Marlborough Conservation Advisory Committee [CAC] member, Cindy Lanzetta, recently updated the Marlborough Town Board and the public on what the CAC, “has been doing and where we’re at.”

Lanzetta said a year ago the Town Board asked the CAC to develop design guidelines for the Route 9W corridor, “something that many of our planning documents called for.” She said the CAC began looking at what other nearby towns have been including in their guidelines, especially noting the strides that the Town of Newburgh has been making in recent years.

Lanzetta said there were professional people in town who volunteered their time to craft a draft document that targeted the corridor.

“We put in a countless number of volunteer hours and the group met regularly every month,” she said. “We ran this draft by the Ulster County Planning Department and they gave us input and we incorporated what they asked of us as well.”

Robert Leibowitz, Principal Planner for the Ulster County Planning Board, responded to Lanzetta last November, offering written comments on the CAC’s Draft document. The document is targeted for new commercial construction and the rehabilitation of existing buildings in the Route 9W corridor.

“Overall the document highlights most of the key concerns for design standards [and] site elements. The section on architectural elements, building materials, especially for the Hamlet areas is particularly strong,” he wrote.

Leibowitz pointed to a few areas of concern, saying it is “disappointing” that Marlborough has chosen the route of supplemental guidelines instead of incorporating design standards directly into the zoning statute.

“Design standards help to create predictable outcomes by requiring developers to build to specific standards,” he wrote. “This is especially so when graphic examples of site plan layouts [and] examples of details have been provided to clearly demonstrate what is desired.”

Leibowitz wrote that if Marlborough chooses to move forward with guidelines instead of standards, he suggested, “an amendment be made to the zoning statute that acknowledges the guidelines for projects being developed along the Route 9W corridor and at the very least requires all applicants to design an alternative that does its best as [is] practicable to comply with the design guidelines.” He noted that any deviation from the guidelines should require the developer to submit an explanation, “and perhaps require the applicant to prove why following guidelines was not practicable in each deviation away from them.”

Leibowitz also pointed out that details of access management are missing in the design guidelines, suggesting that the town, “may wish to require them in this document (shared drives, shared parking, cross access here) or perhaps more appropriately as required elements of site development in site plan review.”

Lanzetta submitted the draft to the Town Board and asked that it be distributed to members of the Planning and Zoning Boards for their feedback.

Lanzetta hopes to receive back comments so the CAC can discuss them at their next meeting in May before returning to the Town Board for an official presentation.

Councilman Howard Baker commended Lanzetta and the CAC for working to develop the guidelines, a process that kicked off about six years ago. He touched upon whether the CAC suggestions would remain as guidelines or be written into the code, something Lanzetta said would be a decision for the Town Board.

“We’ve talked about the pros and cons of a variety of things,” she said. “The nice thing of having this available in its present form is we can change things easily enough if we find that something is not working. Most of this has to do with site plan approval because the Route 9W corridor is more [about] commercial development.”

Lanzetta said once this draft becomes finalized, developers would receive a copy of it when they come to the Planning Board to apply for a review/approval of their project.

“We would encourage them to follow it [and] at some point you might even codify it so they follow the design guidelines,” she suggested to the Town Board.

Lanzetta said this draft document, although specific to the Route 9W corridor, acknowledges the town’s agricultural history, the types of buildings extant in the town, “and why we prefer what we do in this town as opposed to some other towns.”