ITHACA, N.Y. — It was a busy meeting for the Planning and Economic Development Committee on Wednesday evening, if not one of their high-profile gatherings. A few potential ordinances came up for discussion, including downzoning on the State Street Corridor, accessory apartment regulations, and the potential inconveniences of living near the wastewater plant.
Feel free to look at the agenda here and follow along with the summaries below.
Debating West State/MLK Jr. Street Rezoning
The debate over the West State Street downzoning came as the result of the proposed project at 510 West State/MLK Jr. Street. Local firm Visum Development submitted plans for an all-affordable 77-unit apartment building with ground-floor retail, but the issue wasn’t the use so much as the design.
The project would be the first to take advantage of a 2013 rezoning that allowed for six-story, 60-foot tall buildings without mandatory parking on the West State/MLK Jr. Street corridor. However, while it was designed with the assumption that others would fill in with time, meaning there were multi-story blank walls highly visible from West State Street and looming over the one- and two-story neighbors; and given that it’s the first in six years of the zoning in place, it could be a while before those blank walls are blocked by other buildings. From an aesthetic standpoint, the planning department was less than enthused.
The revised zoning, which affects the 300, 400 and 500 Blocks of West State Street, will allow only a five-story structure (maximum height 52 feet) with a mandatory 15-foot setback from West State/MLK Jr. Street. The streetfront will be allowed up to three floors (32 feet) before triggering the setback and stepping back from the curb. The intent is to minimize the curbside bulk.
Originally, as an affordable housing incentive, projects with 20% of units at 80% of area median income or less would have been allowed one more floor for a six-floor maximum. However, the latest writing walked that back. The affordable housing incentive would not be explicitly codified, and a project would have to go through a Planned Unit Development application and Common Council approval before heading over to the Planning Board for the usual environmental review. In short, they can pursue the extra floor if it’s affordable housing and the city encourages that, but approval of the extra floor in exchange for the housing would not be the implied done deal that it was before.
Since PUDs are do-it-yourself zoning, they could choose whatever setback and height they want, as long as Common Council is willing to sign off on it. The tradeoff is that a developer of a six-story building has to go through months of Common Council critique to do a project regardless of the amount of affordable housing, which makes the affordable component discussion somewhat moot apart from a statement of encouragement in the proposal that “hey, affordable housing would be swell and we might maybe possibly sign off on an extra floor, but don’t count on it”.
The handful of public comments were generally in favor of the downzoning. “I’m really so glad you’re doing everything you can to preserve it, otherwise you get these blocks of housing that are kinda soulless … sometimes it makes sense to take a step backwards,” said Belle Sherman resident Ann Sullivan.
Susan Holland, the director of Historic Ithaca, said they are not against the new development, but “we support the changes as proposed by the Planning Department. It would be keeping with the historic character of the neighborhood and the streetscape.”
Committee discussion was brief, mostly just about clarifications. The committee voted unanimously (3-0, with two absent) to send the proposed downzoning on to the full Common Council for a vote of approval and enactment into law next month. It’s not clear if the 510 West State/MLK Jr. proposal is grandfathered in, given that it’s already in Planning Board review.
Changes for Special Permits for accessory apartments
The PEDC also reviewed some changes to the city’s Special Permits regulations, particularly in regards to accessory apartments, which are like the in-law units one might find in larger homes. They can’t be bigger than 33% of the house’s square footage, and if above a garage or otherwise outside the owner-occupied main building (accessory structures are a grey area in zoning), they’re limited to one unit on the property, with no more than two bedrooms.
The substantive permit changes are that a homeowner no longer has to live in a house for five years as a prerequisite to applying for an in-home accessory apartment special permit, but neither the main unit or the accessory can have more than one unrelated person living within their walls. These changes are not related to new infill building construction, which resulted in some confusion during the public hearing. There’s a reason for that — new residential infill buildings aren’t accessory units or buildings under city code (they’re primary), which is one of the many reasons why they want to address the very concept of infill this year.
“A few changes have been made, but it’s not a change to what was already existing. The definition of an accessory apartment is another part of the code that’s not being touched, and it has an owner-occupancy requirement,” stated councilwoman Cynthia Brock (D-1st Ward). “All of these [infill] questions will be dealt with, just not under the Special Permit.”
City planner Lisa Nicholas summarized the revision process for the committee and audience.
“Special Permits are permits allowed by zoning but have Special Conditions, they require another level of review. The BZA (Board of Zoning Appeals) used to issue special permits. Last year, that power was changed to the Planning Board, because a lot of the issues are planning issues – traffic, will this have a environmental impact, and so on. That board change was made, but some of the conditions weren’t, so these applications were coming in but were hard to implement. So we had to go through the code, it was kind of a mess, and we reorganized it to make it easy to read and make it follow with what the Planning Board does.”
The PEDC voted to send the accessory unit revisions to Common Council unanimously.
Up For Discussion: Property owners living within 1,200 feet of Ithaca Wastewater Treatment Facility on west side of Route 13 may have to inform future homebuyers/rental tenants of hazards and discomforts
Up for a motion to circulate for discussion was a disclosure ordinance for the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment facility. As originally written, anyone living within 1,200 feet of the IAWWTF property would be required to inform all future homebuyers and rental tenants of the hazards and discomforts of living near the plant. To quote:
“If the property in which you are taking an interest is located near the IAWWTF, or included within the IAWWTF Setback Zone, you may be subject to inconveniences or discomfort arising from such operations. Such may include, but may not necessarily be limited to: odors, trucks, lighting, construction, noise, fumes, dust, smoke, discharge, operation of machinery during any 24 hour period, storage and disposal of biosolids and trucked waste, and the application of chemicals, amendments. One or more of the inconveniences described may occur as a result of any operation which is in conformance with existing laws and regulations and accepted customs and standards. If you live near the IAWWTF, you should be prepared to accept such inconveniences and discomfort as a normal and necessary aspect of living in proximity to a waste water treatment facility.”
The proposal was later revised to the west side of Route 13, because otherwise one ensnares and likely upsets several dozen existing Northside and Fall Creek homeowners and landlords. The revised version targets the Carpenter Park property, City Harbor, the NYS DOT site the county wants to have developed, and a few other waterfront and near-waterfront properties like Aldi, the Farmers Market and the building supply store.
Councilor Cynthia Brock (D-1st), who has been critical in discussions of waterfront development projects and sits on the inter-municipal IAWWTF Joint Sewer Committee, has been spearheading the effort to get the disclosure ordinance enacted. “We recognize that we’re not going to stop nuisance complaints, but property owners should notify their tenants and purchasers of the negative impact and will do their due disclosure,” said Brock.
During the public hearing, the lone commenter was Ithaca town board member and IAWWTF committee member Rich DePaolo, who spoke in favor of the disclosure ordinance.
“I think it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for, it’s better that not not saying anything to people who are not doing their due diligence…the only thing that we’re protecting against is the truth from being disclosed. Speaking on behalf of my other Town of Ithaca members, we are strongly in support for sending this to Council, and anything less would be seen as a slap in the face. We need to be taken seriously.”
Councilwoman Donna Fleming (D-3rd) asked why the IAWWTF is unique in terms of requiring a disclosure for every residential sale and lease. Brock replied that this was an industrial area with residential encroaching onto it, and called it “an opportunity to put forward this educational feature…[t]he townhomes that Costa [Lambrou] is proposing at City Harbor, I expect they’ll sell for half a million. We’re talking about high-end real estate with high-end expectations of comfort that may not coincide with industrial use.”
City Attorney Ari Lavine said the disclosure itself wasn’t a legal issue, but did have two issues with the wording, stating they went beyond educational. One was the statement about proper standards, because calling something proper standards is a vague concept that could vary from plants from city to city. The other was that attempts to legally codify the wastewater treatment operations as a nuisance may not stand up in the courts.
Committee Chair Seph Murtagh (D-2nd) had some concerns with the proposed wording of the disclosure, calling it “terrifying”. “The Farmer’s Market is right there. This makes it sound like it’s a health emergency. I worry about what it will do for potential renters and buyers, and that we may be spreading alarm and fear unnecessarily. I know wastewater treatment plants can be noisy and smell, but this is very strong language.” City Planning Director JoAnn Cornish agreed.
“I think it’s an accurate depiction of activities,” Brock said in response, but followed up with saying she would be open to a slight softening of language. “It’s not dangerous, it’s an industrial use.”
The vote to circulate for city staff and public comment passed unanimously.