Multi-Family zoning on South Miller Drive acreage stays

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties attended the Feb­ru­ary and March Vil­lage of Sun­bury Plan­ning & Zon­ing Com­mis­sion meet­ings, and was met with stiff com­mu­nity resis­tance to the 149-unit town­house apart­ments Lifestyle wanted to build on a vacant 12.8-acre par­cel at the South Miller Drive and Fair­land Drive inter­sec­tion directly across the street from Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary School.

Zon­ing com­mis­sion mem­bers and area res­i­dents at both the Feb­ru­ary and March meet­ings expressed con­cerns about the pro­posed site’s 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 meet­ings 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 the March ses­sion it was sug­gested that the prop­erty might face a devel­op­ment win­dow that would erase the Planned Res­i­den­tial Devel­op­ment zon­ing allow­ing multi-family units on the site.

Fast for­ward to the Mon­day, August 27, zon­ing com­mis­sion meet­ing, where Sun­bury Vil­lage Solic­i­tor David Brehm said in his opin­ion the multi-family zon­ing remains valid; and prop­erty owner Scott Walker, also at the meet­ing, said Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties has with­drawn their apart­ment com­plex proposal.

Also in atten­dance were about a dozen res­i­dents of the neigh­bor­hoods adja­cent to the site.

“The vil­lage has received a let­ter from Mr. Walker ask­ing about the sta­tus of the zon­ing,” said Sun­bury Mayor Tommy Hat­field. “Lifestyles has with­drawn their appli­ca­tion to build apart­ments at the site, and Mr. Walker wants to list the prop­erty and wants a firm com­mit­ment of what it’s zoned.”

Vil­lage Zon­ing Inspec­tor Phil Stith noted that area res­i­dents were specif­i­cally invited to the meet­ing to hear the dis­cus­sion and make comments.

“This is not a pub­lic hear­ing, just an open meet­ing,” Stith explained. “Mr. Walker has prop­erty rights; we want to make sure nobody imposes on each other. There were some con­cerns about the time lapse of the zon­ing. That’s a legal deci­sion. After that I will inform Mr. Walker of the zon­ing by letter.”

Brehm gave a brief overview of the Sun­bury Mills PRD. It was approved in 1997 for sin­gle fam­ily and multi-family hous­ing and park­land, with sub­se­quent adjust­ments that allowed the Franklin Foun­da­tion group homes and the Sun­bury Mills Plaza development.

“The prop­erty has all been devel­oped except for two parts, and it was all devel­oped in accor­dance with the orig­i­nal plan except the south­ern part of the Kroger Plaza was changed to allow for com­mer­cial,” Brehm said. “We con­tem­plated this devel­op­ment would take up to 10 years to com­plete, but for a vari­ety of rea­sons it was not. There were spe­cific rea­sons the devel­op­ment was stopped; before the waste­water plant expan­sion the vil­lage had to slow down devel­op­ment because it lacked sewer plant capacity.”

Brehm said that ulti­mately the zon­ing for the prop­erty was decided at zon­ing in 1997; that any alter­nate zon­ing change after that 1997 zon­ing board’s approval could end up in court.

“I can research this issue and tell you what might hap­pen,” Brehm con­tin­ued. “I know a lot of you don’t want multi-family, but the ques­tion is, is the zon­ing still intact?”

Brehm did say that the orig­i­nal PRD zon­ing agree­ment has a phas­ing plan, and there were ques­tions about the lan­guage; but in keep­ing with the orig­i­nal agree­ment the devel­op­ment was plat­ted within three years and build­ing began in under five years.

“In my opin­ion any court deci­sion is not going to be in the Vil­lage of Sunbury’s favor,” Brehm said. “If this board chooses to dis­agree and feels that the zon­ing should expire, that becomes an issue for the devel­oper, and that issue will be resolved by the courts. It is my opin­ion that we do not have a strong legal position.

“Lifestyle has walked away from this,” Brehm added. “They said: If the res­i­dents don’t want us there, we won’t be there. They said: We want to be pop­u­lar; we’re in this busi­ness to be popular.”

Com­mis­sion mem­ber Len Weath­erby, who is the only indi­vid­ual sit­ting on the board when the orig­i­nal PRD was nego­ti­ated, said he remem­bers when the pro­posal came before zoning.

“We spent hours and hours nego­ti­at­ing this,” Weath­erby said. “We thought we got the best fit. What’s come out of this? Homes, schools, a gro­cery store. I look at all of that as some­thing that’s been very good for the village.

“The Lifestyle Apart­ments that’s there I don’t like,” Weath­erby con­tin­ued. “But I also know that Lifestyle is build­ing bet­ter apart­ments today than when the PRD was zoned. I’m very proud of our com­mu­nity. I would not want any­thing in there that I’m not proud of; and from my point of view I will make sure what­ever is there will be some­thing we can all be proud of.”

Hat­field agreed with Weath­erby, adding that the exist­ing Lifestyle Apart­ments look like Marine bar­racks with front doors fac­ing front doors.

“But there are peo­ple who have lived in those apart­ments since they were built; you’re not going to find that in many com­mu­ni­ties,” Hat­field said. “What Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties is build­ing today is not a bad look­ing apart­ment. I’ve talked with the Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties owner and he said they were will­ing to work with us. What ever multi-family devel­oper devel­ops that site,” Hat­field added, “we’ve got to make it the best prod­uct we can get.”

Brehm said that even though Lifestyle Com­mu­ni­ties has walked away from the project, to the extent the zon­ing is what it is, apart­ments are going to be built at the site.

“When there’s a new prop­erty owner, first there will be infor­mal dis­cus­sions at zon­ing, then zon­ing approval and then on to vil­lage coun­cil,” Brehm said. “But it’s not approval of: Can we build multi-family units? It just has to be within the frame­work of the orig­i­nal PRD devel­op­ment plan.”

Hat­field said he hoped the res­i­dents attend­ing the meet­ing would be com­fort­able with what’s going to be com­mu­ni­cated to Walker in a let­ter from Phil Stith – that the multi-family zon­ing of the site as out­lined in the 1997 PRD agree­ment stands as orig­i­nally approved.

“I appre­ci­ate your com­ing this evening,” Hat­field said. “I will to make sure that when there’s any own­er­ship change we will keep you involved. We need to be sure we’re doing the right thing.”

Scott Walker also told the res­i­dents in atten­dance that he would be avail­able to speak with them when the prop­erty has a buyer.

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.