Surveyor Patti Brooks represents a senior retirement project known as ‘The Villages of the Hudson Valley’ that has been proposed for ages 62 and up on the western side of Route 9W, opposite the Bridgeview Shopping Plaza in the Town of Lloyd.

Last week Brooks returned for a second time to the Planning Board, along with Ronald J. DeVito, President and CEO of Concordia Senior Communities of Melville, NY.

“We took all the comments from the board and the audience and we are working right now on making a full submission and addressing all of the board’s concerns for the June [planning board] meeting,” said Brooks.

DeVito said his company has been involved at all levels of senior care for the past 30 years, from construction and management to providing a full spectrum of services. He said the Villages project is a combination of 205 per-engineered, independent living units and about 127 units in the Assisted Living.

“We might want to bump that up a little bit to help our bottom line,” he said.

DeVito said the Assisted Living is for adult homes, which the NYS Department of Health says are for, “seniors who are unable to live independently. They need assistance with their daily living activities and that involves a lot of services.” He pointed out that the goal, “is to help seniors age successfully, to helping them do what they want to do, helping them work things out for themselves and all sorts of things like intellectual curiosity.”

Building Department Director Dave Barton informed the Planning Board that he met with DeVito and Brooks several weeks ago in Brooks’ Highland office. Barton asked if there will be a doctor’s office onsite for the housing component that is separate from the institutional building, “or will that doctor be associated with both pieces of the puzzle?” DeVito said it will be separate from both facilities, be free standing, “but it will be accessed by both the independent living seniors and the Assisted Living.” He said the doctor’s office will be manned 24/7 and stressed that most people who are considering living in a place like this always want to know how they will be taken care of in the event of a heart attack.

DeVito said he would like to incorporate a comprehensive wellness program into the mix, aimed at keeping seniors healthy and self-sufficient so they can take full advantage of the complex’s offerings. The onsite Urgent Care center will provide needed emergency services, which will limit the town’s financial outlay in ambulance and fire services.

Planning Board member Sal Cuciti touched upon zoning, section 100-45, concerning Continuing Care Retirement Communities. He noted that the project is applying for a special permit and one section of this calls for 50 ft setbacks from the sideline and 100 ft setbacks from the front line. Another section states there is a maximum of a 5% slope on sidewalks.

“And it says in the code that this must go all the way back to the public street, so you have a very tall, very hilly lot,” he said. “On your initial plan from what I could see, it hadn’t been graded yet, but there were much steeper slopes than that. So you’ll have to look at that and how that affects your layout.”

Cuciti noted that section 10 of the special permit section, “says the maximum total density shall not exceed 12 beds or 4 dwelling units per acre. I interpret that as the 4 dwelling units per acre is individual buildings, so we’ll have to talk to our lawyer and discuss it with our Planning Board.”

Brooks said this point is not particularly clear in the code.

“If you just calculate the 127 beds times the 4 per acre and I think we could have gotten 560 something beds or 4 units per acre, we were considering for 52 individual houses, so we needed 52 acres and we have 53.” Brooks said.

Brooks added that presently the project spreads out across 5 parcels and she will be proposing lot line revisions that will result in two parcels because of licensing issues.

“The health care facility will be on one lot with 127 beds and the Urgent and Wellness Care and the Independent Living will be on a separate lot,” she said. She added that attorneys for the project and the town will have to legally ensure that it will be considered as one project, “so they are always tied together.”

Cuciti pointed out that there is a requirement of 25 feet between buildings but the project plans show a distance of 10 feet. Brooks acknowledged this discrepancy, saying, “We are aware of that and have gone through that with a fine tooth comb...When you read that code it seems the code was contemplating a couple of large structures and not necessarily one story, single family dwellings.”

Cuciti said the code actually requires a mix of housing styles, a reference to 100-45 B(5), which states: “There shall be a variety of design, architectural styles, and setbacks for the purpose of presenting an aesthetically desirable overall effect over the entire development with varied elevations and appearances and without excess uniformity.” Brooks agreed in part, saying that this section of the code requires a mix of independent living, “but I don’t know that it anticipated that independent living would be in something other than an apartment house because when you read through that code and you read the way a lot of the parts read, it seems to lean in that direction. So we are struggling with parts of that code. We absolutely at this point, because of the topography, will need a front yard setback. We will have 100 feet off of the highway but not off the highway bounds because they’re set back so far. We are aware that we will need an area variance for that.”

Cuciti said the main entrance to the site is off of Mayer Drive, just up from Route 9W. He suggested bringing the road down to align with the current traffic light across from Argent Drive; “Then you would have an intersection that works.” Brooks said topographically that scenario would not work and the Department of Transportation’s solution appears to be installing a second synchronized traffic light at Mayer and Rte. 9W.

Brooks said the adult care facility would have its own entrance on Rte. 9W, “and the facility itself would have the main entrance off of Mayer Drive and then we have one or two alternatives [further up Mayer Drive] for emergency access vehicles that we are finalizing now.”