In late January, Surveyor Patti Brooks came before the Lloyd Planning Board seeking a site plan review for the Highland Estates project, proposed for a 7.84 acre parcel within the Highway Business District [HBD] that lies just south of Walgreens on Route 9W.

The project is for a mixed use building with 16,000 sq/ft with first floor retail space including a 3,000 to 4,000 sq/ft gas station facility with four pump islands and a 2nd floor of residential housing. The applicant is also seeking to build a second building with professional offices with 9,600 sq/ft of office space (two story) on a 4,800 sq/ft footprint. Parking will be shred between the two buildings.

Brooks said she had some pre-development meetings with Building Department Director Dave Barton last year prior to the moratorium. She feels the project conforms with new regulations that the first floor will be retail and a second floor with residential.

“We’ve gotten preliminary comments from the Department of Transportation regarding access to the site and before we went forward with additional traffic studies, engineering and design we wanted to get some initial feedback from the Planning Board,” she said.

Brooks pointed out that this proposed project shares a number of common facilities with neighboring Walgreens: water, sewer, gas utilities, common roadways, storm water detention structures, “that are being used by Walgreens as part of the original site plan application that are on this applicant’s property.”

Barton pointed out the new Highway Business District has a few new rules and regulations concerning buffers. He said additional clarity is needed on the tree buffering proposed on the south side between the residential 1 acre zone and the HBD. He also questioned having residential above a gas station and the issue of having truck traffic come in and out close to residents. Brooks pointed out that a station out by Rocking Horse Ranch already has this type of mix, but said she would inform the applicant that this is of concern to the Planning Board.

Barton said, “I just thinks it’s a little strange; it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it and it’s right on a busy highway, but I’m actually OK with it. More important to me and I think the board, would be how the residential kind of blends in with the shop space, visually. I don’t know how the board feels, but I’m sort of hoping that it feels more like a very large house slash apartment building that happens to have a shop downstairs as opposed to a commercial space that has residential on top; just because of where it is, it’s just such high visibility.” Barton noted that right across the street a Stewart’s Shop is coming in the near future that also has gas pumps. He said the Ulster County Planning Board Director Dennis Doyle has commented a number of times, “about the county having had a lot of input with the local Planning Boards and the location of the building and so forth. I am sure you will see some of that here as well.”

Brooks said once she gets, “some kind of conceptual from the Planning Board, we would be looking to set up a Gateway meeting with the county.”

Town Engineer Andrew Learn questioned the marketability of the proposed professional building.

“From what I understand professional buildings are not in high demand at the moment,” he said.

Brooks suggested that perhaps what is needed in the marketplace, “is lots of little pods where people who are working from home and don’t want the kids and the dog in the background, I think maybe we’ll have some new type of office facilities that hopefully start cropping up to accommodate a lot of work from homers.”

Learn said he will check to see if this parcel is in or out of the water/sewer district and believes a traffic study also needs to be done to gauge the impact upon the Route 9W/Chapel Hill Road area, given the amount of proposed and existing development in this immediate area. Brooks said her team is looking at a few alternatives that could help traffic flow in this area.

Brooks said they are providing 64 parking spaces for retail use - four spaces per 1,000 sq/ft - and for residential there is 31.5 sq/ft per one bedroom and for office space there are 23 spaces per 1,000 sq/ft. She said the total is 122, “and we’ve provided 93 because of the cross use of spaces for residential and commercial.”

Planning Board Member Sal Cuciti said, “because I’m only getting a partial view, it looks like there is too much parking and too jammed together like one giant blob of development but I really have to look over the plans.”

Barton characterized this presentation as introductory and suggested that the board tell Brooks, “that we’re not ready to say go just yet. I would say let them chew on it a bit more and have some discussions, off line as well.

Chairman Scott McCarthy invited Brooks back next month in order to allow more time for the board to review the details of the proposed project.