Steve Thurston (2021)
At left, Adam Fitch, co-owner of King's Tavern in Saratoga Springs, addresses the planning board while Mike Ingersoll, a designer with the LA Group, listens, and Matt Jones of the Jones Steves law firm jots notes. They discussed a development near King's Tavern on Thursday Nov. 16, 2021.
It turns out that King’s Tavern on Union Street in Saratoga Springs actually likes its parking lot, thank-you-very-much, and they like beer deliveries made with the help of large trucks. Bar co-owner Adam Fitch explained this to the Saratoga Springs Planning Board Thursday evening, Nov. 18. He addressed the board with about two dozen supporters from the tavern in attendance behind him in a very packed city council meeting room. Fitch owns the bar with his brothers Patrick and Jason.
The issue is a high-end development planned for the block surrounding King’s Tavern, which Fitch at first incorrectly thought would be a gated community that would restrict driving access completely.
The development includes a central pool and cabana on a pipestem lot between Snyder Lane and Mitchell Street. Access to that portion of the development will be gated, said Mike Ingersoll, a designer with the LA Group, during his presentation to the board.
Snyder Lane, an alleyway behind the bar, will actually be expanded in the development, not gated, if approved.
[Read our earlier coverage of it here.]
That piece of good news did not fully assuage Fitch’s fears as property owned by Stewart’s Shops next door to the bar is in sales negotiations. Once the property is sold, the contract Fitch has to use that property for parking could be rescinded.
As well, he told the board, delivery trucks need space to maneuver, and without the parking lot and with questions about the road, Fitch felt vulnerable.
“I live and feed my family off King’s Tavern,” he said. He questioned the community value of the development, aimed at high-income people who do not call Saratoga Springs home. The purchaser of the properties is developer Jay Hanley of Hanley Development in Nantucket, Mass. (Hanley did not return a request for comment.)
Fitch said the development, placed as close as it is to the Saratoga Race Course, will not be a benefit because it was a “fantasy funland for eight weeks out of the year.”
The Planning Board was pretty much ready to approve the project at the meeting last night when Fitch found his biggest supporter in board member Al Dal Pos who pushed the board to consider the plight of the bar and asked that those concerned work together to find a solution.
The problem that still faces the bar, countered Hanley's representative, Matt Jones of the Jones Steves law firm, is that all the property in question is privately held and houses or multi-family residences can be built on the lots, even if the developer does not try to construct the pool and cabana site.
However, the developer also faces a new challenge. An email from the Department of Public Works that arrived late Thursday afternoon to Ingersoll’s inbox asked that the development widen and repair Snyder Lane fully to East Avenue, even though the development in question does not extend to East Ave.
Dal Pos’s arguments were enough to keep the project from moving forward as he seemed to convince planning board chair Mark Torpey to wait.
Torpey said: “I’d like to wait. I’d like to hold off...I don’t feel comfortable.”
The plan may come back to the board in December.