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1 month ago
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ITHACA, N.Y. — Tuesday was a short meeting for the City of Ithaca Planning and Development board, featuring a Collegetown midrise receiving final approvals to move forward with construction permits, while a lack of Planning Board members stymied a signage plan for a small business. The Planning Board is still seeking members to avoid such situations.
Use this table of contents to navigate to a specific project covered during the meeting. If you have some (or rather, plenty of) extra time to kill or fulfill, the agenda can be viewed here, and the meeting can be watched in full here.
- Site Plan Review
- Sign Review
- 445 E. State Street (formerly 401 E. State Street)
- Collegetown Dispensary (105 Dryden Road)
Site Plan Review
Site Plan Review is the meat of the discussion, where review of new and updated building proposals occurs – more info here. Long story short, projects present initial plans and the Planning Board declares itself Lead Agency to review a project. The proposal undergoes State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR), and if the board considers its impacts effectively mitigated (a negative declaration, or “neg dec”), it can be considered for preliminary and, when all the paperwork’s in order, final Site Plan Approval.
Waters Edge (683 Third Street)
Arnot Realty’s Waters Edge project has been through considerable tumult in the almost two years since it was first proposed. The waterfront project, as originally introduced, would have brought 450 apartments across four buildings and about 10,000 square feet of retail. But the new figure reflects the maximum number of units — 200 — for developments with only one fire access road. A second phase is to be gamed out for planning purposes, but until a second access road is secured, it’s nothing more than a paperwork exercise.
The project team encountered another issue with the plan for the Vecino Group to manage 40 units of lower- to moderate-income housing as part of the project. Vecino pulled out earlier this summer, which surprised both city and Arnot officials.
The latest iteration of the proposal calls for two five-story buildings. The larger 160-unit building would be L-shaped and the amount of retail space has been increased from 1,000 square feet, to 4,000 square feet. The smaller building, originally Vecino’s portion but now slated for market-rate housing, saw its footprint shrink to create more of a landscape and floodplain buffer, but in turn its height increased from four floors to five. Vehicle circulation and parking have also been revised (though still about the same amount of spaces, making 215 total), and metal screening elements have been added to cover the first-floor parking areas.
There were no votes scheduled for the project, just an updated presentation with time to gauge reactions from the Planning Board — a “collaborative discussion,” as Arnot’s Ian Hunter called it. Crystal Ross of Whitham Planning and Design was on hand to give the board the latest on the design updates, with architect Eric Colbert on hand to talk about architectural features. Per Ross, the old plan had the Waterfront Trail only eight feet away from the southeast building, and in the latest iteration, it is 22 feet away.
Much to the board’s dismay, the property insurance carrier for the property has refused to allow access to the undeveloped northern half of the property, as had every other insurer they’ve spoken to. If it’s not access-controlled, insurance companies have said it’s too much liability to undertake. The barbed wire currently on the fence was a Department of Transportation mandate, though it could be toned down with the first phase of development.
Board member Max Pfeffer suggested that pots or plantings be added around the perimeter to “make the area more presentable.”
“I think you’re going in the right direction,” said Vice Chair Elisabete Godden. “I think there are still things you can still be creative about in the perimeter of the fence, with plantings and murals and public art, that may not add to your insurance risk. I hope you will come up with some ideas to present to us, because I’m not in support of keeping the fence how it is.”
In contrast, board members were supportive of the larger retail space, which they had long been pushing for.
“The retail space makes perfect sense on the corner there,” said Chair Emily Petrina. Pfeffer continued to be skeptical of the “economic viability” of the space, however.
Overall, the board was supportive of the revised plans, though members wanted more details before expressing full support for the plans. The project will be back for further discussion next month.
215 College Avenue
Developers Nick Robertson and Charlie O’Connor are teaming up to demolish an existing apartment house located at 215 College Avenue and construct a single seven-story residential building.
As planned, the 71,362 square-foot building would hold 84 residential units ranging from studio to three-bedroom apartments, with 150 bedrooms total, along with 4,107 square feet of amenity space and a rooftop terrace. The project includes a public plaza along College Avenue and landscaping.
As a through lot, the property has frontage on both College Avenue and Linden Avenue and experiences a significant grade change from northwest to southeast. The project will require area variances and is subject to the Collegetown Design Guidelines. On the agenda for this month was that coveted vote of preliminary and potential final site plan approval.
Consulting architect Noah Demarest led the board through the updates. As Demarest explained, the 1,500 square-foot roof amenity has an “activity zone,” a bar/grill space, and a lounge area with pergola — none of the roof features are particularly visible from ground level. The entire perimeter has a railing for fall protection, with a sedum green roof buffer. There will be interior-projection lighting and security cameras for safety — city code requires lighting to be “dark sky” compliant.
The board was generally favorable to the details shared.
“This is a really nice space for people who don’t want to be out at Collegetown bars,” noted the board’s Sutcliffe. “Having lived in New York City for a long time, I love a good roof deck.”
However, Petrina was still concerned about the photometrics — the light spillover from the roof.
“I’m still ready to approve it, I feel like it could be a condition where the photometric [light quantification] plan shows what it is past the parapet [roof edge], so it shows the drop off beyond the building,” Petrina said.
Planning Director Lisa Nicholas lauded the design, but was still concerned about noise carrying from the rooftop at late hours.
“We know most of the neighbors surrounding this property and our reputation is on the line. If this building becomes an issue, then we need to shut it down, we’ll need to start restrictions,” O’Connor told the board. The board did debate a stipulation a “cut-off time” for rooftop use that coincided with the bars at 1 a.m., but decided to leave it to the Planning Department’s discretion. With that and the photometrics stipulation added to the resolution, preliminary and final approval was granted unanimously 4-0.
Grinspoon Hillel at Cornell (722 University Avenue)
Plans for the Steven K. and Winifred A. Grinspoon Hillel Center for Jewish Community at Cornell University call for the construction of a three-story, approximately 23,190 square-foot building with a 5,665 square-foot footprint on a vacant 0.47-acre parcel of land owned by Cornell.
The cultural center will have four floors with one floor below ground, comprised of spaces for educational, cultural, Jewish and interfaith religious programs, along with a bevy of other spaces for activities. On the agenda for this month was the project’s determination of environmental significance — a negative declaration, meaning there is no significant impact, would allow the project to pursue site plan approval at next month’s meeting.
This project’s time before the board could not have been more than five minutes. Whitham’s Crystal Ross returned with a short presentation regarding project updates, showing the lighting plan and outdoor fixtures and the photometric plan. The board was generally supportive and had little further comment. The negative declaration passed unanimously 4-0. The project will be back for potential site plan approval in October.
Sign Review
Signage proposals, while seemingly minor, are always liable to animate the Planning Board. There were two submissions this month. First off, the sign package planned for “Theory Ithaca,” the 376-unit apartment building under construction on what used to be a large surface parking lot on the east end of Downtown Ithaca.
The board decided last month’s proposed signage package was simply too much, so the project team deleted the creekside “blade”-style sign, changed the State Street sign from illuminated to backlit, and reduced the archway entrance sign from 75 square feet to 50 square feet.
Brian Bouchard of CHA Consulting Inc. presented before the board. Despite the toned down signage, members remained unpersuaded but the sign package. “I remain a ‘no’ on any backlit signs,” said Sutcliffe. The other members largely agreed.
Petrina also expressed concerns that the signs would conflict with the Alpha Phi Alpha commemorative site next door. While she was willing to approve the archway sign, but wanted one of the blade signs eliminated. The board members didn’t even like the font of the “Theory” signage — though that is outside their purview.
In short, the board made it clear they were not ready to approve the submission. Bouchard said he would head back to the owners to discuss their options.
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The Collegetown Dispensary, a cannabis dispensary planned for 105 Dryden Road, which some of you might remember as the neighborhood Subway restaurant in a bygone era, also came forward with a signage request.
The politics of dispensaries aside, the owners ran afoul of the Planning Department for putting up non-compliant signage. Planning staff did not approve the two wall signs the applicant erected. As the applicant has the legal right to, they are now appealing the staff’s decision to take them down for being too big, and are asking the Planning Board for approval of the two wall signs.
Additionally, the applicants have two window decals that they installed without a sign permit so will need to apply retroactively for a permit. If they are retaining all four signs, they will then need variances for the two wall signs. Planning staff have no objections with the window decals as far as design.
“This is a new process for me. I was not aware that we had to go through the Planning Board approval in Collegetown. We had been given guidance that signs in Collegetown didn’t need approval, which was clearly poor advice,” said business owner Karli Miller-Hornick.
The signage isn’t lighted, and the board was fine with the font. The board’s Pfeffer agreed that the “Carnelian Red” clashed with the building, and Sutcliffe felt the sign was too big and only one sign in the transom windows was necessary. As often happens with signage, the project team received significant pushback to the size and scale of signage.
“Just due to the advertising restrictions that we have on cannabis dispensaries in the state of New York, getting the word out that a dispensary exists is extremely challenging. One of the only options that we do have is clear signage,” Miller-Hornick said. “It would be really unfortunate, the business is brand new, it’s struggling a little bit, and we really do need to get the word out and get signage on the building.”
The board was willing to accept the color as the branding, and one transom window sign. The window decals, which are low visibility, were acceptable.
Miller-Hornick said she’d accept that, but unfortunately, the board couldn’t agree on color. With a bare quorum, there was no way they could move forward with a vote, and the matter was tabled.
“If we had more people, then it would be a different story,” Petrina said.
Four votes are needed to approve, but considering there are only five members, one of whom (Andy Rollman) was absent last night. When boards are understaffed, these things happen.
Other Business
In other business, Planning Director Lisa Nicholas stated that she had encouraged the county to bring its Center of Government to the Planning Board for comments, but it was her understanding that would likely not happen. She asked the board if she could write an additional letter on their behalf encouraging them to do it for the sake of openness, to which the board was amenable.
There was also discussion of proposed zoning ordinance changes regarding Site Plan Review. Primarily, the changes were language tweaks and some clarity on Board of Zoning Approvals and Planning Board roles, but one of the details shared by Planner Nikki Cerra was that projects with 14 housing units or less may be approved at the staff level if they feel adverse impacts are otherwise adequately mitigated. This would streamline the review of small residential projects like “missing middle” housing.
