Pittsford residents filled the small Village Meeting Room Tuesday evening for an hours-long continuation of the public hearings concerning the controversial canalside property planned for 75 Monroe Ave.
One last public hearing on the matter will be held Thurs., Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in the Village Hall. The board will then have 62 days to make a final decision.
The developer, Canalside Properties LLC, needs a special use permit from the board in order to construct a six-building Westport Crossing apartment complex with a pool, clubhouse, and fitness center and a family bistro style restaurant on the site.
The site, which was once an asphalt plant, is currently a vacant lot full of vandalized buildings surrounded by a broken fence.
Tensions grew high as the public attendees, frustrated, asked what they could do to stop the development. The board is not legally allowed to deny the developers their "reasonable return" on the property, so though they may ultimately decide to deny the special use permit, they can not legally force Canalside to scale down their project.
Much of the controversy over the development stems from a code requirement that the property must maintain the "distinctive physical character, charm, and historic integrity" of the village.
Many in attendance at Tuesday's meeting said the 167-unit complex would not meet that requirement.
"I live in a historic district where I can't change my basement windows without approval, yet a project of this size can get this far," said Marty Martina, who moved to the village from a Mark IV Enterprises property in Corn Hill.
"They will meet the minimum requirements and do the minimum they have to do to get into the village," Martina said about Canalside, a Mark IV entity. "The promises will be made up front and the presentation will be fantastic. In five years the glow has worn off. In 10 years you're stuck with it."
Village Mayor Bob Corby said the Village Boards have worked with developers to scale the project down for over four years to make sure it fits the community.
"One of the reasons this project has taken so long is because we are all concerned with the character of the village," Corby said. "It's taken a tremendous amount of time to tackle some complicated and complex issues, and in doing that work, the proposal has been dramatically altered from the original version."
Pittsford residents filled the small Village Meeting Room Tuesday evening for an hours-long continuation of the public hearings concerning the controversial canalside property planned for 75 Monroe Ave.
One last public hearing on the matter will be held Thurs., Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in the Village Hall. The board will then have 62 days to make a final decision.
The developer, Canalside Properties LLC, needs a special use permit from the board in order to construct a six-building Westport Crossing apartment complex with a pool, clubhouse, and fitness center and a family bistro style restaurant on the site.
The site, which was once an asphalt plant, is currently a vacant lot full of vandalized buildings surrounded by a broken fence.
Tensions grew high as the public attendees, frustrated, asked what they could do to stop the development. The board is not legally allowed to deny the developers their "reasonable return" on the property, so though they may ultimately decide to deny the special use permit, they can not legally force Canalside to scale down their project.
Much of the controversy over the development stems from a code requirement that the property must maintain the "distinctive physical character, charm, and historic integrity" of the village.
Many in attendance at Tuesday's meeting said the 167-unit complex would not meet that requirement.
"I live in a historic district where I can't change my basement windows without approval, yet a project of this size can get this far," said Marty Martina, who moved to the village from a Mark IV Enterprises property in Corn Hill.
"They will meet the minimum requirements and do the minimum they have to do to get into the village," Martina said about Canalside, a Mark IV entity. "The promises will be made up front and the presentation will be fantastic. In five years the glow has worn off. In 10 years you're stuck with it."
Village Mayor Bob Corby said the Village Boards have worked with developers to scale the project down for over four years to make sure it fits the community.
"One of the reasons this project has taken so long is because we are all concerned with the character of the village," Corby said. "It's taken a tremendous amount of time to tackle some complicated and complex issues, and in doing that work, the proposal has been dramatically altered from the original version."
Mark IV President Chris DiMarzo agreed.
"From the first stage of approvals dating back to May of 2008 the Trustees have worked with me to modify and sculpt this concept into something that will fit seamlessly into this transitional area of the Village," Dimarzo said in an email the day after the meeting. "Our designs and goals are aligned at this time."
The proposal at one time called for two apartment towers containing 185 units and has since been changed to include 167 apartments in more, smaller buildings. The restaurant has also been downsized.
Corby, however, said he still shares the concern that the project's size and scale may be incompatible with the historic character of the village.
"The village has done an extraordinary job in the past 25 years protecting its character, and I think it seems to be a potential threat to that character," Corby said.
Others expressed concern that the addition of the apartments on Monroe Avenue would have a disasterous effect on village traffic. The board, however, cited three traffic expert studies showing that, if the speed limit is reduced from 40 to 30 mph, if the road is restriped with narrower lanes, and if a 250-foot curbed and landscaped meridian were to be built west of the bridge in the town, the development's statistical effect on traffic would be negligible.
The board said the Department of Transportation agrees that the above would be the best way to deal with entry and exit traffic, and the developer would pay the cost for the median.
A remark from Corby that it would be difficult to find people willing to build single-family houses on the property prompted a number of attendees to wonder why, if the site is too "toxic" (their word) for homes, why it is suitable for apartments.
Corby clarified that building single-family homes on the property would be an issue of code enforcement, not toxicity. The property is a brownfield site, meaning it may be contaminated with a low concentration of non-migratory hazardous waste. It would be impractical, the board said, for individual home developers to meet all the legal requirements for cleaning up and building on the site because to do so would prove too costly to earn a "reasonable return" on the property.
A large development like the one proposed could clean up the site, meet the necessary building requirements, and still potentially turn a profit.
"We have the financial backing, experience, and patience to take the risk to transform this contaminated site and personally pay for public improvements on and off site and transform a dilapidated warehouse at the gateway to the Village into a vibrant tax paying upscale residential living community," DiMarzo said. "It will not only create construction and permanent jobs in the area, but also be fully tax paying and create a larger pool of residents that can walk to and utilize the Village businesses. It is Win-Win-Win for everybody."
When members of the public turned the conversation to the "types of people" a housing project like the one proposed would attract to the village —citing prostitution rings and high level drug dealers, to name a few— the board promptly dismissed both the language and the allegations as offensive.
Though the board has held a number of sparsely-attended public hearings in the past two months, those at Tuesday's meeting said inconvenient meeting times and a low public profile kept many residents from voicing their opinions.
DiMarzo offered one explaination:
"Now that the approval is imminent, a vocal few residents are desperately making personal disparagements to me and the board in a feeble attempt to strong arm a negative outcome," he said. "Most of these naysayers are coming to the public meetings for the first time and have no idea of the four and a half years of due diligence the village has completed to date."
The board agreed to hold one final meeting next Thurs., Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. in Village Hall. The public hearing will then be closed, and the board will have 62 days to reach it's decision.
