ITHACA, N.Y. — There was no meeting of the City of Ithaca Planning Board last month, but the board made up for lost time on Tuesday with a five-hour long meeting that featured the Planning Board’s introduction to the initial Downtown Neighborhood Plan proposal.
The meeting’s length could largely be attributed to the prolonged discussion over Cornell University’s Meinig Fieldhouse proposal, which has been scrutinized by local environmental advocates over its proposed inclusion of an artificial turf field. A similar proposal from Ithaca College drew protests last year, though the field was eventually approved and is now in use.
The fieldhouse proposal drew dozens of speakers in favor and against, and due to the length and complexity of the debate, it will be covered in a subsequent article.
Read on for this month’s meeting summary, which can be watched here. The agenda for the meeting is available here.
To note: Former chair Mitch Glass has left for a work sabbatical, and longtime member Emily Petrina has taken over the Chair’s role. While the board still has a vacancy on its seven-seat roster, new to the board this month is Jennie Sutcliffe, who brings a background in public health and emergency preparedness.
Special Agenda Item: Overview of the Downtown Plan
Deviations from the standard Planning Board meeting are uncommon, but occasionally items of interest may be brought before the Planning Board by city staff. In this case, senior city planner Yamila Fournier opened Tuesday’s meeting with an overview of the Downtown Neighborhood Plan.
Following the adoption of a new citywide Comprehensive Plan in 2015, the city moved forward with neighborhood-specific plans as part of a long-term second phase of urban planning. Previous neighborhood plans have focused on the Waterfront and Southside.
The Downtown Plan has been in the works for over five years, though the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on meetings until early 2023. The plan’s boundaries envelop Downtown Ithaca, the State Street Corridor, and the West End. Downtown is the traditional urban core, West End is the secondary core, and State Street is the major commercial artery that connects them.
The draft Downtown Plan can be seen here — while it’s been developed by neighborhood focus groups, it still has to go through Public Hearings and open houses. Revisions will be made as needed before it is sent to Common Council for its review and potential endorsement.
This has been a slow process, as the other neighborhood plan formulations were. As for Tuesday, since the Planning Board reviews all sizable city real estate projects and has to consider zoning in those reviews, Planning Director Lisa Nicholas was there to gather their thoughts on the proposed guidance document.
While broad and encompassing, for anyone who’s been reading development news over the past decade, the document does not call for groundbreaking change. It keeps these neighborhoods on the same general course the city has been heading — dense, walkable with bus/bike infrastructure, protected historic structures, incentivized lower-income and supportive housing, and encouraged redevelopment of surface parking and underutilized parcels.
Programmatically, it suggests a form-based zoning code for downtown, wider sidewalks and tree lawns, design guidelines for the West End, finishing the downtown parking study, and better connectivity to Six Mile Creek as a public amenity.
Fournier noted that the Planning Department was pleased with the public engagement, as over 1,400 people completed the downtown survey to help establish which issues were more pressing and what goals were greater priorities. If there are no issues that arise during review, Common Council could vote to adopt the plan as an official guidance document by the end of the calendar year.
The board had nothing but kind words for the plan.
“I looked at the plan, I think it’s really an exciting and incredible document, and I’m excited about the potential,” commented board member Andy Rollman. The board and Common Council will likely continue the review over the next few months.
Site Plan Review
Following subdivisions and the customary public comment period to start each meeting, the Planning Board delved into Site Plan Review (SPR), the meeting segment where new and updated building proposals are reviewed. Rather than give the same spiel about procedural details every month, the “Site Plan Review Primer” can be found here.
116 North Meadow Street
While CSD Housing’s plan to construct a new 70-unit affordable (50-60% area median income) and integrated supportive housing project on the West End was approved back in February, the project returned Tuesday due to a pair of design changes. The project team wished to reduce its footprint to accommodate the work zones, as well as raise the building one foot for flood mitigation, which impacts entry stairs and ramps.
Whitham Designer Graham Feltham and Passero Associates’ Kamillah Ramos presented the changes, which do not include any changes in unit counts. They said the building footprint change had been requested by officials from the state Department of Transportation and NYSEG, who asked for the elimination of the eastern facade bump-out to allow a 10-foot distance from the nearby power lines. The height change is in response to what will likely be the finalized revised FEMA flood map.
Developer Rob Cain said they have over $12 million from the state committed towards the project, as well as county funds from the Community Housing Development Fund. The last funding component from NYS HCR needs a final plan submitted by Sept. 18, hence their trip to the board for revisions. If that is approved, construction will start next year.
Most of the board found no major issues with the changes, though they were unhappy about NYSEG’s requested changes.
Rollman was disappointed the building was pulled back from Meadow Street, and wanted the east facade “enlivened.” Cain acknowledged there may have been minor errors in the rendering provided to the board Tuesday that could be clarified, and board members said they were comfortable with planning staff monitoring the project without further input.
With that, the board approved the revisions unanimously 5-0, with member Daniel Correa absent.
Waters Edge (683 Third Street)
Arnot Realty’s expansive waterfront project was back before the Planning Board on Tuesday. The project team proposed demolishing three existing Department of Transportation maintenance buildings to redevelop the 8+ acre site into a mixed-use development.
The proposal includes two five-story buildings along Cayuga Inlet and two 4-story buildings inland, with approximately 452 residential units total and about 10,000 square feet of commercial space. Twenty percent of the housing would be set aside for those making 80% of area median income or less, and 18 of those units would be set aside for the “frail elderly” population, as shared at the last Planning Board meeting.
The project will be constructed in two phases over 34 months, with approximately 200 units built in the first phase and about 252 units in the second phase. Each phase includes a waterfront building and an inland building.
The waterfront buildings will be connected by a second-floor roof terrace and will include a mix of parking, commercial, residential and amenity/service space on the first floor, with apartments and additional amenities above. The two inland buildings will include a mix of residential units and amenity service space, and various site improvements are planned as well.
This project is large and complex. The project team has been hoping to avoid a positive declaration on their SEQR/CEQR determination, which would force the team to put together a lengthy Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) before reaching the approval stage.
As reported over the past few months, the Planning Board has mixed opinions on the idea, and the final determination of environmental significance remains uncertain. Tuesday’s meeting focused on aesthetic, visual and architectural design impacts.
Arnot Realty’s Ian Hunter presented new visualizations to the board, which included massings for City Harbor and Cayuga Park. With those similarly sized buildings included, the Waters Edge complex doesn’t stand out as much in the new development around the waterfront. Viewsheds, cross-sections of the waterfront trail, and internal renders were also presented to the board.
Hunter shared physical samples of the facade material, which is thermally-treated pine wood that will be laid in a regular, not uniform, pattern over the sheathing — “like Legos,” as he put it. The buildings have hardly changed design since first presented, which is rather unusual for Ithaca’s notoriously scrutinous environmental reviews. The traffic study is ongoing with the state’s blessing, and additional soil testing is underway.
Prompted by a question from Vice Chair Elisabete Godden, Hunter noted they had given verbal approval for an easement for emergency vehicle access through the rowing center next door, though it would take a few months to finalize given the need for another railroad crossing.
While there were slight concerns about color weathering and pedestrian and bike safety, the most common comment from board members focused on the “flatness” of the building facades. The board liked the building’s form, but felt the exteriors lacked articulation, which made the buildings come off as more impassive. It wasn’t a deal-breaker for board members, but they did feel more work was necessary.
Adam Walters, the consulting attorney for the city, explained that he felt the situation was coming to a major fork in the road, and that the time was coming to make it clear to the developer whether or not they would need to do an Environmental Impact Statement.
“It’s really a question for the board,” Walters said. “But I think sometime soon, we’ll need to come to a determination on whether this is working, or whether we need to think about doing something else. Ultimately, it is your decision on how you want to approach it.”
With Walters’ comments weighing on the decision, the schedule calls for design review to be done at a future meeting, and the emergency access and traffic pieces will be brought in as soon as they are ready. The emergency access and traffic elements will need to be ready by that time, because otherwise the board will have their hands tied legally and have to issue a positive declaration, triggering the ask for an EIS.
Walters was non-committal, noting he had just finished a 3.5-year process to get a rail crossing easement with CSX at another location.
The SEQR process cannot legally be paused. As Board Chair Emily Petrina noted, it sounds like the decision of whether or not to request an EIS will need to be made soon, with a potential “straw poll” during the board’s next meeting.
Cornell Duffield Hall Expansion (116 Hoy Road)
Lastly from the Site Plan Review portion of the August agenda, Cornell University is proposing a four-story, 46,340 square-foot building addition to the existing four-story Phillips Hall on the campus’ Engineering Quad. The addition, with new research labs and instructional spaces, serves to connect the existing Duffield and Phillips Halls, and the entire complex upon completion will be referred to as Duffield Hall.
This might be one of a very few occasions where the project team asked to delay because it was so late in the night. At 10:50 p.m., nearly five hours into the meeting, everyone was too tired to properly discuss, and the project team nor the board decided the agenda item was pressing enough to be discussed Tuesday. The project will return at the end of the month for the board’s next meeting.
Special Permits
Special Permits are fairly uncommon and are typically triggered for unusual property uses in certain zones, usually lower-density residential areas. In this case, the Downtown Ithaca Children’s Center (DICC) is proposing to use the ground floor of 201 East Tompkins Street in Fall Creek for a Pre-K afterschool care program.
Most Fall Creekers still know this building as Tony Serviente’s former artisanal glass studio, but since 2021, the 2,569 square-foot ground floor has been used as a fitness studio, which also required a Special Permit.
The studio has outgrown the space, and the Children’s Center wants to move in, with afterschool care until 5:30 p.m. Monday-Friday, and from 7:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. during school breaks. The project is in the R‐2B Zoning District, which allows neighborhood commercial and service facilities via special permit.
DICC representative Krista Tripp stressed they are a licensed provider that is striving to fill a need for 18 pre-kindergarten children and their families. The school district would bus the children to the site, where they would be received by staff.
There were a few speakers during the public hearing. One of Tripp’s colleagues at the Children’s Center spoke in favor of the project, while one comment in opposition came from a neighbor who was concerned the children would play loud music and disturb his pitbull. The last came from Serviente himself, the building owner, who was in favor of the project. As Serviente quipped, “Four year-olds aren’t going to have Pelotons and hardcore workout music.”
The board has to conduct the full gamut of environmental review, public hearing and site plan review. The modest nature of most Special Permits usually makes it a quick process, but in this case, there was a delay in paperwork that will push the review to next month.
The project involves no physical exterior changes, and city staff are keen on providing childcare facilities to support working families in the city. It also helps the applicant’s case that the childcare program isn’t open for nearly as many hours in a week as the gym was. All signs point to approval for this project, but that will have to wait until the end of the month.
Board of Zoning Appeals Recommendations
There were four items on the agenda this month to review for potential recommendations in favor or against as they head to the Board of Zoning Appeals early next month. Two of the four items were for residential modifications, both of which were approved.
The other two were for commercial properties: changes to telecommunications equipment on the Eddygate Plaza on Dryden Road, which was approved, and signage for Steve Shannon Tire & Auto, which purchased the former Trombley Tire business on West State Street. The board objected to the size of the Shannon signs, saying they did not fit into the rest of the neighborhood.
The post Planning Board gets first look at Downtown Neighborhood Plan appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.