GUILDERLAND — The owner of a local liquor store is seeking permission from the town to construct a new mixed-use building on property he owns adjacent to his current shop.

Christopher Laviano is proposing the 8,500-square-foot structure be built next to his Laviano Wine & Liquor at 1871 Western Ave. The building would have 4,000 square feet on the first floor for two offices and one retail tenant, while the second floor would contain four residential apartments. 

The Guilderland Planning Board first reviewed the site plan for Laviano’s proposal at its Jan. 25 meeting; the town’s zoning board is the lead agency for the project. 

Laviano on Feb. 22 told planning board members that since they last saw the project, he’d detached the proposed mixed-use building from the existing on-site liquor store and decreased his request for the number of allowable office tenants from five to two.

“My biggest concern, Mr. Laviano, is that the building is kind of big for the site,” Chairman Stephen Feeney said in response to Laviano’s summary of project changes. 

Later in the meeting, Feeney told Laviano he “tried as best I could” to bring the project into compliance with the town’s design guidelines and make it so Laviano could get everything he wanted out of the proposal. “And I couldn’t do [it] — I admit, I couldn’t figure it out,” Feeney said. “I think the best I could get was like 7,500 square feet of space was the best I could do.”

A smaller project might also alleviate some of Laviano’s parking problems. 

The parking on the proposed site was considered tight, with Laviano showing 39 spots, of which 10 (three actual and seven banked) were located in the front-yard setback. If he were to scale down and re-site the building a bit, Laviano was told, it’s likely the project would require fewer variances. 

But Laviano said a scaled-down building couldn’t work for him financially.

“There’s no point. The numbers don’t make sense. I’m a numbers guy,” he said. “I’ve run the numbers, I have it written down, that it financially does not make sense at all,” Laviano said, stating he’s already on the hook for nearly $1 million in land-acquisition costs.

Laviano also noted for board members that he hadn’t received much neighbor pushback on the proposal, to which Feeney offered him an email from a Kent Place resident expressing opposition to the prospect of second-floor apartment dwellers leering into their backyard.

Toward the meeting’s conclusion, board member Thomas Robert told Laviano the financial viability of his project was not the planning board’s concern, and said,  “Our opinion is from a planning point of view, from a planner’s perspective: It needs to be scaled down a little bit to be more consistent with the neighborhood. And that’s what we’re bound by.”

Variances

At the planning board’s Feb. 22 meeting, Town Planner Kenneth Kovalchik told board members that Laviano was offered direction in January related to the proposed size of the building, its location on the site, and parking for the project. Kovalchik also said there had been changes to Laviano’s four variance requests for his proposed development, which stretches across four small parcels between 1859 and 1871 Western Ave.

Laviano is seeking two variances to allow for parking on the site’s front and rear setbacks; a variance for setback requirements of differently-zoned districts; and a fourth variance for the minimum area required for buffers  — “trees, hedges, shrubs and/or other landscaping,” according to Kovalchik — between residential and business districts. 

Feeney asked Kovalchik if the buffer variance request was for setback relief from the zoning district or property line. “So the district boundaries [are] not changing,” Feeney said. “The zoning districts [are] not changing.”

 Kovalchik said Feeney was correct. 

To which Feeney responded, “So the building is going to be five feet from the residential zone.”

 Kovalchik told Feeney that was also correct, but said the way Jacqueline Coons, the town’s chief building and zoning officer, interpreted the code was to incorporate a proposed lot-line adjustment for the currently-zoned R15 service alley running behind 1855 to 1869 Western Ave. as part of the future development.

“So this is: Once the new lot-line amendment is approved, this will be the new lot line,” Kovalchik said. “It won’t be to the service alley lot line, it’ll be to the northern prospect line.”

Under the current site plan, the new building would be about five feet from the boundary line with the service alley; however, with the lot-line amendment being proposed, the service alley would become part of the proposed development, adding another 20 feet of buffer between the proposed building and the Kent Road residential neighborhood. 

Feeney disagreed with how the project was being presented to the board, with a future lot-line amendment already incorporated into the calculation of the buffer needed between differently-zoned districts: Two of the project parcels are located in the town’s Local Business (LB) District, for which town code requires a 40-foot buffer between it and a residential district, while the other parcels are part of the Business Non-Retail Professional (BNRP) District, for which code requires a 20-foot buffer between it and residential zones. 

With all the questions raised about the proposal, the board decided to table a vote on the site plan, choosing instead to allow Kovalchik time to write up a recommendation for the zoning board based on the issues raised on Feb. 22.

Laviano is to come back before the planning board on March 8, at which point members will vote on the recommendations in Kovalchik’s memo.

Golf 

The board on Feb. 22 OK’d the site layout for a project at 5180 Western Turnpike, where Precision Sports is proposing a change in tenancy from the site’s previous use as a restaurant to allow for an indoor golf center. 

The zoning board is the lead agency for the proposal. 

Precision is looking to convert the former Nirvana Indian Restaurant, across the street from Town Hall, into a golf performance center. The restaurant shut down nearly a year ago at its original site, and is now known as the Great Indian Kitchen Restaurant and Bar at 1652 Western Ave. 

The planning board signed off on the project’s site plan, but made it contingent upon the zoning board receiving updated landscaping and lighting plans and clarity regarding the number of parking spaces required for the proposed use. 

Cats 

The planning board also gave site-plan approval to the Just Cats Veterinary Clinic for a new space just two doors down from its current location, which opened in 1994. 

Susan Sikule of Just For Cats told the board the move from 2073 to 2079 Western Ave. will allow for more exam rooms and additional services.

The zoning board is the lead agency for the project, which requires a special-use permit because of the proposed change in tenancy at 2079 Western Ave.