Lifestyle back in town; residents still not thrilled

By LENNY C. LEOPLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties Direc­tor of Con­struc­tion Oper­a­tions Ron Coyan attended the Mon­day, March 19, Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ing, and was met with stiff com­mu­nity resis­tance to the 149-unit town­house apart­ments Lifestyle wants to build at the South Miller Drive and Fair­land Drive inter­sec­tion directly across the street from Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary School.

Coyan said he attended the meet­ing for a sec­ond infor­mal dis­cus­sion with zon­ing com­mis­sion mem­bers. Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties Chase Miller attended the Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 27, zon­ing meet­ing with archi­tec­tural ren­der­ings of the proposal.

At the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing Miller said the site was zoned in the mid-1990s for multi fam­ily town­house use; that there are 152 exist­ing lifestyle apart­ments in the vil­lage built in 2000. He said the pro­posed 100 per­cent rental 149-apartment com­plex, geared toward a young pro­fes­sional demo­graphic, would con­tain one, two and three-bedroom two-story town­houses in neigh­bor­hood scale streets.

Zon­ing com­mis­sion mem­bers and area res­i­dents at the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing expressed con­cerns about the pro­posed sites ingress and egress points. The Fair­land Drive entrance to the apart­ment com­plex is directly oppo­site the Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary School entrance used by school buses and staff; the South Miller Drive entrance is approx­i­mately 300 feet north of Fair­land Drive; and a stub in the architect’s draw­ing shows a poten­tial con­nec­tion to Fox Trail Drive to the north lead­ing through that devel­op­ment to Cheshire Road.

Fox Trail Drive res­i­dents attend­ing the Feb­ru­ary meet­ing said they were con­cerned about traf­fic if their street is made into a col­lec­tor for Cheshire Road and West Cherry Street. One res­i­dent even asked about the his­tory of Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties apart­ments and crime statistics.

At last Monday’s zon­ing ses­sion Coyan said he was there just to let com­mis­sion mem­bers know the Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties had ini­ti­ated a traf­fic study for the sur­round­ing area.

Sunbury’s con­sult­ing engi­neer Wes Hall, CT Con­sul­tants, said he had a phone con­fer­ence with Coyan to work through the scope of the traf­fic study.

“They’re going to cover inter­sec­tions adja­cent to the site,” Hall said. “They’ll do a traf­fic study of exist­ing con­di­tions first, and then over­lay the impact. Fox Trail Drive is not involved because there is no inter­sec­tion; there’s no turn­ing, just traf­fic in and out.”

Com­mis­sion mem­bers were con­cerned about the hours of day when traf­fic would be stud­ied; if the study would include school traf­fic peak hours.

“What they’re try­ing to find out is the impact made on the inter­sec­tions by this devel­op­ment,” Hall explained. “You can’t take school peak hours and put that bur­den on the devel­oper. That’s typ­i­cal traf­fic impact study procedure.”

Hall also said the traf­fic impact study would not include foot traf­fic, but when the devel­oper designs the project they will make sure there is safe access to the nearby ele­men­tary school and park.

Coyan said the traf­fic impact study would cover the pro­posed apart­ment com­plex peak hours of 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. in the morn­ings and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in the after­noon. To accom­mo­date area res­i­dent con­cerns about school traf­fic he said they would also cover from 3 p.m. in the afternoon.

Com­mis­sion mem­bers wanted Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties to broaden the traf­fic impact study to 2 p.m., because of Fair­land Drive traf­fic to the new Big Wal­nut Mid­dle School that ends classes shortly after 2 p.m. every day.

“My point is if you’re col­lect­ing data it has to be encom­passes that area,” said com­mis­sion mem­ber Nathan Coey. “I don’t know if we’re doing our­selves any favor if we do 3 p.m. instead of 2 p.m., espe­cially if it doesn’t cost any more money.”

Coyan agreed to broaden the after­noon hours of the traf­fic impact study; and not begin the study until stu­dents return from spring break.

Com­mis­sion mem­bers also dis­cussed the entrances to the pro­posed apart­ment complex.

Hall said there was not enough frontage for another entrance on Miller Drive.

“Fair­land (at the GRE entrance) would not war­rant a traf­fic sig­nal; a four-way stop maybe,” Hall said. “But I don’t see a four-way stop or a sig­nal war­ranted at this time.”

Hall said he was more con­cerned about a Fox Trail Drive con­nec­tion in and out of the apart­ments that could inter­sect with Cheshire Road, inter­fer­ing with mid­dle school traffic.

Coyan said using the Fox Trail Drive stub was not some­thing Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties nec­es­sar­ily wanted to do.

“We pro­vided our two means of ingress and egress for our res­i­dents,” Coyan said. “That Fox Trail Drive con­nect was some­thing that was added.

Com­mis­sion mem­ber Len Weath­erby said con­sid­er­ing the con­cerns that area res­i­dents have already expressed, there shouldn’t be a con­nec­tion to Fox Trail Drive.

“It’s not fun­da­men­tal to your devel­op­ment,” Weath­erby said. “Maybe have that stub opened up for emer­gen­cies, but have a gate there. But that doesn’t address the other con­cerns we have.”

Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field said the prob­lem is the result of dif­fer­ence between the area sur­round­ing the pro­posed apart­ment site when it was zoned multi-family in 1996 and what’s hap­pen­ing in the area today.

Non-voting com­mis­sion mem­ber Pam Lil­lie, the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Zon­ing Com­mis­sion Liai­son, said the school was built first, so com­mis­sion mem­bers should look after the school when mak­ing any nearby zon­ing decisions.

Weath­erby said, in essence, there’s no win-win.

“What we’re talk­ing about here is the lesser of two evils,” Weath­erby said. “Two entrances on Miller Drive, or one on Miller and one across from the school entrance.”

Fox Trail Drive res­i­dent Trudy McCloskey said her street is the only street in the sub­di­vi­sion with­out a turn­around and it’s the narrowest.

“There’s senior gar­den apart­ments located there and a group home,” McCloskey said. “Crews work there around the clock. They park on the street plus there’s a bus and a van every day. A fire truck can­not get to the hydrant with park­ing on both sides of the street. It’s hard right now to get down there and you want to open that up?”

Rac­coon Lane res­i­dent Phil Boyd said Sun­bury does not need more apartments.

“We need peo­ple to move here and invest in our com­mu­nity long-term,” Boyd said. “The impact of this on our school sys­tem will be tremendous.”

Wendy Hughes, Fox Trail Drive, said she has the last house on the street.

“This apart­ment com­plex will be next door to my house,” Hughes said. “If that road opens up, the added traf­fic to Cheshire — the whole area is going to be ugly. I’ll walk out my front door and look at an apart­ment com­plex. Our prop­erty val­ues will plum­met. There are a lot of 4, 5, 6 and 7 year olds who walk to school from our neigh­bor­hood. Pedes­trian traf­fic needs looked at.”

Henry Clark, a Heart­land Court res­i­dent and navy vet­eran, said he has seen apart­ments in all kinds of communities.

“Apart­ments draw a crime ele­ment,” Clark said. “We don’t want that here. I moved here with my fam­ily for this com­mu­nity, this lifestyle. We don’t want this.”

Cheshire Road res­i­dent Jerry Hig­gins asked com­mis­sion mem­bers if Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties sub­mits a zon­ing appli­ca­tion that meets the rezon­ing as approved in 1996, do com­mis­sion mem­bers have the right to turn the appli­ca­tion down.

Vil­lage Solic­i­tor David Brehm said: It’s pos­si­ble yes, it’s pos­si­ble no.

“It’s up to this body to approve or dis­ap­prove a zon­ing per­mit appli­ca­tion,” Brehm said. “Then it would go to vil­lage coun­cil, and then it could even go to the courts. I might add that this plan was approved in 1996 and it had a 10-year devel­op­ment window.”

The next Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ing will be held at 7:30 p.m., Mon­day, April 23. Com­mis­sion mem­bers will meet one hour early, at 6:30, for a work session.

All Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ings adhere to the man­dates of Ohio Sun­shine Law and are open to the public.

Posted by Gary Henery on Mar 28 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.