Town hires consultant to examine historic site protections

The Town Board has agreed to spend $7,500 to hire the Cultural Landscape Foundation to study whether local historical properties in town need stronger protections than the town’s current zoning regulations.

At a board meeting Monday, Aug. 12, town Planning Board Chairman Michael Trimble said several development applications under reviewed could affect wellknown landscapes in the town.

“Three ... are National Register properties,” he said. “One of the things they’ve been designated for is the landscapes that were created when these things were first built.”

Trimble said town Planning Board members don’t have a background in landscape architecture as part of their historic preservation training.

“As we get more and more development pressure, it becomes more and more important to try and preserve these things,” he said.

“We do environment, we do wetlands, we do historic structures,” Trimble said. “But (for) the actual landscapes that make Rhinebeck ... the rural community that people want to come to, we really don’t

have a lot of guidelines.”

Trimble said the board needs expertise on “exactly how to assess and how to go about working with developers to preserve what is really valuable on these properties, while at the same time allowing them to do what they chose to do with the properties to the extent that we feel is properly balancing the

public need and their need as well.”

Trimble said the applications being reviewed by the Planning Board could have significant impacts on local historical properties, including:

• The Rock Ledge estate

on Ackert Hook Road, the site of the former Daytop Village drug rehabilitation program. Developers want to convert the site’s mansion into condominiums and build condominiums along the property’s carriage trails.

• Grasmere, the site of Livingston Manor, on U.S. Route 9. A proposed project there includes a restaurant and spa.

• Astor Court off of River Road, along with an adjacent property that has frontage on the Hudson River.

The owners are seeking to recreate the Astor Estate.

“To a large extent, through just good fortune, a lot of the landscape features still exist, and the idea is to try to preserve those to the fullest extent we can,” Trimble said.