Farm to Market Road development given approval

Plan provides for 91-lot residential development

HALFMOON, N.Y. >> After several years of review, the Town Board has approved legislation allowing a 91-lot residential development on the site of the former Mott Farm, home to the originator of Mott’s Applesauce.

The board approved the legislation creating the Mott Orchard Planned District Development at 165 Farm to Market Road at its Oct. 2 meeting. The development of the 97-acre parcel will put homes on both sides of the road.

The developer for the project is Beacon Homes.

The proposed development of the former farm has been the cause of continued concern for neighbors living immediately to the west of the property. They find the continuing loss of the area’s once abundant farms to be discouraging.

At the Oct. 2 meeting Beacon Homes’ engineering consultant, Joel Bianchi of MJ Engineering and Land Surveying presented the board with revised plans. The revisions include additional vegetative buffering between the two properties.

A “paper street” between the two parcels will be placed on the Mott Orchard PDD plot plan should the neighboring site to the west ever be developed.

Of more concern to neighbors living to the north of the Mott development was the revision putting an actual connector street between the Mott Orchard project and the newly developed Howland

Park subdivision. Howland Park resident Darren Phelps asked why a “paper street” had become a three-dimensional connector street.

“When Howland Park was approved it was approved with a paper street or stub connection,” said town Planning Director Richard Harris. “If the day came that Mott Orchard was developed, it would become a public street and offer alternative routes of access between Johnson Road and Farm to Market Road to help ease the burden and provide people from both developments a third alternative route. From a planning standpoint, for traffic mitigation and congestion at a peak hour, it is a pretty basic principle of transportation planning and land use development that the more options people in a residential subdivision have the less individual burden from a one road network.”

Without the connection to the subdivision to the north and without a second entrance from Farm to Market Road Harris said the Mott Orchard project would become one big culde-sac.

Harris noted the safety aspects for both subdivisions as well.

“From an Emergency Services standpoint and my 20 years’ experience, the more options for police, fire, and ambulance to get to a neighborhood, the most direct route is always a positive aspect of a development,” he said. “If you didn’t make the connection to Howland Park emergency access would all have to go to Farm to Market Road. I think that it is sound planning and consistent with the town’s previous planning of Howland Park to make the public connection and to provide options to residents.”

Phelps was unconvinced. He asked that a traffic study is done to see if the streets in the Howland Park subdivision would become through streets for commuters trying to get to and from Route 9.

“You are dumping a development into a development,” he said. “You are doubling the traffic into Howland Park. That’s why we were pushing for the emergency access only, but a full blown road, you are just doubling the traffic.”

In answer to Phelps’ concern, Supervisor Kevin Tollisen said the town would follow the recommendations of its Planning Department, its Highway Department and the Saratoga County Planning Department.

Mike Hutchins, a neighbor of Phelps who lives across Gorsline Drive from him and near the spot of the connection, asked Tollisen if the plans for the connector could be revisited should traffic be heavier than expected.

“I’ve been on the Town Board as Supervisor for five years and I have not heard of that,” Tollisen said. “I do not know if it has ever been done. My opinion to you is that they would not change that, don’t count on that. If you are asking the question would that ever come out, the answer is most likely no.”

The Mott Orchard PDD now moves to the Planning Board for additional site plan review.