Saratoga Hospital has been planning to develop the open space at the corner of Myrtle and Morgan streets in Saratoga Springs since at least 2015, attorney Matt Jones, the hospital’s representative, told the Saratoga Springs Planning Board on Thursday Sept. 30.
The hospital had made a serious attempt then, bringing a Planned Unit Development to the Saratoga Springs City Council, and—in a surprise for the hospital—neighbors not only fought back, they forced two board members to recuse themselves, and the PUD failed.
The exact plan has changed over seven years, Jones told the board, but the hospital is back with a three-phase plan for a 75,000 square foot building and two 15,000 square-foot buildings at the same site.
Then, as now, some in the neighborhood near the location are trying to force the hospital to reconsider.
Alice Smith who lives in a single family home nearby is fighting on two fronts with the help of attorney Claudia Braymer. Although Smith is the only person in the neighborhood retained by Braymer, Smith said other people are helping to support the fight.
One front is on the legal side.
Smith and Braymer are appealing a court ruling against Smith and a small handful of neighbors last year that says the city should have considered the hospital’s overall plan before rezoning almost all of the property to medical office use. The rezoning makes the project much more likely to pass through the planning board. Braymer said the decision may come this spring.
The other front has been progressing at the Planning Board meetings.
The 19.3-acre location is surrounded by a hospital parking lot, a golf course, the Birch Run neighborhood of duplexes and triplexes, a two-storey apartment building, and detached single family homes.
In the current plan, three buildings, parking and landscaping cover 13.8 acres.
Smith sees a problem in the unaccounted for 5.5 acres.
“If there is a commercial area, the tendency is to build to the maximum permitted,” Smith said in an interview last month. She feared that the review would ignore the final 5.5 untouched acres and at some point, the hospital would come back with a plan to fill them.
"We've asked the planning board in our site plan review to review the entire project," Jones said in a subsequent interview.
City attorney Vince DeLeonardis confirmed that the review looks at the full parcel, all 19.3 acres.
[Read our previous coverage here.]
That is not the only angle to consider.
Thursday, Nov. 18, when the project comes before the Saratoga Springs Planning Board again, Braymer said she hopes the planning board will push for a full Environmental Impact Statement.
As “lead agency” in the SEQR—the state’s required environmental review—the planning board still must read through the environmental assessment form submitted by the hospital and determine what more information or what questions they have, said Sue Barden a senior planner with the city. Then the board compares the information to questions on the SEQR Environmental Assessment Form.
The SEQR EAF not only asks about the ecological environment but also the built environment and how the development affects quality of life overall.
According to Barden, at that point, they can make a decision about whether there is a little, a moderate or a heavy impact on the environment.
If they determine a moderate or heavy impact, the hospital could be required to produce the Environmental Impact Study that Braymer and Smith hope for. Braymer said the advantage here is that a full assessment of each problem and a plan for mitigating that problem is required in the EIS.
Particularly, Smith and Braymer have spoken about the blasting required to build the buildings; the increased traffic on the narrow streets in the neighborhood; the look of the buildings themselves as compared to nearby structures; and stormwater mitigation and runoff, among other concerns.
According to Matt Brobston a designer with the LA Group of Saratoga, the plan calls for shielding the buildings from the neighbors with berms and trees. It has on-site stormwater collection and the main building will have a green roof. The hospital is looking at solar collection for part of its power. Overall, the main building should look less institutional and more like the nearby apartment buildings, he said when he presented the plan to the planning board in September.
It goes before the Saratoga Springs Planning Board Thursday Nov. 18.