Condo tower needs variance

By Paul Kirby, Freeman staff Daily Freeman February 14, 2006

KINGSTON - A New Jersey developer is expected to apply within the next two months for a zoning variance required to build a condominium complex that, at 12 stories, would be more than twice the city's building height limit.
Harv Hilowitz, regional manager of The Teicher Organization of New Jersey, said Monday night that the company plans to request both height and density variances for the proposed 214-unit complex on the site of the Uptown parking garage.
Hilowitz said the building would be 121 feet high on the North Front Street side and 146 feet high from Schwenk Drive. Neither elevation is allowed in the city's Stockade Historic District, he said.
"The current zoning height limit for buildings in the Stockade District is 63 feet high, or the height of the bottom base of the steeple on the Old Dutch Church," Hilowitz said after a city Planning Board meeting Monday. "We are going to need to get variance for that."
While applicants for zoning variances typically must prove hardship, developers will argue that the proposed condominium complex will be of great public benefit, Hilowitz said. He said it will help address Ulster County's housing shortage, create jobs, and will be a economic stimulus for the Uptown area.
"We feel that, on a certain level, that (the height limit) is a rather arbitrary height limitation based on a previously existing edifice and not based on any functionality or any other reasoning," Hilowitz said. "It is an old law based on a building that we all love, but it doesn't really reflect the needs of Kingston nowadays."
The Zoning Board of Appeals, which is authorized to grant variances to the city's zoning law, holds public hearings before any variances are granted.
Meanwhile, the Planning Board unanimously agreed Monday night to seek lead agency status in the project's environmental review. Additionally, the Planning Board determined that the developer must submit a detailed environmental impact study of the project.
The Teicher Organization, including its founder Fred Teicher, first outlined its proposed project last spring at a community meeting Uptown.
Besides the 525,000-square-foot condominium building, the developer plans to build 10,000 square feet of retail space and a 600-space parking garage. The current parking garage would be demolished and 300 spaces in the new garage would be set aside for municipal use

.©Daily Freeman 2006

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