Hearing tonight on multifamily dwellings
The session is scheduled to start at 6:30p.m. in the Town Hall on Wamsley Place.
HURLEY, N.Y. » The Town Board will hold a public hearing Oct. 26 on revisions to proposed zoning and planning amendments regarding multifamily dwellings.
The hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in the Town Hall, 10 Wamsley Place. The town previously tried unsuccessfully to use a videoconferencing platform for public hearings on the matter.
The town is looking to determine if its attorneys have made any substantial changes to the proposed amendments, which would keep developers Kerry Danenberg and Sarah Russell from moving forward with their plan to convert the former West Hurley Elementary School into a 46unit apartment complex.
The developers’ attorney, James Bacon, has said the proposed amendments are a “thinly veiled” attempt to stop the project.
Town Supervisor John Perry disputed that, saying recently that the town simply is trying to update 50-year-old regulations “so that we can actually have black-and-white language to address any new and/or future development.”
Perry also said applications for two other projects added to the motivation for updating regulations.
“One was the old Terrapin restaurant, which was going to be converted into a four-apartment complex,” he said. “The other was the old St. Joseph Mission
The amendments would limit a multifamily “dwelling building” to four units, which would not impact the Terrapin proposal but would effectively stop the West Hurley school proposal.
Church, which was being looked at to be converted into either condos or subdivided out for other things.”
The amendments would limit a multifamily “dwelling building” to four units, which would not impact the Terrapin proposal but would effectively stop the West Hurley school proposal.
Efforts to put apartments in the former school have been unpopular with residents in the neighborhood, who fear traffic and water supply problems. They also have cited complaints from tenants in other buildings owned by Danenberg and Russell.
In written comments, Bacon said The Hurley Town Board has “made no secret of trying to stop this project....”
T he West Hurley school consists of the 13,406- square-foot Ryan building, built in the 1930s, and the 30,645- squarefoot Levins building, constructed in 1964. They stand on 36.3 acres at 97 Cedar St.
The Onteora school district stopped using the site for classes in June 2004.