Board endorses zoning adjustment for The Kingstonian
The city Planning Board has endorsed a request to rezone a portion of the Uptown property where the proposed mixed-use development known as The Kingstonian is proposed.
The board on Monday unanimously adopted a resolution in support of adding a parcel at 51 Schwenk Drive to the city’s Mixed Use Overlay District. The recommendation will be sent to the Common Council, which has the final say about zoning matters.
The rezoning would allow the entire Kingstonian project to fall within the city’s Mixed Use Overlay District and allow for rental housing on the site.
Planning Board member Robert Jacobsen said he had no issue with the rezoning request. He said the property’s original zoning does not make sense when one looks at the map of the area. The parcel is too small to develop commercially on its own, he said.
The Common Council voted earlier this month to refer the rezoning request to the Planning Board, the city’s Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Ulster County Planning Board for comment before it acts on the request.
The Historic Landmarks Preservation Commission last week declined to comment on the request, according to city Assistant Corporation Counsel Daniel Gartenstein.
The county Planning Board has not yet discussed the matter.
If the rezoning is approved, the 0.313-acre site at the corner of Schwenk Drive and Fair Street Extension would be added to the city’s Mixed Use Overlay District. That land would join a 0.488acre parcel, owned by The Kingstonian development team, that already is in the zoning district. The two parcels are adjoining, and the developers have proposed revising the lot line between them as part of The Kingstonian project. That proposal remains before the city Planning Board, along with the project’s site plan.
In the request for rezoning, the developers said the change would not constitute “spot zoning” because the parcel abuts the Mixed Use Overlay District.
According to the City Code, Mixed Use Overlay
Zoning districts have two underlying purposes. One is to adaptively reuse existing commercial and industrial buildings to provide multifamily rental housing, including affordable housing. The other is to encourage mixeduse, mixed-income, pedestrian-based neighborhoods.
The Kingstonian project does not include a proposal for affordable housing, which some critics have decried.
First proposed in September 2017, The Kingstonian to be built on two sites at the corner of Fair and North Front streets, including the location of the city’s former Uptown parking garage. An open-air pedestrian plaza would be built over a portion
of Fair Street Extension. That portion of the road, between Schwenk Drive and North Front Street, would be closed to through traffic.
The Kingstonian is to comprise 129 market-rate apartments for rent, 8,000 square feet of restaurant and retail space, a 32-room boutique hotel, the pedestrian plaza, a footbridge crossing Schwenk Drive between the new development and Kingston Plaza,
and 420 parking spaces, of which at least 250 would be for public use.
The project’s cost is expected to exceed $52 million, more than $46 million of which would come from private funding. The project is to receive $3.8 million from the $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative grant awarded to Kingston by New York state, as well as other government funding.