Planning Board - Regular Meeting

OK, GOOD EVENING. THIS IS THE FINE BOARD MEETING ON TUESDAY, MAY 19. WE HAVE GORHAM, BERLE. IS THERE A MOTION TO OPEN THE MEETING? MOTION. SECOND? SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. OK, OUR FIRST ITEM IS A SCHEDULED PUBLIC HEARING. THIS IS ONE OF THE ONE AND DONE PROPOSALS. IS THERE A MOTION TO OPEN THE PUBLIC HEARING FOR STROVER AND DUNN, 790 AND 780 KING STREET? MOTION. SECOND? SECOND. ALL IN FAVOR? AYE. OKAY. ARE YOU REPRESENTING THEM?

YES.

OKAY.

I'M GOING TO LOAD THIS.

THANK YOU.

I was curious about that, but I think that it's following existing defenses and stuff like that. Go in the back.

Yes.

Especially on the main roads. Okay. All set? Yes. Okay.

Good evening. Good evening, Mr.

Chair and members of the board.

Thank you for your patience just now.

On behalf of the applicants, my name is Dan Conant.

Laura and Michael Struber, the owners of 790 King Street, as well as the co-applicants, Claire and Joseph Dunn, the owners of 780 King Street.

And the applicant's amended proposal seeks to convey .22 acres from 780 King, the Dunn's property, in the town of New Castle, to 790 King's holdings in New Castle.

Can you speak closer to the mic, please?

Struvers will convey 0.22 acres in the town of Mount Pleasant to 780 King, the Dunn's property. And this amended proposal really is driven by the applicant's desire to address an oral agreement that was in existence with the prior owners of 780 King. The prior owner's caretaker, who was living in the guest house, which I believe is historically known as the chicken coop, 2012 and that garage happened to be on the strober's property at the western edge where that jacket funny strip is Kind of see This is the aerial. Do you want to orient that or no? Yeah, right about there. Yeah, if we go to the next slide, please. Thank you So This is an aerial from 2016, and you can see where I called out the garage. And so you have 780 King in blue, 790 King in red, and the orange dotted line is the municipal line. And so once the garage was built and the Sharpers realized it was on their property, they thought this might be a good opportunity for us to safely add a add a parking area to their existing driveway for safety purposes. In our application package, I submitted a Google Street View image, I believe it was from 2012, that showed how narrow the driveway was, as well as how once there was a vehicle in there, it was very difficult to turn around before exiting onto King Street, which I'm sure you know is a busy road that folks tend to speed on. So there was this oral agreement, and then the Former owners of 780 King went off, and I don't know if they or their caretaker removed their garage, and before this oral agreement could be formalized, they sold the property to the Dunns, and the Dunns being the gracious, good new neighbors that they are, agreed to this swap to formally address this prior oral agreement. And as noted in the report from your planning director. There are several other benefits to this. We are eliminating the non-conforming side yard setback of the garage on 790 King. And we are also, although not in the lands of your town, we are also reducing the non-conforming side yard setback of the chicken coop slash guest cottage and reducing the impervious coverage of 780 King. And there's no disturbance. This is strictly a proposed lot line adjustment. I think it's two more down is where I have my colorized version. That's just the, yeah. So here in blue, you can see, again, 780 King. with the blue hatched area being the 0.22 acres in Mount Pleasant that they would acquire from 790, and then the red hatched area being the 0.22 acres that 790 would receive from 780, which is located at Newcastle.

I think. Is this shape following existing something?

Yes. basically deer fence there. There's fencing there.

Okay, so that's how they just decide to follow that. And then this shape up there is just the delta, right? They took that square footage and they did it up there? Yes. Are there any existing landscaping that makes them do this kind of hard line or do they just do a rectangle and say, we're good? So, Sabrina?

Yeah, I can speak to that. So, the... The smaller lot is non-conforming lot size. In order to do the lot line exchange, they couldn't do less than, they couldn't lose more property to make them non-conforming. So the exchange had to be equal, and they needed to adjust what they were swapping to make it equal.

Oh, I'm just talking about the shape. I'm just saying that this hard shape... it was that done just to me it seems like that this piece of property it just seems like I don't know if it could have been a if it went off on an angle does it make the property more usable for the users that's all I'm just asking it just seems like you know this is a hard corner popping up I don't know it might be in the woods and it may be a useless point I'm just asking if there's any thought that went into it or did they just put out lines and do square footage yeah so if I may just come over here to

point out. So there's actually about 80 feet of elevation change from the King Street frontage to about in this area. So this is forested woods that is 80 feet up. Up on a hill. Yeah. So this actually is not very useful in a sense to you know, the Strober's at 790, but for the Dunn's and this guest house at 780, you know, it's, there's probably a 10 to 15 foot drop from here to here, but it makes much more sense to have the land, you know, the landscaping, you can see that probably ends, I think, right about here. And Sabrina, I believe that towards the end of this, I have a photo that I took from the site.

This one?

Yes. Oh, so that square piece of land is up beyond that wall? Yeah, so it's way up there. Gotcha. Okay.

Fair enough. And the other challenge that you had was, even though these lots are pre-existing and non-compliant with current code, any change that you made couldn't make it worse. In fact, it's improved it. Correct, yes. So you had that kind of puzzle to solve.

Yeah, we were dealing with several constraints.

Right. Well, I think, to Greg's point, we always like to see regular lines in something that makes sense, but, you know.

I'm all about regular lines.

Trust me. Picasso-ish, you know.

Yeah, and some of the, you know, the tortured lot lines are existing. We looked back at title going back to, you know, turn of the century, and we couldn't find exactly why that jagged edge came about.

Yeah, where did that ever come from? That's so.

We couldn't pinpoint it, but we did find references to it in the, you know, 20s and 30s. Probably something had to hit that mark, right?

Like the town of Newcastle had to hit the Croton River to get to the Hudson River to get to London, so maybe it's the same thing. Okay.

Okay, great.

Board members? I want to make sure I'm not missing. I thought on one of the plans it said there's some gores between the properties.

Yeah, there are some existing gores in the property descriptions, and if approved, the new property descriptions will remedy those gores. It's sort of a continuous gore that runs along their shared property line from about King Street to up near that jagged edge area. But it's being fixed.

OK. Sabrina, any comments?

I think you've pretty much addressed all my issues. It is a type 2 action. It's before you for a public hearing. So you'll have to open the hearing if you so wish to close it on direct resolution to be approved. THE APPLICANT AND THE APPLICANT'S CONSULTANTS DID A WONDERFUL JOB IN ADDRESSING ALL OF THE ZONING CONFORMANCE TABLES, THE COVERAGE TABLES. I SUMMARIZED IN MY MEMO FOR YOU WHERE THEY MET WHERE THEY DID NOT MEET WITH THE COVERAGE REQUIREMENTS. PRETTY MUCH I THINK EVERYTHING DOES MEET WITH THE COVERAGE REQUIREMENTS. AND THE ACTION IS ACTUALLY REDUCING THE NONCONFORMING ZONING ISSUES ON THE SITE. BUT THE STROVER'S LOT IS STILL UNDERSIZED FOR THE ZONING DISTRICT. OKAY. BUT PRE-DATES, EVERYTHING'S BEEN IDENTIFIED APPROPRIATELY, SO THEY'RE IN GOOD SHAPE.

GREAT. ANY COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC? ANYONE ONLINE? WE'RE GOOD. THANK YOU. OKAY. GREAT. I'M SEEING ANY FURTHER COMMENTS. IS THERE A MOTION TO CLOSE THE PUBLIC HEARING? MOTION TO CLOSE.

You opened it. We did? Yeah, Greg, you opened it.

Oh, I opened it. Sorry. I'll close it. Then you close it.

Motion to close the public hearing. Second. All in favor? Aye. Is there now a motion to direct staff to prepare a resolution for our next meeting? Motion. Second. All in favor? Aye. Okay. Very good. Thank you. I thought I opened the meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. I've been doing a lot of lifting here, Greg. It is a jump call. Okay, our next item tonight is the referral from the town board for the MFR-C legislation. We looked at this about a year ago, right? Was that a referral back then?

I think they just referred it. It wasn't a formal referral process.

I think at that point it wasn't legislation that was proposed or not firmly proposed. I think the whole thing was back then, wasn't it, that You might have identified... There was an applicant. There was a couple of applicants. Sort of, yeah.

But Sabrina had to identify conflicts with the law. Because the applicants came with all these questions.

Yes, and I think everyone who's here confirmed that they were, in fact, conflicts. Agreed. And one of the things I thought we would want to do is recommend was at least clear out those conflicts and then consider whatever you want to do in terms of policy changes. Anyway, here we are. So the... TOWN BOARD HAS GOT SOME... DO YOU WANT ME TO SUMMARIZE THE... YEAH, I MEAN, SUMMARIZE WHAT THE CHANGES ARE THAT THEY'RE PROPOSING.

SO THEY'RE PROPOSING TO... CAN I JUST HAVE ONE QUESTION BEFORE YOU START?

THE STUFF WE LOOKED AT LAST YEAR, SHOULD WE JUST FORGET ABOUT THAT?

FORGET ABOUT IT.

OKAY.

Thank you. I mean, you can drag it up if you want, but this is different changes. They're not as extensive. The town board is addressing the conflict and the coverage issues. They are going with the requirement of no coverage. That reflects the requirements in the BR zoning district. So there will be no maximum thresholds for building or development coverage. The changes also reflect a change in the 50-foot setback. They have reduced that down to 10 feet to be consistent with the street line or the street frontage, the Belt 2 line in that zoning district. They have also- In the business district. In the business. This is only applicable to the BR, the business retail district.

So this is the downtown-

This is the King Street. It is not the downtown. The downtown is the business retail parking district. This does not apply in that district. It only applies to the business retail district, which is the King Street Hill. There's an area of North Greeley, and it's at the top of King Street where Lane's Deli is, and then goes kind of down around the corner, encompasses those little businesses on 117.

to go across the street to Quaker or that area.

Yes, yeah. And the other most significant change is reducing the one acre requirement down to a quarter acre requirement. So those are the main categories of the changes.

So really just three things.

Yep.

But those three things...

They also added... Oh, the energy, the green.

Yes. Yes.

They added that there was an incentive that was written into the existing code. Any other special project is dictated by the planning board. They changed that to read any green building or energy efficiency project as reviewed by the planning board. That's it.

Quick question on another subject, but it actually does play into this. Did we get anywhere with deaths in terms of multifamily? And here we are proposing multifamily and green energy, and yet that's nothing. No. We never heard anything back from the town board.

No, the town board adopted that legislation. The town board adopted that legislation, prohibited tier two and tier three, and allowed standalone tier one.

And is it still based on a solar basis?

No. Tier 1 can be standalone without solar. So if a Tier 1 will support a multifamily, they can do it.

Got it. Okay. So on these particular changes, what has happened in the last year since we last tackled it in terms of information to support the changes? What was the process? I'm unaware of a process.

My understanding is the town board revisited this in their discussions in the executive session, and they wanted to bring it out into the public and have a public discussion. And they had legislation with a few changes that they wanted to make, not as extensive as they initially were trying to do. And they referred it to you. I am working on refining the zoning maps and identifying the properties, putting together some tables and references for that process, but it is an ongoing process.

Would you suggest that that might have happened before they actually adopted legislation? to me having been around doing some of the stuff for a long time that's a little bit backwards usually you get information and on the basis of the information you consider it and that informs your your policy where you want to go it seems to me a little bit backwards I mean I'm just saying how many properties are impacted you know where are they What are we doing about the business side of things? I think people have made comments that this requirement that it has to be continued to have business on the ground floor doesn't work on the Hill. All these kinds of things and yet out of the blue we get this legislation referred to us and without, by the way, doesn't CEQA come into play on this kind of change legislation? Isn't there supposed to be an open process?

I have a simpler question. Of the three things that are put forth in this, not the incentive, the quarter acre, the 10 foot, and the zero or 100% coverage, right? Do those three things help clear up any of the conflicts or ambiguity that we were finding in the two different codes? Or do we still have those floating around?

The lot size reference.

The quarter acre?

The quarter acre, whether it's a quarter acre, three quarters of an acre, but addressing that will fix the points of conflict or entry that are ambiguous, ambiguous, ambiguous, ambiguous at the moment.

Okay, so that's one possible. That's one.

The second thing that it will correct is the conflict when it comes to coverage requirements.

Yeah, that was another one. So those are the two. And the street frontage clears up that too.

Well, the street frontage was 50 feet. There was no conflict in that. It was an implementation hindrance given the district it was applied to and the size of properties.

If you're trying to get a retail street wall, having a 50-foot setback kind of kills it. Yes. But if you are, yeah.

Okay.

But, again... Is retail appropriate for all parts on King Street? Because retail on a hill, we all know, doesn't really work.

Well, the MFRC... Does not, it gets away from the retail on the first floor.

It doesn't force you to do it.

Correct.

So that's another change then.

No, that has always been the change. That's the reason why people would do the MFRC is to avoid having to do commercial use on the first floor. Because in the BR zoning district, you can have apartments above the store, but you have to have first floor commercial. Right.

Matching, matching. So- There's no maximum to coverage?

There's no maximum to coverage.

So someone could build a four-story?

No. You can only go three stories at 35 feet. Two or three stories at 35 feet.

And 100%.

Yeah, but you really can't with stormwater requirements and parking requirements and garbage and circulation and

But you can't park underneath.

Yes, you can.

And put the building up on polities.

You can only put 90% of your parking underground.

How about if you put it on gray, but you raise the building up? But then you lose a height.

You can't. You have a height issue.

Then you have a height issue. And these were a lot of the things that we were talking about changing last year to make it more incentivized for people to do stuff at Chappapas so it's not dead at night. But now we're not having that happen anymore.

We're not having that discussion with this code.

Okay.

That is a whole other discussion.

Mm-hmm. How is that 35-foot measured?

According to our town code. The middle of the E, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The average?

Yeah, the average from the peak of the roof and the mid-distance of the E down to the finished grade.

Could someone in theory build on the hill 50 feet on one side, 20 feet on the other side? Yep, and bury some parking. Yeah, average it out. Mm-hmm.

But that would be a creative solution that could be good, actually, because then the parking's hidden and you don't see it.

Yes and no. As the chairman mentioned, there's a lot of things that may not have been fully thought. I think my comment a year ago was, I love legislation like this because I could drive a Mack truck through it. Right?

You can... That was your exact quote.

What was your quote? This ambiguous zoning and code, I mean, that's the developer's best friend because Ty goes to us. Not that we're all bad guys. But... There's a lot to unpack on this where you could do some pretty creative stuff and maximize those lots. And maybe it's what we want. Maybe we want some of that outside of the box developments, but at the same time, I don't think we even know how many of these properties it could apply to. And that's... I mean, I've said this a year ago. You're doing a memo.

I mean, you're doing an updated map is what I, OK. A year ago, I said if the goal is to stick to the comp plan as much as possible, the comp plan is calling for tons of varieties of different types of housing in the downtown Hamlet. And what we started to do last year, work towards the comp plan, I think what we're looking at now is working away from the comp plan.

So you guys are required to put together a memo to kind of flesh out your idea?

Because I don't think it lets you do as much as you want. More options. I'm not saying build out to the max. I'm saying just make it options for people to come in and do stuff. It doesn't mean everyone's going to compile all the land at downtown. and put up a big monster building. Nobody could ever gather up all that land. There's too many lawyers to do that. But people want to come in and buy a little piece of property or have an existing piece of property and want to do something. This zoning does not let them do anything. So Chapel Ocala's going to stay dark. It's going to stay quiet. And if that's the ultimate goal, then great. Do this legislation. But if the ultimate goal is to Try to liven up the downtown tonight.

This legislation isn't going anywhere. Okay? This legislation is on the books. It's on the books for, you know, since the late 80s. And it was put in the books for a specific reason based on Barron's indecision. It is a multifamily housing legislation. So right now, there has been no activity other than applicants wanting to do something on certain properties, and I cannot process them before you're bored. And so this is an opportunity, regardless of the changes, it's resolving the conflict so that I have direction to say, coverage, no coverage. Does it meet the setbacks? Like, these are the things that I need.

And these three things will clear up all those ambiguous things?

Yes.

Okay, so at least then people can start to push things through the process.

Exactly. Whether or not it affects 50% of the allowable properties or just three, that's what it does.

It also has a significant impact on the look, the feel, scale, et cetera, of the town. I mean, a 10-foot setback going up that entire hill is transformational. Not necessarily good, in my opinion. 50 feet, I understand, is very onerous, but maybe something between.

I think we talked last year about 25 or so. And maybe it depends on what the use is. Like what the applicant is proposing for the property, well, maybe that dictates a different type of setback. Because the one use requires one type of setback, and another use requires another type of setback.

And we have, you know, we saw one comment from... One property owner talking about how it's a dentist's area. It'll have a very substantial impact just on the streetscape in terms of what you have now in terms of some mature trees. They're gone. You're just going to have a wall. That's appropriate. It seems to be downtown. At the bottom. The bottom. Bottom of the hill. That makes great sense. And I think, what do we have down there? Is it 10 feet down there, Sabrina?

It's 10 feet.

Yeah. That makes good sense. I think if you use that and project that 10-foot goal, transformational Seems to me. It's a little draconian.

You'll be driving up a whole wall right exactly and you know so the intent is to have some some variability both height and setback There was one property that came the attorney was here for where they have an existing Building corner. It's 11 feet off off the property What are we going to do with that? Maybe existing non-conforming use, you get a pass. But someone who's building whatever is 40 feet back, bringing it 30 feet closer, that's going to change the entire look of the area and it's going to I think we definitely need some, in my opinion, variability on that hill, both setbacks, height, and type of product.

And the hill almost has like three different zones, if you think about it. There's the top of the hill that already has a little strip center, right? And there's across the street from it that starts to get to a little bit of a community neighborhood feel. Then you've got the big hill, which really should be retail quiet, right? And then the bottom of the hill, which should be fully blown retail, wherever you can have it. Just my opinion.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I'm concerned about the coverage as well, because I think that also goes hand in hand, where you have 100% coverage, it's the same sort of thing as a 10-foot setback. Again, transformational. And the other issue is, and this goes to the information that we don't have, not only the lots, but every time we've had an application on King Street, it's been a Challenge for stormwater drainage flooding onto neighbors properties It's really tough and I know that we've had all you know I know a couple of projects that have failed just because of that that we've had and just never went further They couldn't tie in they couldn't get the neighbor to agree to tie in it didn't work It's it's that's a real challenge and I think a hundred percent coverage just accentuates that that challenge WHEN YOU PUT IN PARKING AS WELL. THAT'S WHAT I MEANT IN TERMS OF WHAT'S THE INFORMATION THAT WE HAVE? YOU KNOW, A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, I PROPOSED TO THE TOWN BOARD TO SEND A PERSONAL NOTE THAT THEY CONSIDER THERE'S ALL DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMALLER LOCATIONS UP AND DOWN THE HILL THAT ARE PROBABLY SUITABLE FOR AN ACCESSORY APARTMENT OR TWO TO ADD ON THAT WAY TO GET DENSITY THERE IN THE TOWN. THE PARKING IS ALREADY THERE. THERE'S NO ADDITIONAL PARKING, NO ADDITIONAL impacts to stormwater, drainage, et cetera. So there are different ways of looking at it. And I think this kind of like bulldozer, you know, wall 10 feet is a little bit over the top, frankly, from what I think most residents would like. And I think most residents agree with you, Greg. They would like to see some action, but the retail should be at the top. It should be at the bottom. And the hill is, you know, a residential area.

I mean, right now, right, doesn't this, isn't it already kind of calling, isn't it pulling the hill out? No. Right? Right now, this, I mean, this is proposed. This is a draft, but this one pulled the hill out. So this, I definitely, this area has a feel, and this area has a feel. Exactly. Yeah. And I agree with you that the 50-foot and the 10-foot definitely have a different play in these two neighborhoods. And I think most people would agree with that.

So I don't know what we do here. I mean, you know...

I think you need to take each of the points that they're trying to change and kind of give your consensus of the three of you.

Well, I think also, I think the other message is can we get the gross, the information that we need to make these kinds of policy judgments in hand? A number of lots. I think last year we spoke Didn't we say that there were only three lots that were an acre? Mr. Chairman, there's the chart.

Two.

I'm refining them. Okay, good. That's the thing. I've been asked to refine those numbers to make sure that they understand where these properties are. I can tell you based on what I've been working on, there are about 27 properties that are a quarter of an acre or greater. not including town-owned or quasi-town properties. 27 properties.

In that district, that's at least a quarter of an acre that could fall into this category. Before, we had two, right?

Under an acre, there were two that did not have any other purpose to them or recently designated. There were two. WITH THE NEW I THOUGHT I SAW IN THE NEW LEGISLATION PROPOSAL STILL THAT THERE WERE SOME INCENTIVES OFF-SITE INCENTIVES AVAILABLE THAT IS IN THE CURRENT CODE THEY DID NOT CHANGE THAT THEY DID NOT CHANGE IT AND AGAIN THIS THIS PERMIT IS ISSUED BY THE PLANNING BOARD THERE ARE CATEGORIES IN THERE FOR YOU TO MAKE DECISIONS REGARDING DENSITY AN APPLICANT CANNOT INCREASE THEIR DENSITY BEYOND 100% OF WHAT THE BASIC DENSITY WOULD ALLOW. SO BASED ON THE REQUIREMENTS IN THE MFRC, IF YOU COULD ONLY PUT TWO UNITS AND, YOU KNOW, ONE OR TWO UNITS IS ALL A SMALL PROPERTY SUCH AS A QUARTER OF AN ACRE WOULD ALLOW, THE MAXIMUM INCREASE WOULD BE A TOTAL OF FOUR UNITS.

TOTAL OF FOUR. TOTAL OF FOUR. TWO ADDITIONAL.

TWO ADDITIONAL. TOTAL OF FOUR. SO A PROPERTY THAT'S AN ACRE OR GREATER, THAT'S WHERE YOU START SEEING THE 15 UNITS AS OF RIGHT TURN INTO 30 UNITS MAXIMUM. BUT THE SMALLER LOTS, THEY'RE NOT CONFIGURED, AGAIN, BECAUSE A LOT OF THESE LOTS ARE VERY SHALLOW. RIGHT.

SO UNLESS YOU PUT THEM ALL TOGETHER, YOU'RE REALLY LIMITED.

CORRECT. AND WE KNOW THE CHALLENGES OF THE COMBINING LOTS. And so the amount of density increase is not, looking at the mechanics of the lots, we're not talking a substantial amount of additional housing.

Has Public Works opined on the ability to serve these from a water and sewer perspective?

They can serve them from water and sewer. When we did the upgrade, it was always anticipated that there would be an increased density.

The green incentive.

Yes.

What does that get?

I'm not sure. It was just thrown in there. But I would advise you.

This is my cynical thought.

Yes.

Maybe cynical is the wrong word. This is my concern. If it's just if you do some green stuff, you get a little bit of bonus. It's up to you. Okay, well, I'll voice my concern. It's up to you. It goes back to you. If you do some green stuff, you get a bonus. Or if you make it all a market-driven green building, does that drive a whole mess of people out of the market to potentially buy or rent there? Because market green buildings, I think, are going to be more expensive. than a traditionally built building. So is this green? My concern would be this green incentive would drive somebody to do something that's a really totally green building, but then 90% of their population can't move into it because the rents are too high. So that would just be just food for thought.

Well, but also we tried to ensure that that wouldn't happen with 50 North Greeley by increasing the energy requirement. You know, so that somebody that moves in there with very tall ceilings and very large windows, WAS IN SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY IN ELECTRIC HEAT. SO WE REQUIRED DIFFERENT MEASURES AS FAR AS THE the approval through the building department that ensured that those units were 100% efficient to a certain level so that they would not be breaking the bank on the electric bill.

Gotcha. So it would still be somewhat affordable.

Exactly. Exactly. So we build in measures like that. And if you, as the controlling entity who issues these permits, if you have a property owner that wants to do that, we can tie in conditions that would ensure the affordability is maintained, but they have to build to that standard. You can't put in floor to ceiling windows unless they're triple paid and get the efficiencies that you need. Right? So you need to make sure that the efficiencies are there because a lot of times the super insulation, the extra inch of insulation in the wall, It makes a tighter interior envelope, which should cost less to heat.

Back to your comment that you made right before. So the aggregate, there's 10 incentives here, approximately, on the new installation. In aggregate, no matter if you do all of them, You're only going to get 100. You cap out at 100.

You cap out at 100, period.

And from a green perspective, I think there are some things that are beneficial. For instance, we talked about stormwater. I think Jerry's still out on green roofs, right? But if you put a green roof and you're reducing your stormwater runoff or you're improving your stormwater quality, right, that's something which can be better for the community. Agreed. And especially as you get south King Street, building it. store your stormwater and release it slowly versus with everybody else is a benefit. After that, the green building materials and things like that, it's like what I would say about lead. It's a nice thing to put there, but you get points for putting a bike rack outside. Right.

I know.

having a shower.

I just don't want it to be so, I don't want it to price out than people coming in and be able to live in it.

But I think that they're, we talk about green aspects, it doesn't necessarily, it's great to do the all electric and all that kind of stuff.

Right, but rain gardens and things of that nature, not necessarily green buildings. It's just that this is, these are not the size of development that would dictate that to be beneficial.

Yeah, I don't think there's too many rooftop green roofs that are coming anytime soon.

Going back to the septic and sewer and the water, especially sewer.

It's sewer and water, no septic. Yeah, of course. Public sewer and water.

Obviously, we have the capacity here. No problems downstream, Yonkers?

Yeah, when they did the work, didn't they size everything based on all those studies we did? We really packed the downtown with four stories.

It would never, never, ever happen, but that's what it was sized for. We did size for it. We had to balance the sizing.

But you still have to go to Yonkers. Yonkers says no, and we've had projects where Yonkers has said no.

Yeah, the county approved it. The county approved the sizing that we put in.

Okay.

They're holding it for Millwood. Yeah, that was the story. That was the theory. You were holding it from nowhere. Yep. Hold your breath.

Someday the world will get... Someday the firehouse will move on. I guess the memo, at least from my perspective, would be talking about... Hang on a second here. Where's the information, the data to support... Just the data. I don't need the support. What's the data? Then, of course... identify clearly, even in the legislation, the overall point of it, explore alternatives that we might have that are readily and easily available and without the transformational feel. And then whether these, from my standpoint, whether these goals can be achieved with something less transformational, a little bit less on coverage. a little bit less on the frontage. And then to Jeff's point, which I think is a great point, this is planning. Each lot is different. Something different can be done. So these are, you know, there should be parameters and probably, you know, again, I think less coverage and less with the frontage, but escape valves. So if someone can come forward with something that, like you said before, pre-existing, 11 feet off the, you know, okay, we've got the same sort of situation. We should have some ability... For applications for relief for relief from those those kinds of things. I always argue for relief all the stuff that we do. I never get it from the town board, but I've always argued for it. Well, yeah, absolutely trying because there should be those escape valves for particular situations. real estate is unique, as we know. I think flexibility is important.

Yeah.

Flexibility is with relief, I think.

Yeah, flexibility and release are the same word. I believe every site is different.

Is there a time crunch?

You have 30 days to respond.

But for their having, it looks like they're setting this on the June 9th agenda, is there something that is pushing that time frame?

I am not aware.

And that's another thing. I mean, there's stuff that I know we've asked for that, Sabrina, I know you're working on, your office is working on. Other than the 10-foot setback, right, which I can say from my perspective, preexisting is one thing. Bringing both sides to 10 feet in uniform, I mean, you'd be driving down a channel. Because that's what everyone's going to do, if you can do it. If they can, sure. THAT'S WHERE I STAND AT LEAST ON THAT ISSUE. ON THE COVERAGE, REALLY, YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW THIS TRULY CAN IMPACT, WHICH SAYS IT WENT FROM TWO PROPERTIES NOW TO POTENTIALLY 27 PROPERTIES. THIS IS GETTING A LITTLE MORE EXPANSIVE.

AND, AGAIN, THE COVERAGE ISSUE, IT SHOULD BE ONE THAT'S FLEXIBLE FOR THE SITE. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, MAYBE SOMETHING CLOSE TO 100% COVERAGE MAKES SENSE IF THEY'RE PUTTING IN A GREEN ROOF. And you're going through all that expense and you're doing that, that might make real sense.

Maybe the site is this big, right? And to get it to fit, they got to go 100%, right? And maybe they can only get two units on it and that makes it, that pencils out for them, right? And that's it. But if they can only go to 75%, they can't get it to pencil out so the property just sits there forever. That's why I think it has to be relief valves. Yes. Any comments from the public? Oh, God.

Just a few. I see Chuck back there drooling.

Good evening. I'm Jim McCauley. I'm a resident of Cape I'm not against additional housing in Chappaqua. I don't, I won't go into it now, but I don't think the problem is a lack of people. I think there are other issues why the retail areas don't prosper, whereas Pleasantville or Mount Kisco does. But that's not a pop comments for here. The way I see it, and I have a view zoning map here and the BRC zoning map. There is the property next to ours, south of ours, which was the Perez property, which is now owned by the Tavallacci Group. There are five residential properties. would be affected it seems to me now I'm one of I notice 19 units and 149 there's 11 units of my project and there's one person here all right there's been no notice no suggestions and for the town board to put it on I think We're thinking about this. What do you think? Because there's tons of properties that border these, you know, 100, maybe more. I can't. They're too small a count here.

If there's an application for a particular property, then everybody surrounding that property within a certain distance is going to... We got the zoning.

Okay. Yes. There was zoning, and there was only a couple of people here for that, for the I'm wondering, those five properties across on King Street, yeah, they could be redeveloped, no question. Yeah, there could be more housing. But it seems you're putting the cart's going before the horse to plan for such small properties and such major changes. Maybe has any study been done as to the owners or the condition of the owners? Are they thinking of selling or at least being combined? Are there more than one owner who is discussing this or one developer at this point? There really aren't too many other properties that are of the Tavolochi property. So I think it certainly should be considered. I'm not against property building. I looked at that property 40 years ago. I looked at it again five years ago, thinking about it. And I just decided because of my own age and my own retirement situation that I didn't want to bother getting involved in more development at this point in time. But the extremes that I hear 100% coverage That had to go from 35, 25 to 100%. That's a major, major change. I stated before in the zoning meeting that getting rid of the retail requirement, absolutely. Nobody was going to stop on the hill to go out and to go into a drugstore or anything like that.

RETAIL GROUND FLOOR, IT WOULD BE PERMISSIBLE? YES. OKAY. IT WOULD. JUST A REQUIREMENT.

OKAY. BUT IT WOULD BE ALLOWABLE TO BUILD WITHOUT IT? CORRECT.

YOU DON'T REQUIRE FOR AN MFRC IF YOU'RE GOING TO DO RETAIL. BECAUSE THAT ZONE REQUIRES YOU TO BE 10 FEET FROM THE STREET.

It seems to me it's a lot fewer properties because 149, I don't know the name of it, but the upholstery project, I thought that was approved a long time ago, but they never did anything about it. It was not approved. Oh, I thought it did. The Tavolacci property, the rest of it is pretty much town property. That could potentially be housing. I'm sure So Not against housing not against developing all these properties, but the I think it should be put out to the to the entire downtown and Let people understand it rather than changes without, you know, letting the voters and the residents who were paying the taxes know about it. Let them, you know, comment. That's the way.

waiting for the first time for you to tell me that you love something.

I don't love it. This is Charles Napoli, and I don't love it. And actually, I don't know where to begin except the hill. Let's talk about the hill. I talk about there's three hills, and Jeff alluded to one of the hills. There's the hill that goes up, and then there's the hill that goes up off of the hill, and then there's the hill that goes down, off of the hill, major steep slopes. And if you want to know, go to the post office and see how big that retaining wall is, because we're building into hills in certain parts. And so the Flat Earth Society designed a zoning code on a two-dimensional. But this is not two-dimensional. an Italian hill town maybe. It has a certain character to it. It also has a lot of constraints. But I really don't know where to begin. Accessory dwellings. APARTMENTS, NOT RESIDENCES, A LOOK THAT HAS A SCALE AND CHARACTER, AN AESTHETIC FOR THE HILL IS PROBABLY WHERE WE SHOULD BE STARTING. AND THEN FROM THERE, WRITE THE LEGISLATION. AND WE'RE DOING IT BACKWARDS AGAIN. WHAT WE'RE REALLY DOING, YOU SAW IT LAST YEAR. YOU SAW AN APPLICATION COME BEFORE YOU WITH A BIG PROBLEM INCENTIVES. WE HAVE TO FIX THE INCENTIVES BECAUSE THEY'RE CONFUSING. AND THAT HASN'T CHANGED. THOSE INCENTIVES ARE STILL THERE. NOTHING HAS CHANGED. THEY'VE ADDED ONE. AND THAT PROJECT THAT CAME LAST YEAR IS DRIVING THE NEED TO HAVE MULTI-FAMILY, MULTI-RESIDENCE CODE THAT WAS DESIGNED FOR 50 ACRES. back in the 70s, and reducing it down to not an acre, but even constricting it further to a quarter acre, taking a code that was meant for a lot of property, a lot of open space, green space, trees, recreation spaces, parking for visitors, and putting that into a quarter acre And then saying, by the way, any incentive is a special use permit by you guys. So if you're going to give somebody an incentive, say, for low or moderate income, that's one of the incentives. You want some apartments, low and moderate income apartments? Well, you're allowed 50% of the number of units that you're allowed to put on the property. So if you have two units on that property, well, actually, you're allowed three. And the real problem is that what is still not settled is that there's a three-bedroom apartment in there. There's also... And the plan that the town board is looking at has almost 21 bedrooms in it and four buildings. It's already set up as four buildings. It's already designed as four buildings. Site plan's already done for four buildings. And we're writing a code to match that project. Now, what does that sound like? I mean, that is code. based zoning, based on a form that's already there. I'll just use the right word, form-based code. There's a form. It's four buildings. They're figuring out a way to allow it. And that's backwards as usual. Now, I think there's so much potential on the hills. for so many varieties of living spaces that we should not limit it to just townhouses, which this thing basically does. Because the townhouse under this code needs a front door, a mailbox, like a house. And they put them side by side by side by side. Forget about the steep slope. They've got a nine-foot retaining wall to make the parking lot. around this particular property, design, draw. Well, I think you want to look at some details because that's a site plan that you would end up getting. I think you should look at what is being proposed on this property before we go ahead and approve that it's an okay thing. Because, I mean, it's a four-story building on the downhill slope. Four stories, by the way, the grade is so steep that the front door is at grade and the back door is open to the basement. And so that doesn't fit the definition of a basement. It's a definition of a story. So it's technically, under code, a four-story building. That's the right height, but it's still four stories. And there's so many challenges building on the side of this hill that to... To say that one size is going to fit all, it's going to be difficult. And so I think we have to look at all the sizes before. And I really think that you need a little more time on looking at the options. Because one of the big things is a lot of these properties have They were designed for retail on the first floor, office on the second floor. And back then, we made all the parking lots for office and retail. Somewhere in the 80s, we decided that, oh, we could have some apartments on the top. Well, if you did one thing, and I hate to jump to a solution, but just we have a business retail zone. Why don't you just... Add a permitted use called residential on the first floor. You don't have to change any codes. People can do what they want on the first floor. They can make apartments. They can add to the back of an existing building. If you look at, and I'm not going to, I'm going to keep going. You tell me when to stop because I don't want to bore you. But if you go to the Greeley House, you see that cute little building in the front. You ever go in the back? That's a three-story addition back there. You could put, I did, five apartments in that building without a problem of ruining the look of the hill. You've set back as stays the same. the dance of the buildings going up the hill stays the same. If I do anything on any property, if you've got a building there and you're knocking it down, you've got to put a building back that spot. Forget about the setbacks and the changing the front or the back. Keep the character, and that's the other thing. What do we want it to look like? And if they go ahead with this so-called new zone, I mean, I think they have to show a full build out of what it could look like. I mean, come on. If we're talking about 27 properties, I want to know what could that look like? And how can you make a decision without knowing where we're going? And so anyway, I love the accessory dwellings. Two reasons. Parking lots. are big. We don't use all those parking lots anymore. We have room to put stuff back there. We could give every property owner another building, a little apartment, a little one-bedroom apartment that has parking underneath. They just use the same parking place. How about Talbots? Back in the 70s, we designed Talbots, and that parking lot had like 75 cars in it or more. Well, that whole back parking lot, it's got grass growing out of it. It's not used at all. And so, you know, you want to do something on parking lots? We should look at what parking lots can be developed. If you want to look at what buildings can be added to, why do we need a front door? What's wrong with a few apartments in, say, one of the bigger buildings downtown? You could put six or seven units in one of the bigger buildings without changing the look and character and scale of the hill. So I only have about four other ideas, but I'm not going to talk about it. I'd love to know, is there a way that we could get together and talk about What's possible before we go ahead and kick, well, what do you guys do? I mean, are you going to tell the town board no? Or are you going to tell the town board, all right, in 90 days, you know, we're going to approve this thing? I mean, you're going to get the site plans. And I think you should know what you're getting before this thing goes any further. Thanks. Okay, thank you.

Okay, do you have any thoughts, comments at this point? So do we meet again before we have to put together a memo? Two weeks, I assume. Right?

Yeah.

So we can meet again and continue the conversation.

Do you want me to outline this conversation? Yes, I think that would be helpful. try and draft something that reflects the sentence.

Yeah, that would be good, that we can work from the draft. That would be good, echoing the comments that we've heard tonight from us.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean, just try to get those issues out there.

I'll put it on paper from the board, and you guys can edit it.

And what you can do, if you wish, is make an executive summary, just the points that we have, and we can- Yeah. you give the AI after that to have the points that we think really need to be covered, whether it's flexibility. Sai said back, you know,

I have the list.

Yeah, parking.

And maybe if Felicia finds out that somebody's not going to be here, maybe they can get their comments into us so we have that.

Oh, and that has not worked.

I know, but we can try. We can always keep trying.

We always do try in every way possible to get your feedback.

Yep. I'm a culprit on that. Well, sometimes I'm a culprit, but sometimes I give comments, too.

Absolutely. Good night, guys. Good night. Thank you. Good. Okay. That would be very helpful. I think it doesn't have to be anything fancy. I think an executive summary would be really great, just listing the points so we can say, yep, yes, or whatever those points are, how we want to address it. But it seems to me that there are quite a few issues and points. And, you know, we haven't asked Jeff about his concerns, his thoughts in terms of engineering, Dennis in terms of environmental issues. You know, obviously, lots of slopes here. So, again, that's going to be an engineering issue as well. The whole thing is a slope.

This site plan that Chuck made reference to, have we seen it? No. Okay.

So, we haven't seen it. Yeah, the first gentleman, he was 149 King?

Yes. No, first gentleman was 26 Highland.

26 Highland's up the hill a little bit further. As you go up, it's on the right-hand side.

There are some properties that were redeveloped in that area, right? There was success and the multifamily and...

Well, there's the Lutheran Church.

The Lutheran Church is the Habitat house?

No, no. There's nothing Habitat-y in that building.

No, next to the Historical Society?

Yeah, it's up the hill from...

It's up the hill further.

Yeah, it's across the street. Yeah, it's not contiguous to it.

And I mean, one thing, we don't have purview over it, but we came up with the 50 North Greeley hearing last week. Graflin is over capacity right now. Yeah. I know my son and my daughter's grades both had to add a fifth class. I'm hearing that they're having to add a fifth class to first grade and kindergarten next year. They're running out of room in there. I know it's not necessarily in our purview, but when you're thinking about the future, we should also talk to CCSD because there was at some point, are we going to change school? Are we going to maybe move the line? who's going, what the catchment zone is for which schools, and also for Bell, whatnot. And there's more to this that it's not just simple 10-foot setback.

How many units are there? 50? No, it's really 40? 50? 15? 50. 50, okay. So what do they think for school tents? And that goes to Graflin?

And that goes to Graflin? Yeah. Yeah, I think everything east of the sawmill comes to Graflin.

Everything east of sawmill to Graflin.

Yeah, so I don't know.

Well, it actually is part of our overall thinking, but normally we start, we hear from the school district on this. And that usually comes out in SECRA.

And this is legislation, you know, with SECRA, if you're making legislative changes, that's not really, you don't do the deep dive analysis unless there are huge overhauls of legislation. So I think that You know, we were advised that this is a type two or not a type two. Yeah, type two because it's legislation and the changes.

How do you determine whether or not there is an impact?

Well, this was based on the earlier figures and whatnot. And so, you know, the communications with the school district previously were that they had plenty of capacity, that they were actually under capacity. I truly believe that the increases we're seeing at kindergarten and first grade are the COVID cohorts that are coming through the school system. And there needs to, you know, the school district, I'm sure, is handling the calculations.

Oh, yeah, all the COVID kids are more. Yeah, but neither of my kids are COVID, so... And they had to add class. I mean, it's some years.

When we did Chaparro Crossey, weren't all the numbers telling us that the school districts were just crashing and burning?

And when we did 15 North Greeley, they were under capacity as well. And we've had every developer since use the school district's calculations when doing their projects.

But I think what we're hearing is that, for example, The new middle school out there has never been at capacity, right? Seven Bridges. Yeah, Seven Bridges. So the problem is it's skewed because it's segments in the district. So overall the numbers are X, Y, Z because initially when the very first Chapel Rock Crossing project, the school district went crazy. And that was one of the reasons why it changed from what it was going to be, which was going to be you know, over 50 and, my God, I think it was going to be 150 units that they were going to put in there. They went hysterical. But then since that time, I think overall it's come down. But to Jeff's point, You know, one size doesn't fit all. I mean, you know, seven bridges I don't think has ever reached capacity, and yet you have overcapacity in Graflin. So how do you do that? You know, maybe they can figure out something if you're a little bit closer into town.

Maybe you could go to Roaring Brook. It's not that big a deal. I guess they just bust kids out to seven bridges.

It's L versus seven bridges, but... Yeah, there was talk about shifting the Roe and Brooke.

That's a school district discussion. Yeah, absolutely. Please, we don't do that.

And they're getting nominated tonight, so.

I hear you, I hear you, I hear you.

All right, so motion to, no, we need to do that. Oh, we have minutes. Minutes.

Minutes, I'm sorry. Minutes. So we have the minutes of Tuesday, May 8th. Any questions, comments? Okay. I have no questions. Okay. I'm good. Okay. Is there a motion to adopt the minutes of May 5? Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. And a motion to close the meeting? Motion. Second. Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye.

Okay. Excellent.