've made some improvements with curb cuts and traffic, um, down to this. And now it's a little bit different than a McDonald's drive-through is what we're saying. You've already ordered somewhere else and you're just going there. He's handing you through the window. I'm assuming. Is that correct?

Correct. I mean, this is like when you go to Walmart and there's a designated parking lot number that you just go to that parking lot and they hand you your order. But we didn't have enough parking spot. And that's why we did this pickup window. It's due to the fact that we don't have enough parking spot.

So if you're immensely popular at this venture, What happens if you have 20 orders to pick up all at once? I mean, you know.

We'll open up a third location.

Excuse me?

I said we'll open up a third location. Okay.

Other questions?

There was something in the staff report about necessity for a parapet. Oh, I'm I'm this.

It's okay. I got it. Yes. So there was some discussions here that we're going and I don't have the building elevation here. But we did add to the building elevations. We had tap architects add the equipment that's that's on top of the building that's currently there today. The The Is it on that one, Eric? There it is. Okay. So they did add the elevations. So there is equipment up there. As of right now, we're still going to look at pursuing a variance request for the screening. It's my understanding. I haven't heard a detailed report, but I know that the code department was out to the site doing an inspection. I haven't seen the results of that inspection yet. So that's one of the things that we were waiting to hear. on if there's something else that needs to be done there.

I don't have a definitive update on that. I was in touch with the code officer that came by, and I'm waiting to get an analysis from Kevin.

So as of right now, we're going to still pursue a variance request for the not having a parapet. That's correct. Right, Al?

Correct.

Okay. But if something differs from a report, then obviously we'll have to look at addressing the plans from that point forward.

Okay. Thank you.

If it's required, you could accommodate it. You would have to, right?

I'm not an architect, but we'd have to, they'd have to do something different with the building or add some type of fencing or something along the top of the roof. We did look at some of those options for like putting a fencing type of screen up there that would create a very large mass on that top of that building that would draw probably even more attention to the top of the roof line than the equipment today.

Any other questions? If not, we'll see if there's any members of the public who want to speak on this. Yes, come forward, please, both of you, or one at a time. Identify yourself for the record, please, and tell us your thoughts. Sorry.

You're good.

Hi, my name is Brandy. I've been a resident in Lansingburg for 21 years since I met my husband. My daughter graduated last year. My son is now in Turnpike Elementary, which is located near where this new store will be going up. I do have to say, I think it's a great idea. I think it will help. Like, for instance, when I'm leaving the school, cars will just rip through that parking lot that's vacant right now just to get that turn to go through the light. So we'll help organize that. I'm also a big fan of the food. The food is delicious. To get good food that's not full of preservatives and stuff. Not to mention a lot of the parents and kids that walk to school will be passing this. So, I mean, in my point of view, it's good fresh food. I just think their business model is great. They don't serve alcohol, drug paraphernalia, any of that kind of stuff. which is a big thing um like i said i've lived in troy for 21 years but i don't go to every store i will go out of my way to go to certain stores um as far as like panhandlers and whatnot i don't feel comfortable so i feel like um he has a wonderful business model and i think it would be good for the area and the community great thank you thank you thank you yes sir

My name is Martin Opoca. I live at 874th Avenue, directly behind this operation. I sent an email. I don't think you got it until I got here and I seen that a postmaster or whatever said that it was never delivered. But I did send it again. I dropped off some backup phone.

We received it.

You got the email? We did, yes. excuse me, when I was at the last meeting, I was told that it was gonna be prepared food elsewhere and then brought there and kind of finished and sent out. And then I see all this air exchange ventilation on the roof. I'm not gonna be able to keep my windows open. I'm gonna be constantly smelling food. I don't believe that everybody's gonna pre-order. There's gonna be a nightmare there with traffic. People park on the side of the road that live in the residence, them four houses, including my own, on the side of the road. So it's not like an open two lanes going each way. In the wintertime, the plow goes up and plows one lane. Maybe that'll change with the business being there, but I also... If you look at the operation that they got already on Fifth Avenue, I went by last Saturday. There was eight cars in front of the place and two at the pumps and probably a couple on the side streets. Place is very busy. This guy's very successful. He does have good food. I've eaten there. But as far as the quality of life that's going to be existing for the people that live there, it's going to change immensely. You know, I don't know what was thought about before it got to this stage. But I mean, if we're not going to talk about it, it's going to happen. And then what do you do about it? You know, after it's already happened. I don't know. I don't want to deprive this man from making any money off his major investment, but I live there. And it's going to, you know, people are not, they walk in and out of there, they're going to be doing business. They're not going to say, you didn't pre-order, you know, go and pre-order and then come back. And because of the restrictions on how the flow of people being able to turn in and out of there, it's going to, In some ways, it may seem like it's better, but that's going to be a heck of a place. Probably 100 cars are going to go through there, if not more, a day. Think about the neighborhood, you know, the people that are trying to, I used to play stickball out there. We're talking 70 years now. I don't know. I think it's going to be too congested for everybody that lives there. I tried to speak to some of my neighbors yesterday after I bring down the backup documentation, but nobody was available. Nobody answered the door. But I know the woman that lives right next to me, she's got some concerns about it. I wish she had come. All right. And plus, people keep on saying that this was grandfathered in. Jenrins was a repair station that closed at 5.30 at night. I mean, I go to bed at like 8, 9 o'clock. I get up at 5 o'clock to go to work. And there's going to be cars going in and out of there doing all this stuff. I mean, I think they've said they've corrected the lighting, but my bedroom gets lit up with the lighting that's there now. The trees in the back of my yard get lit up. I can't sleep with that kind of light. I'm probably not going to be able to sleep with that kind of traffic either. A lot of these people come through there and they're going to have, you know, a thousand watt amps in their cars and boom in my, shaking my windows and stuff. It's a residential area. It's not, you know, strictly a commercial area. I'd appreciate some consideration. That's all. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Yes, sir.

Hi, Stephen Maples, South Troy again. So I'm looking at the specifically at the sidewalks and just sort of trying to understand why not having like, why would we not be proposing to have continuing pedestrian circulation around the entire area? block the entire uh parcel um as folks have said that it is a residential neighborhood people would be coming from those areas um and then of course with the drive-through window safely navigating that um i understand that like you know the maybe that's part of the intent is not to have people walk there but um people are going to do that anyway so i think providing that that safe passage is paramount. Additionally, for the exit of the pickup window, at that exit point, I think it would be a really smart idea in conjunction with expanding the sidewalk, simply adding just a little bit of a lip to that sort of northern edge such that the car is exiting The drive-through are square to the road. It would just make everything much more safer. The drivers could see much easier. Pedestrians could be seen much easier. It would reduce that. It would ensure that that is a much safer confluence of vehicles and people. um so i think those are my really my main concerns are just you know wrapping around the entire parcel of with sidewalks especially in in relation to the neighborhood um i just i looked at the uh google earth and there's not a ton of sidewalks there now which i understand that that can be sort of a reason why i put them there but if we're not going to put them there now then when did they get put in? So thinking about that pedestrian circulation, I think it would be nice to see that. I wouldn't say critical, but I'll leave that to you folks. Thank you.

Thank you, Stu. Thank you. Yes, sir.

Good morning. I mean, good evening. My name is Dr. Mohammed. I own the laundromat in Troy.

Can you speak up just a little? Okay.

My name is Akhtar Mohammed. I own a couple of businesses in Troy, and I came to Troy in 1990. This gentleman right here, he said he's not going to cook there, but if you look at the picture, he has the hood. on the top of the rope, okay? And the second thing is, he showed this is a two-way street. This is not a two-way street.

It is a two-way street.

No, it's not. No, it's not.

It is signed as a one-way right now. Yes. He believes that was not properly done by the city of Troy sometime in the past, at least before 2011.

Okay, so again, they have two signs over there that say do not enter. So if you think this is a two-way street, it's fine with me. But right now, you guys need to take care of the signs. And I will not believe what this man say. Make sure you have everything on the record. They will cook the food there, and I know the smell of the food will go to all the neighborhoods. But this is right here. They have sign right here that says do not enter. And right here they say it's a one-way street. And you're telling me this is a two-way street, right? Supposed to be. Okay, so there are supposed to be lots of things, but right now we're speaking. They changed the signage. Yes, so make sure you guys change the signs. And when you cook over there, the smell is going to go to all the neighborhoods. And again, you say, if I come first, again, how are you going to make a U-turn to come back? Yeah, with a drive-thru. So that's all I got to say. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Not yet. Is there anyone else who wants to speak? Yes. Go ahead, sir. Use the mic, please.

two-way street. It's a one-way now. It's been a one-way for a long time. I know you're planning on changing that, but what are you going to do with people emptying out in there? They are already almost accidents there now. You're going to put a second light on Northern Drive Extension to stop them from going into that five-corner, whatever. This is a nightmare. This is going to be a nightmare for traffic, and it's going to be a nightmare for the people that live there. How many people I'm 70 years old. I was brought home there from the hospital. My family's been there over 70 years.

Okay. Excuse me. Excuse me, please.

Thank you. I don't see this working. I understand. Somebody's really going to have to work this out, and you're eliminating a lot of people in the neighborhood park along here.

You're going to eliminate that.

So we're worried about the density up on 15th Street, is it? And what about what's going to happen here?

Sorry, I just want to step in and just clarify one thing here. So for Northern Boulevard, the one-way versus two-way, right? This was 100% my decision, not related to this project. In reviewing this project, I realized it was a two-way street. The applicant and his engineer was open to leaving it a one-way or whatever the city wanted. Since right now it is configured as a two-way, that is the way they're proceeding. And I also hope that LaBella can speak further to the improvements that make it work as a two-way that are proposed there. And quite frankly, if this isn't approved, then the city of Troy will have some legwork in improving this intersection to make it feasible as a one-way or as a two-way, because right now it's working as a very poor one-way, quite frankly. Oh, yeah.

There's no enforcement either. I mean, you know, police could be sitting right there and somebody go up the wrong way and they just look at them. But so you're saying there's going to be a light stopping people from going in and out there?

No.

I mean, right here at this intersection. People flowing right out. People coming up, people coming down.

Can you point that out on this screen?

On this side?

Yeah, please. On this side.

You're going to need, at the very least, a light here stopping a lot of people. You're going to have to stop people back here. There's probably been two or three accidents there. Yes. In the last three or four years. So Chris, if we go and change the signs, we'd probably put a stop sign at that corner, correct?

I would think so, yes, for sure.

There's a stop sign right here. There's a stop sign down here, and then there's a stop sign near Test House. Nobody stops for them.

Sir, bring that microphone right up to your mouth.

Not even the school buses don't even stop, most of them. They go right through it. People accelerate to the stop sign.

Okay. Thank you. Do you folks want to respond to any of those comments?

How about some more public speaking?

I lost him.

Hold on, please.

Sorry. What was that?

Is there somebody else who wants to speak?

Yes, sir, I did, if you don't mind.

Go ahead, Jim.

All right. I just want to talk about a couple things. First, I have owned a couple restaurants. All restaurants have filtration systems to minimize the excessive waste coming out to the top of the roof. And the heated air usually rises. It doesn't fall down towards the houses. It usually goes up above the air. And that's only through experience that I speak about that. I will say the cars came in and out of that lot for a long time in Gendron's every day. They got their gas. Cars were being repaired. They parked cars all along the side. There weren't a lot of necessities back then, but a lot of flow traffic came through there. Most of the people that parked on that side street parked towards the slate wall, not on that side of the street where Gendron's was. Um, saying it's a residential area. I don't know about you guys, but there's sunset that was there for many years. All these fish fries, you got test those on the next corner. There's a lot of commercial properties around there that, that are running their businesses. And I don't know if anybody's ever stopped at five star. Uh, grill and deli. I mean, the gourmet belly and grill is just a great place to get food. He does make great food. There probably will be good business there. It's a piece that Lansing burden needs. We need more commercialized businesses that are serving our public. And I think that this is a great plan. I know there's some hiccups along the way to make it fit with Al's new plan with this, the drive-up window, but I think it's a genius idea. And I think it's worth the chase on this one. He's invested a lot of money there. So to say that the smell of the food is going to drive people away, I think the smell of the food is going to drive people in, not out. And I do think that... He has great stuff, and if you haven't tasted it, maybe you ought to. He's a good addition to Lansingburg, and I hope that you'll find a way to figure out how to make this work for everybody involved. Thank you.

Thanks, Jim. All right, thank you. Sure, come ahead.

I agree with the whole pedestrian safety thing. I think that that's a good idea. Also, with the concern about the traffic, could always put a sign up to restrict left turn to avoid any...

Hold on, right here.

Right here.

Restrict that. Okay, thank you. Okay, if you want to respond to any of that.

Sure. We'll try to clarify a few things and keep it short. But just to get back to the existing condition out there today, Chris had indicated, yes, that the applicant is willing to, if the road was to be closed, if it was a one-way or two-way road, We're willing to work with that site plan. However, we've worked with Chris in the engineering office to get to the point where we are today as it relates to his decision as to keeping it a two-way road. This aerial image, I think, is a great image that shows the existing condition and some of what the audience has mentioned today about how that intersection works right now. that intersection creates an angle directly across today. There is no road definition when you go out there. If you go out there today, it's wider than the north way. I keep using that term, but it is. There is pavement from that building corner to the alley and all the way out to the intersection. So when we looked at the plan, So cold day when Chris and I went out there and sat in that parking lot and we just watched how traffic worked. We watched the signal and how it cues. Um, we looked at that angle of approach and you can see we've created a nose here. Um, The young lady here indicated to try to keep cars to get them to turn, to kind of get more of a facing, to get more perpendicular. That nosing is there to help create, make people, when they come across that angled intersection, not just hit the angle straight on, make them turn their car left to then turn right. Let's slow them down. gentlemen said that they move like crazy through there and that that is a calming device that that happens just by putting that nose and it creates a better pedestrian node there and allows us to be able to get people from fifth street to our front door um which was a comment uh that uh planning staff had the last time out so There's a lot of improvement here as it relates to the roadway networks that's back there. If you look at that plan there versus the aerial image, it's significant. So I'll turn it back to you, Mr. Chairman. Okay, thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Al wants to say something.

Just wanted to make a quick comment. First of all, thank you for the ones that made a positive comment. We will definitely not let you down. Second of all, for our neighbor concern, I would like to assure him that We live in Lansenburg as well. We are residents of Lansenburg. We care about the neighborhood. We care about Lansenburg. So this is not just some type of investment for us. We were actually invited by city officials to invest in this neighborhood because they needed... a successful, good model business that knows the area and understands the area to invest in here. So, yes, it's a financial decision. Yes, we are a business. We want to be successful. We definitely want to make money. However, our motive was not just... oh, this is a piece of land, let's put a business in here. Let's make some money. We were actually invited by city officials to invest in this neighborhood, because we know it very well. We understand the community, and it's a responsibility for us, because we definitely do not want to let the community, who knows us very well, down, and we do not want the city officials down as well. So we definitely won't disappoint them, and we understand your concerns. We'll definitely work with them, and you won't regret it. I promise you that. That's it. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you.

Would it be a problem if on the northern drive entrance that we made two-way last time, if they didn't make a left-hand turn there to go on Fifth Avenue? If they couldn't make a left-hand turn to go on Fifth Avenue, and if the pickup window couldn't make a left-hand turn to go out to Fifth Avenue, could we make that so that when you came out straighter, you had a turn right?

So... I can let Roger answer, but again, one of the first questions I think I asked you, Roger, when we met on site. I mean, I believe the concern is that any closure you make, it can re-encourage traffic circulation back through a parking area and where people are reversing and all that. Again, I think I mentioned last meeting, I don't always meet with the engineer on site, but this is a complicated parcel. We knew that it was going to... The traffic concerns were going to be raised. And quite frankly, I really appreciate the level of detail that this has all been presented and discussed to us. It's honestly probably more than... We've had for any other project thus far for things that are tying into the public right away. And I'm lucky to get this level of detail for a curb cut permit sometimes. And we're getting improvements to our right away, which you've heard me ask many applicants for many meetings. Having said that, again, everything has a trade-off. I kind of feel the same way, at least the first look, and I didn't discuss this in as much detail, but about the service window, right? You're going from a low traffic area on New Skaticoke to a relatively low traffic area on Northern, which is not a bad circulation path versus people pulling into parking spaces and reversing within the site to pick up their food alternatively. Theoretically, it should keep things moving a little bit quicker and in a path that makes sense.

If you're going to have any stack in at all, you're better off stacking on new scatter coke. And observationally, when you're coming out of the drive window, the pickup window, let's call it, you're coming out at an angle which, you know, if there was more traffic on that One way, now two way. You'd want to tee that off more maybe. But otherwise, I think this is a significant permit over the last presentation. And it shows that the responsive to what you know, our comments are and what your neighbor's comments are as well. The lighting is important. I think that, you know, it's a little bit complicated with the pickup window and your business model is, you know, first let's grasp the app thing. And, you know, I thought a second after you spoke was, Okay, well, you're telling them to come up now and pick up their food. You can kind of control that stacking in that five minutes from now, you pick up your food. If you came 10 minutes too early, well, come on. But it's kind of a way of controlling the traffic for that pickup window a little bit differently than if it was just a random drive-through window where you ordered and then went to a pickup window. You know, the circulation that you're talking about is kind of what happens. You know, we build drugstores, but they had a pickup window. And it was similarly, you went around and then you tried to enter far enough away from a light or a pattern that was heavy. So to prevent stacking. Yeah. So I think we're closer on that. You've done a good job on that, I think. So it's much clearer to me what you're doing here now than it was the last meeting. I think I'd like to follow on, but I know Chris has put a lot of effort in this. So I want to show that respect and say, kind of give you the lead, Chris, where are we at on this thing?

Well, again, it's sort of an awkward spot because if this project didn't go through and didn't happen, I'd probably be looking at this anyways independently as the city of Troy because this intersection is not in best shape as a lot of old.

So we have an opportunity to make it better.

And I think it is. I in terms of the pedestrian circulation as well, one I know there's issues with crossing from service window areas, but to another thing we discussed out of the site was the the grades coming from 125th. You know, heading from west to east, there's the curvature of the road prevents proper sight distance, and we don't essentially can't encourage crossing at that intersection, pedestrian crossings without serious grade adjustments. A much larger project would be planned by the city of Troy to...

Without getting the city and DOT involved, we're looking at, you know, we can only. I think it's worth looking at. I think this is my personal catch and a lot of things to look at in the area. I can only manage what we can manage in the context of them trying to do the site development. without going in and changing traffic lights. And, you know, we're talking about changing a couple stops or a do not understand.

Correct. The reason this is integrated to me is the access to Northern from the service window and from their parking lot. And so those curb cuts are detailed in a way that improves the site distance and cut throughs. And I think they're hitting that objective perfectly. But I'll defer to Labella to elaborate any further on everything we just talked about.

Now he's just going to tell us how great it is.

Now, this has been a unique project in that, you know, it's a small site, but it has a lot of moving parts. And we've had a really good opportunity to work with the city staff on this to get Chris's attention to come out to the site and actually look at that. It's big. And Eric's group has been doing a stand-up job as well. So, yeah. um there's a lot of effort that's going into this and um we appreciate the comments from the public and we we are being mindful of your comments as well okay uh yeah in terms of what steven had said and kind of thought to my head is is there a world where that whole northern could shift

To the, and again, I'd have to look at this closer too with you as well, but to allow that driveway, the service window aisle to square up better. So you had the same with the northern right, but you You push it further away from the site?

There might be opportunity a little bit there, Chris. There's a lot of right-of-way in that particular spot. There's a lot of pavement in that spot. So if the edge changed a little bit, I think somebody had mentioned a nosing. Steve, is that you that mentioned that? I think that easily can be accommodated here to get a little bit more of a hook, similar to what we did at the intersection, just to kind of do that. And those are minor adjustments to just... Just make that turn a little bit, and it'll just square that car up to the road. And Chris, I think there's room to move it maybe two or three feet, probably, within reason. You start to push that out too far. I want to avoid putting back. the angle that's there today, right? I mean, if we stand out there and you looked at that today, it looks like you're meant to just go really fast through that intersection and right up Northern Drive currently, which is one way, at least in that direction.

But we watched people go the other way while we were even sitting there.

But yeah, those are small things. We'd have to look at that geometry just a little bit with you. But I think there's a little bit of flexibility in that edge.

So when will the one-way stop signs be taken down? Or one-way street?

When that radius that's at that intersection is defined as part of this project, ideally. That's when we pull the signs. So then could we...

I don't want to openly invite it until that sign is broken up. Until it's done. Okay. So could we ask for a stop sign on Northern Drive in... Fifth Avenue before they get on to Fifth Avenue?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, there's a stop sign for that. If it's not shown on there, we'll make sure that that's on there. Yeah. It's intended to have a stop sign there.

Because I know that traffic going up Northern Drive can back up at that light a little bit, so you certainly want people to stop there.

Okay. Okay. Any other questions, comments? Is there a secret motion? Sure. Take care of it.

After this is all approved, I think I've got big enough mouth. After this is all approved and it's out of your hands and it doesn't work, what do you do then? When there's problems, I mean, so who handles it after that? City engineer. Code enforcement. Code enforcement? Yeah. Traffic flow is cold?

City engineer, yes.

I see problems, but we'll see.

I think it's a difficult intersection. I don't know if I should make the... I'm considering making improvements immediately at this northern intersection.

There's going to be traffic on all the streets there and all. They're all, they're pretty narrow. I'm going to get a car parked in there and they're even more narrow. If you get the, and I only want to say one more thing and I'm going on. When that pickup window has got cars out on whatever you're calling that, Scottacoke, Old Scottacoke Road, when the school buses come down through, are they going to stop the school buses? There's a lot of things that go on there that I don't think are being considered.

I mean, they should not queue in that location. I actually would not want that for you specifically. Quite frankly, that was in my head, and I was going to raise that later on because, you know, just the headlights facing you and whatnot. We'd have to enforce that.

I don't know. Traffic enforcement in Troy seems to be nil. You know, the police have a lot to do with more major things than traffic.

No, I think it was already on my mind. I think it's worth looking at now.

Thank you. Good evening. Thank you.

Before you continue, Peter, I have a comment online. Give me one second. Scott heard in states if they make right turns out of excuse me, they make right turns out of the pickup window. It is not wide enough and cars will overlap onto coming traffic if it is a one way.

Okay, thank you.

No, that's not what we're talking about widening that.

I think it's time to be determined if we have a secret motion. And they can see their determination.

Well, we've already done a seeker unlisted. So we would make a motion to have a naked naked. I make a motion that we have a negative declaration under seeker.

Second discussion. All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Oh, say no. A motion carries unanimously. Next issue, I guess, is are you ready to declare the application complete? Yes.

I make a motion that we declare this application complete.

Second.

I second.

Second. Second. Discussion? All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Opposed say no. Motion carries unanimously. Next issue is to schedule a public hearing. Is that correct?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's about the ZBA, but, you know, we've always talked about this. They can always re-extend the, you know, submit for an extension of the public hearing if they don't get required variances of ZBA.

Right. So, yeah. You can schedule it for the next, and if they don't get their variances, then we'll just extend it.

Yeah.

So I'd like to make a motion to schedule a public hearing for this project dated June 16th.

That's a Tuesday? Yeah. Okay.

Second? I second. Discussion?

All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, no. Motion carries. So we're done for tonight.

OK. Thanks, everyone, for your time tonight. And we'll move on to the ZBA. And then we'll be back to see you for the next meeting.

Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other business to come before the planning board? Make the motion to adjourn. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? The meeting's adjourned. Thank you.

Get out of here.