Walking the walk, not talking the talk
Planning board views Carvel site

By: Bob Audette, Staff Reporter The Register Herald  May 19, 2005

PINE PLAINS/ MILAN The planning board had an opportunity to walk the Carvel Property Development site on April 4 and that same evening the public was invited to a public meeting to view a video of the visit.
During the meeting, members of the planning board had only a few questions to ask of Carvel's representatives.
"This process was extra and beyond the scope of SEQRA," said Matt Rudikoff, referring to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). Rudikoff is the environmental consultant for the project.
SEQRA "requires the sponsoring or approving governmental body to identify and mitigate the significant environmental impacts of the activity it is proposing or permitting," according to the Department of Environmental Conservation's Web site.
Rudikoff said he and the other environmental consultants of the project are in the process of finalizing the draft environmental impact statement.
"An EIS is a substantial study prepared by the project sponsor (less commonly by the agency) of all potentially significant environmental impacts ... alternatives to the proposed project that would avoid the most significant adverse impacts, and things the project sponsor could do to reduce or offset the most significant adverse impacts, called 'mitigations,'" according to homestead.com, a concerned citizens Web site.
Mike Kearney, in a telephone interview with The Register Herald several days after the meeting, said he expects the DEIS to be presented to the planning board within the next 60 days.
"But the document continues to grow and change," he said.
Kearney is the vice president and director of construction for the Landmark Land Company, Inc., the company tasked with developing the land by the Durst Organization, which owns the 2,230 acres of the project.
Once the planning board decides the DEIS is done, it will hold public hearings at which time members of the community will be given the opportunity to comment on its contents, said Rudikoff.
"Milan will have its own public informational meeting," said Rudikoff.
"The total number of homes will come after the lotting layout, but we are still in the range of 975 units," said Kearney, who said he understood the concerns of local residents who are afraid Pine Plains will grow too big, too fast.
"Doubling the pop sounds extreme, because it's a small town," said Kearney. "But that's over a 10-year period. The impact analysis will show how the town might grow with Carvel and without it."
Kearney said that the closest lots to the center of Pine Plains will be 2.5 miles away, but he insisted that all this information is preliminary.
"A town should control its destiny and guide outside developers, which Pine Plains and Milan are doing," said Kearney, who said in talking with residents, he has been getting favorable comments about the development.
"We have heard good and bad things, but people who have businesses want their businesses to be successful, and that requires growth," said Kearney.
"Some growth is good for a town. Milan and Pine Plains are already seeing growth coming, so what is the best way to grow? Master planning is the best way. With master planning they can control the destiny of this part of town, because we will have consistent guidelines and a vision for the project versus scattered individual developments coming in one at a time."
"As of right now, we are looking at 69 lots in Milan," said Kearney.
Kearney said the project engineers arrived at this number by determining how many five-acre lots could be subdivided on the Milan side of the line, in accordance with Milan's current zoning regulations.
Kearney said in order to protect as much open space as possible, he expected that the 69 lots would be built in some sort of cluster arrangement, but until the final lotting plan has been arrived at, how the property would be subdivided is purely speculation at this point.
"A cluster-type subdivision means we would have smaller lots with more protected area," said Kearney. "The goal is to preserve open space and that's according to Milan's zoning regulations."
Kearney said that open space areas and conservation easements will come out of the lotting plan, which will be presented in the DEIS.
"There will be open space on individual lots and different types of open space," said Kearney. Kearney said open space in these cases is dependent upon the environmental constraints of each independent lot.
He identified a few of these constraints as wetlands, rocky features and red rocky cedar summits, which he called "an occurrence where rock makes grade and cedars grow there, which is a unique feature in this area which is not found elsewhere. Red rocky cedar summits are a unique habitat that we want to preserve, and most of those would happen on private lots."
Kearney said other open space areas would be preserved as commonly held areas, governed by either an internal agency such as a homeowner's association or an external agency such as the Dutchess Land Conservancy.
Kearney said these open space areas would include stream and wildlife corridors and natural features such as "old fields." Kearney described an old field as an area that was once used for agriculture but is not reverting back to its wild state.
"Open fields have a cultural value because of the visual quality and they have a habitat value because they are cleared and not forested which allows different species, though maybe not threatened or endangered, to move back into those areas," said Kearney. "And many of those fields also have wetlands associated with them."
Kearney said it was important to establish wildlife corridors to interconnect habitats across property lines "to allow wildlife to move freely."
He said if a road crosses a wildlife corridor, the developer will need to put in "some kind of device that will allow wildlife to move freely."
"Once you have the lot lines drawn you go back to you environmental consultant who will tell us what links we will need to design for these corridors," said Kearney.
At the meeting Kearney said that 40 percent of the development would be clustered on 25 to 35 percent of the land.
"But these are really rough numbers," said Kearney, during the phone interview. Kearney said the clustered properties would be located around Lake Carvel, which he called a protected viewshed because it is enclosed almost entirely by a ridgeline which will prevent the clustered units from being seen from existing roadways.
"Phase One of the development would include the initial development of the project and the infrastructure needed to support that development," said Kearney, who said the initial work would include the construction of a golf course, a club house and the clustered units as well as the waste water treatment plant.
Kearney said at the same time Landmark will be offering some individual residential lots.
"And as we expand the plan is to go over the ridgelines to develop the bigger, more dispersed lots," said Kearney.

©The Register Herald 2005

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