As expected, the Saratoga Springs City Council passed the Unified Development Ordinance and rejected the Marion Avenue PUD on Tuesday Dec. 21.
[Read our recent coverage of it here.]
Mayor Meg Kelly thanked the staff especially her Deputy Mayor Lisa Shields and attorney Vince DeLeonardis for their work on the UDO. It's a document that totally revises zoning in the city.
“It is probably the biggest legislation that we have been doing,” she said.
During discussion before the vote Commissioner of Public Works, Anthony “Skip” Scirocco, said he still had concerns about the city’s gateways and protection of the city’s greenbelt. Because of the pandemic, he thought people did not come to public hearings as much as much they might have. He voted against.
Commissioner of Public Safety Robin Dalton also voted against, citing among her concerns the fact that a new board is coming in January, that only one person, Scirocco, will remain on the board, and was voting no.
Commissioner of Accounts John Franck said he found the arguments made by the organization Sustainable Saratoga, which had many problems with the UDO, “absurd” and that the UDO can be adjusted if needed in the future.
The vote was three for and two against.
“The matter passes. Thank you to my staff,” Kelly said.
With that vote came a change that Stewart’s Shops can use in a redevelopment of their site on Marion Avenue, just north of the intersection with Route 50.
Although the Marion Ave PUD that Stewart’s Shops proposed was voted down, the ability of the convenience store chain to redevelop the property has not gone away.
Charles “Chuck” Marshall with Stewart’s Shops says they are planning for redevelopment.
“[The PUD’s] failure is more a let down to the overall city than it is to Stewart's,” Marshall said in an interview earlier today. "Stewart's will be able to relocate and make the customer experience better.”
They are still planning a new Stewart’s Shop at the location where the Marion Avenue Mobil is. Stewart's owns the Mobil Station and property surrounding it.
With the UDO effective April 2022, liquor stores will be an acceptable use at that location, Marshall said, so they will bring both the Stewart’s Shop and the liquor store to Marion Avenue from the current Maple Dell location.
The Stewart’s Shops will be about 4,000 square feet, he said, but the liquor store has not been sized.
The current carwash, a point of contention with the Maple Dell neighborhood across the street, will remain in its location, and the mouth of it will still face the neighborhood.
"As of today, we're just keeping that building there,” Marshall said. It is an allowable use under current zoning.
Commissioners also talked about the problems with traffic at the intersection. Marshall said the current plans do not have any traffic mitigation measures, per se, but moving all the commercial elements to one side of the street should help. Also, the driveways in the redesign will move away from the intersection of Marion Avenue and Route 50.
"Our driveways will be far north of that,” Marshall said.
The news that the Stewart’s Shop is leaving Maple Dell, may be good news for residents of the Maple Dell neighborhood.
“We want the store out of the neighborhood,” said resident John Iacoponi after the Tuesday evening vote. He has been instrumental in the fight against the PUD.
He said the neighborhood had a couple serious issues with the PUD. If the PUD succeeded, the carwash would move and be even closer to the city’s greenbelt, Iacoponi said.
But a bigger issue might have been that a residentially zoned parcel of land near other houses in the neighborhood was set to become commercially zoned with a number of allowable uses, none of which the community wanted, Iacoponi said.
He said that it is unheard of to turn residentially zoned property commercial. He said commissioners would not allow it to happen in their neighborhoods.
He asked: “Why do it on our street when you wouldn’t do it on another residential street?”