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Editorials
After hearing comments from residents at Monday evening’s public hearing opposing 81 & 3 of Florida’s petition to rezone 8.6 acres of Gateway Centre property for the purpose of developing an eleven building 88 unit rental apartment complex, the Lancaster Town Board will weigh issuing rezone approval for a property they rezoned several years for the same developer.
Neither the developer nor proponents for the project spoke. Three spokespersons for a group of 15 attendees addressed the board on why the rezone should be denied. They made it crystal clear they were not against development on this site, but against the rezone for the project being proposed.
Comments made residents by Lee Chowaniec, Dave Ostrom and Lynn McCarthy concerned the following:
It contradicts the intent of the Master Plan
According to the Town’s Master Plan, which was worked on from 1999 and adopted in 2003, Transit Road was to be designated a commercial corridor, a node used for regional commercial and retail development. The Town and Planning Boards concurred with the consultants’ recommendations that Transit Road be viewed as a logical location for regional scale shopping facilities and increased the setback depth devoted for such uses from 250 feet to 1,000 feet.
After receiving town approval to have somewhere between 15-20 acres of residential property rezoned to GB, with a setback of 1,000 feet, Bella Vista (aka 81 & 3 of Florida) received site plan approval in 2003 to develop Gateway Centre, on 36 acres of property. The site plan was approved for the development of two retail buildings on 21 acres of property totaling approximately 270,000 square feet.
In January 2006, Wal-Mart purchased 24 acres of property from Bella Vista and took the project over. Wal-Mart purchased more property from Bella Vista after that, leaving them with 8.6 acres of property to be developed.
In summary, Mr. Cipolla wanted the land rezoned to build a shopping center. The town approved a master plan that GB’d the Wal-Mart site for commercial purpose. And now Mr. Cipolla wants to change the game again to suit his best interests. This should be considered “spot rezoning” and the petition denied.
Bella Vista (aka 81 & 3 of Florida) created its own hardship
By selling more land to Wal-Mart, Bella Vista created its own hardship. He now declares that he does not have enough property left to interest investors into building a commercial / retail enterprise, and adds that investors tell him that they are not interested in building on this property as the location visibility from Transit Road is limited.
At a Planning Board meeting Mr. Cipolla said: “We actually have a contract with a tenant to occupy this area, but you can’t have a building without a parking lot. This drawing shows the significant impact of the wetlands (north of his site). It becomes an impossibility to put parking in unless someone changed the wetland rules and that ain’t going to happen. So, we can’t use the land as intended,” end of quote.
I would remind the board to consider that the Transit Road Aldi and a second smaller retail store is being developed on 3.3 acres of land and that several of Mr. Cipolla’s strip plaza’s have businesses in them where they are not visible from the main road – the Tops Transit Road plaza being one of them.
The petitioner now proposes 176 parking spaces for an 11 building complex, but states he does not have enough land to build commercially? Doublespeak!
81 & 3 of Florida will only consider building an apartment complex
Although by written requests to the Planning Board, through vocal resident requests and even by requests made by Planning Board members, Mr. Cipolla refuses to consider developing anything other than an apartment complex. Being that it’s his land and his market study indicates an apartment complex is in his best interest, he is of the mind he knows what’s best; for him that’s true.
Citing a police report that shows that in the past two years there were 96 police calls to the Transit Road apartment complex south of Kohl’s (one involved a murder and eight others for gun shots) and 68 calls for the apartment complex on the north side of Kohl’s, I and many other Northwood residents share concerns on such development adjacent to us.
Character of the neighborhood
At the Planning Board meeting, Mr. Cipolla cited several multi-residential dwellings on the Lancaster and Cheektowaga sides of Transit Road. The majority of them was located on the Cheektowaga side and has nothing to do with Lancaster’s master plan and/or the character of the neighborhood within our area. As stated before, Bella Vista wanted GB zoning, got GB zoning and now because of dour economic times or his getting better loan interest rates favor his taking this course of action, should not be cause for granting a rezone.
It is my opinion that Northwood Village properties values would be adversely impacted by an apartment complex development. Our quality of life would also be adversely impacted by such development.
Location of apartment complex
As I brought to light at the last board meeting, there is a retention pond to the north-east that is attracting geese and other varmint. There is substantial waste, feathers and debris in the pond area, and ours as well. And, the apartment complex will be located within a short distance to the pond. As a board member has been heard to say on several occasions, “When future residents look at this area years from now, they will be asking, ‘What the hell were they thinking!”
Before the board renders its decision, there are drainage, sewage, police, traffic, easement and other site plan issues that need their consideration as well.
This is not about NIMBYISM! We know development is coming here. Bella Vista asked for GB zoning, the town made it possible for him to get GB zoning, now they want to change the game. It is the duty of your office to act in the best interests of the community. Granting this rezone is not one of them.
Protection
We are looking for protection from the town should this project be approved. We want you to insure rules, declarations and by-laws are established and binding on the developer and future owners of the proposed complex to make sure this complex does not become a boarding house or slum environment.
We would like to see the complex moved farther north so the buildings line up with the west end of Transit Boulevard to ensure Transit Boulevard is never opened to traffic. It is conditioned in past site plans that the Transit Boulevard stub road would not be opened to Gateway Centre traffic. You are now considering rezoning a rezone. Who’s to say the condition may not be overturned by another board.
Because of the Wal-Mart project we have lost many trees in the conserved area, have felled trees on our property, debris blowing onto our property from the businesses fronting Transit Road and now we face the prospect of another enterprise that could further adversely impact our quality of life and property values. We now have standing water on our property, surcharged ground water, have detention pond drainage issues on our property and air quality issues. Do I move because of development that since occurred because of rezones, being told in the meantime that I should have known better? I don’t want to. Please take this under consideration.
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