Housing project gets OK
CLIFTON PARK, N.Y. » The Planning Board has approved a revised design for a three story apartment building with 39 residential units that will front on Clifton Park Center Road.
This is the first residentialonly project to be approved by the board since the town adopted its Town Center zoning nearly three years ago.
A project from Windsor Development going up along Clifton Country Road includes apartments but will also have space for mixed use and retail business on the lower floors.
After 10 months of discussions between representatives for parcel owner Bob Phillips and a Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) from the town, the board approved the new design Jan. 9.
The project at 451 Clifton Park Center Road will incorporate the apartment units in a single building with a footprint of 23,519-square-feet on the 3.98acre lot. The site is just west of the intersection of Clifton Country Road and Clifton Park Center Road on the north side of the road.
The building site is zoned TC2, (Town Center-2) and is considered an “edge” or transition zone between commercial districts and residential. The building will have three floors of apartments built on top of a ground level parking garage with space for 80 cars. There will be some exterior parking also.
The parking garage is expected to be landscaped in such a way with vegetative buffering on the front side from Clifton Park Center Road that it will be hard to see.
“The TC-2 zoning allows three stories but we give credit for ground level parking,” said town Planning Director John Scavo. “TC-2 should provide more amenities and space for neighbors to interact. It’s primarily residential in nature but it is considered a transition zone.”
Scavo noted that projects in the TC-5 or TC-6 zones, near the center of the Town Center area, may go as high as five stories.
When the project first appeared before the Planning Board in March 2017 the design called for 38 apartments in four, individual, threestory buildings. One of them was to have its access on Wall Street. There was to be an elevated walkway from the Wall Street building to the other three and each apartment unit was to have its own garage.
During the initial discussion Director of Building and Zoning, Steve Myers, said the parcel appeared to be covered by wetlands. Scavo said with the new design incorporating four buildings into one large one, there is no longer a building bisecting the wetland corridor on the northern part of the parcel.
“Going from four buildings to one allowed for the parking underneath,” he said. “There’s less land disturbance so it’s more compact. It preserves more of the land around it with the same density. They aren’t going that deep into the parcel now so they won’t touch that wetland corridor. From a site design standpoint it makes more sense.”
The recorded minutes of the project’s initial appearance before the Planning Board showed board members liked the concept, liked the project, but thought there were tweaks that be made. Scavo said when it was pointed out to the applicant and his representatives that the Town Center Plan allowed for a TAC, he and his architect agreed to work with it on improving the design.
“They agreed to meet the Town Center code as best as possible and the TAC represented us with the applicant,” Scavo said. “The applicant’s design team worked with the TAC to perfect these plans and what was presented last week was the result of those meetings. The (planning) board was very appreciative of the applicant working with us to achieve what we think is the best project you can do at that site.”