'Hang On to Your Seats'
Winston Farm Developers Begin Push for Approval
News by Steve Ellman
8/19/24 • Land Use
A map from the developers’ presentation.
Saugerties– The developers who propose to transform Winston Farm’s 840 historic and environmentally significant acres into something more domesticated and commercialized than mere landscape offered a first look last week at their current thinking.
Wednesday night saw a PowerPoint preview before the Saugerties Town Board; the full Monty arrived the next day with the release of the project’s Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. Usually acronymized as DGEIS, it's a description, per state regs, of “purpose, public need and benefits” as well as "a statement and evaluation of the potential significant adverse environmental impacts at a level of detail that reflects the severity of the impacts and the reasonable likelihood of their occurrence."
The DGEIS runs 208 pages and examines the impact of up to 133 single family homes, 115 townhouses, and 800 condo/apartment units as well as “a campground with a 157 cabins and RV sites, 425,000 square feet of commercial retail space, a 150-room boutique hotel, a conference center with 300 hotel rooms, a 5000-person amphitheater, and 375,000 square feet of lab or light-industrial space."
The DGEIS will take time to digest. But already there are numerous nuggets on which to chew.
The developers "Changes From Earlier Development Concepts" seems to reflect their response to public concerns about the scale of the project. Some of the changes are limited and others are trade-offs that may not address the critics underlying concerns.
A planned water park has been illuminated only to be replaced with the hotel and conference center. Will 450 rooms of hotel guests generate less traffic and require less parking than a water park?
The outdoor adventure park "has been eliminated from the forest area." Does that mean it's entirely eliminated or will it only be relocated?
The proposed amphitheater has been changed "from an outdoor venue to a completely enclosed performing arts venue.” Open air or not, traffic and parking for that many people and cars seems like a lot to introduce to a hereto for rural area.
Two significant caveats were prominent in the presentations: 1) ”There are no plans to develop the full 840-acre property" and 2) “Development opportunities outlined in the DGEIS are not a site plan. They are conceptual, for further consideration."
That "further consideration" is likely to be contentious, if the sites history of failed development proposals and the depth and passion of the skeptics in Wednesday nights audience are any indication. A key question of there is concern to 73% open space goal articulated in at 2009 vision plan and whether the proposed Winston Farm District will accord with that. Other points raised concern the affordability of the project’s proposed housing and the diversion of farmland in a time of widespread food insecurity.
Speaking for Winston Farms developers, who operate under the name Winston Farm, media rep Josh Summers offered this reply to Kingston wires questions:"All of the concept plan submitted to the town have significant open-space as part of the commitment of the owners to make Winston Farm is strong balance of economic development and preservation. The amount of open space will be determined during the environmental review process with the town…[in regards to] traffic, the traffic study in the DGEIS provides a comprehensive review and will closely be reviewed by the town."
On the skeptic’s side, Kate Hagerman, program manager for (Catskill) Mountainkeeper, the non-profit that has done extensive research on Winston Farm as an ecosystem, had this to say via email: "People come here for the rural nature of our region, which will be destroyed if this development, the size of the Village of Saugerties, is approved. Imagine thousands of people descending on the town to go to an indoor 5000-seat concert venue and a 250-room room hotel and conference center. Thousands of cars will gridlock our country roads, billow pollution into our clean air and will absolutely destroy the rural nature of our region, not just the town of Saugerties… the entire community deserves for the town board to go slowly and carefully through every aspect of this proposal.”
Saugerties Town Supervisor Fred Costello Jr., who chaired the Wednesday night meeting, seems resolutely in favor of development of some sort – though fully accepting of the need to examine the propose project at length and in depth. Referring to the years-long history of previous development proposals going nowhere after public outcry, he said, “We were right in blocking a lot of uses."
Costello pointed out that under the towns presently existing zoning, the Winston Farm developers have a great deal of leeway to develop the property with little regard to outside critics, strip malls included.
"This is truly an opportunity," he continued."Lets work with this group. Let's try to find something that's palatable to the majority of the community.… If we get this right, people will come from everywhere to see what we did. If we get it wrong, the community is going to rise up in defense of the property, as it has in the past. I'm not under the illusion that this is going to be easy. Hang on to your seats. We're about to go through something pretty exciting."
https://newsatomic.com/news/2024/08/19/hang-on-to-your-seats/500Uzz
