LA Group via Saratoga Springs Planning (2021)
The 3D rendering shows the rooming house in the lower left and the horseshoe driveway to its right along Frank Sullivan Place. Nelson Avenue runs along the upper left.
The open field sandwiched between Frank Sullivan Place and Nelson Avenue near the Saratoga Race Track will get a “cottage court”-style development if all goes according to the sketch plan that was presented last week.
Mike Ingersoll of LA Group, the Saratoga Architectural firm, presented a plan for 12 buildings--11 homes and one rooming house--on the empty field just yards from the west end of the track.
In the plan presented, the houses along Nelson would face the street and would look much like the houses already on the block. On the Frank Sullivan side of the property, the developer JW Hemmingway/Witt Construction and CRND Properties, would create a horseshoe-shaped driveway, with greenspace in the center of the horseshoe and homes along the outside. A house currently on Nelson Avenue is not part of the open parcel and would remain.
The rooming house would sit on one corner of the driveway and the road.
Under sketch plans, developers do not bring all of the details, but an outline of their plan.
In this case, Ingersoll was asking the Saratoga Springs Planning Board what they thought of basic design but also another idea to turn the project into a homeowners association, perhaps similar to a condominium. The homes would not sit on individual pieces of land but on shared property, with the footprint of the home being the only portion owned by an individual.
Although the board seemed to like the idea of the plan, they pushed back a bit at the notion of the condominium.
The rezoning necessary to make a condominium work could be troublesome, they said.
The field currently is used during parking at the track and is a cut through in the neighborhood. Ingersoll and the members of the board said the property may have a cut through during the day and fencing or gates to keep people out in the evening.
Sketch plans are early drafts, so no final decisions were made.