The library at City Hall was packed -- one Councilor noted that there were more people there than attend City Council meetings.
Under state law, the applicant is allowed to -- as it was put -- "bifurcate" their application, asking the Board first to consider and rule on a USE VARIANCE, and then, if that is granted, to consider the SITE PLAN.
Given the public interest in the project and the issues put on the table by the applicant's requests for variances, this may take several hearings and become rather contentious.
Wednesday evening, the applicant presented its architect and traffic and planning consultants to give testimony supporting the variances it is requesting.
THE TESTIMONY
THE ARCHITECT -- While detailed consideration of the site plan would take place in another phase, the architect presented an overview of the project with plans and renderings to place the variances being requested into context. PT was struck in particular by the renderings -- one a complete street facade, another a detail of a portion.
Given the width and depth of the lot shown in the rough SITE PLAN, the width and height of the proposed building in the RENDERING seemed unrealistic. To this observer, it seemed stretched width-wise to make it more impressive than it might actually be if constructed. PT remembers the bitterness with which all parties viewed the Arlington Heights condo project once it was built.
Where the rendering had shown a neat townhome-style project with small but adequate front yards and a few steps up to the first floor entry. As built, the yards became miniscule and the flight of steps was steeper than rendered (owing to the shallowness of the setback) and literally pitched the user onto the front sidewalk. (You can drive by yourself -- the project is at the corner of Arlington Avenue and Randolph Road.)
The lesson on RENDERINGS: Beware! What you see is not likely to be what you get.
THE TRAFFIC CONSULTANT -- This testimony was in two parts: TRIP GENERATION and PARKING.
On trip generation, the consultant was at pains to assure everyone that the NUMBER OF TRIPS expected to be generated were within generally accepted guidelines (31 trips per hour during the peak AM hour, as PT understood it) and the KIND OF TRAFFIC would be more residential-friendly -- no trucks.
With regard to PARKING, the consultant noted the proximity to the Netherwood train station and the fact that a New York bus stopped across the street as reasons to grant relief on the parking requirement of TWO SPACES PER UNIT.
PT is not one who has drunk the Kool-Aid that people are clamoring to use public transportation and will find it quite to their liking to get along with one vehicle per household. Especially since there are no amenities within walking distance. As for trip generation, however reasonable the number of trips likely to be generated in and out of the site, it will be no fun for the resident who must wait for 15 or 20 vehicles to pass by on this busy street before they can cut across traffic to get in or out of the drive.
Those of us who live on busy streets (PT is on West 7th, near new condo and home construction) can testify to how the experience of new housing with increased traffic and on-street parking clogging the thoroughfare have impacted the daily grind.
The lesson on PARKING: Two spaces per unit will likely be barely enough to suffice. And what about guest parking?
THE PLANNER -- This was the real snake-oil portion of the evening. The planner was smooth and covered a lot of ground, but one had to swallow hard to accept the premises -- especially if familiar with the area, which the planner was at pains to characterize as mainly residential.
Like a Boardwalk vendor making a smoothie, he whirled together Sixth Street residential, the Light Industrial zone of the project and the Mixed-Use zone of other South Avenue properties to contend that a residential use would improve the area and that light industrial would not.
And, of course, another chorus of the siren-song about new residents walking to the Netherwood station and queueing up to use public transportation.
The lesson on PLANNING: Applicant needs to go back to the drawing board. Not compelling. AND -- while the presence of the DPW garage on the western edge of the site was briefly mentioned, NO ONE brought up that the word in the street is the City wants the PMUA to give up plans to build its new headquarters, equipment shop and parking lots on Cottage Place and move instead to -- you guessed it, SOUTH AVENUE!
This may be a very good project, but it needs to be sold in a more convincing manner. And with fewer gimmes. And it needs to fit into a larger picture -- what is projected for the entire area? Why would anyone spend the kind of money being talked about to live next to the DPW or the PMUA?
THE 'VISION THING'
The public presence at both meetings on this proposal demontrate that people understand the project is an important one AND -- PT thinks --
that people understand that everything is connected to everything else.
Take the response of some of the other South Avenue business owners. There is some consternation that this project represents nothing more than the opening salvo in a drive to banish them from the area where they and their employees make their livelihood. One can understand their anxiety, given that it was not so long ago that South Avenue's zoning came under discussion in order to push the automotive businesses away from the area between Leland Avenue and Terrill Road.
The Zoning Board may not be where this gets hashed out -- they, after all, are concerned with trees, not forests.
This is where the 'vision thing' comes into play. The Administration has asked that the Master Plan be revisited. Good idea.
Will the revision take care to provide for LIGHT INDUSTRIAL and MIXED USES as essential to the economic health of the community?
Or will the 'transit-friendly' vision prevail: All residents will use public transportation. All will be residential. All shopping will be done at Wal-Mart. All goods will be made in China. Products will not be serviced or repaired, they will be thrown away.
Butchers, bakers, candlestick-makers, auto repair and supply facilities, be gone! In progress' name.
-- Dan Damon
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