By:Angela Marshall
Last year, the Planning Board adopted a positive environmental impact statement on the Signature Place project, indicating that it had concerns about how the development would affect the community. The developer, Chase Partners, then began putting together a Draft Environmental Statement, in which its experts described how the apartments would affect the school district, traffic and village services, including water, electric and sewer. The developer continues to maintain that the development would have no negative impacts and would, in fact, be an economically viable redevelopment of a vacant industrial site.
During hearings last year, the developer was asked to answer several questions posed by the public, the Planning Board and some village department heads. In response, Chase turned in a 1,500-page, two-book document. But Planning Board members said many of the questions were left unanswered.
Is it a perfect document? asked Michael Faltischek, attorney for the developer, during a meeting later that night. Probably not. That-s why it-s called a draft.
He said Chase plans to continue resubmitting the document until the Planning Board is satisfied.
The developer objected to some of the questions it was asked, saying they went beyond the scope of the environmental review. Many of them focused on impacts to the school district and the financial burden homeowners might bear if a substantial number of children were to move into the complex.
The developer cited court decisions finding that the potential economic effects of incoming children is not within the purview of the environmental review. Indeed, it has been determined that economic impacts in particular are not a proper area of inquiry during [State Environmental Quality Review Act] review, the developer said in the FEIS.
However, it was Chase that brought up the issue of economics in the first place, devoting a section of the original environment draft to the taxes anticipated to be generated by the proposed development.
Robert Grover, the environmental expert hired by the village to review the project, had also asked for more information on a reduced-scale alternative but was denied.
The project sponsor has indicated in the DEIS that a reduced-scale alternative is not feasible, the developer wrote. The project has already been reduced from 500 units to 349 units, and as currently configured meets all zoning criteria. Further analysis of the reduced-scale alternative in not warranted, as it is not a feasible alternative.
