GUILDERLAND — After a very brief discussion, the town board voted, on March 22, to send to the planning board for review a proposal to rezone 27 acres on Winding Brook Road in Guilderland, across from the YMCA, as a Planned Unit Development. An apartment complex is planned there, of 52 apartments in 13 two-story buildings.

Daniel Hershberg of the engineering firm Hershberg & Hershberg presented the project over a series of meetings. Two members of that firm, Frank McCloskey and William K. Mafrici, are the developers.

The site plan says that 18 acres of the property will be designated forever wild, but town Supervisor Peter Barber said this week that that acreage might be dedicated to the town. In that case, he said, it would still remain open, but a trail of some sort could be created, to connect it to other open spaces.

Proposals for the open acreage, he said this week, would probably either be included by the planning board in its recommendation to the town board or incorporated by the town board into the local law it eventually crafts.

Next, the project goes to the planning board for site-plan review, Barber said. He expects that a town-designated engineer will be assigned to look into environmental issues such as stormwater management, angle of repose, and soil stability.

Accident history

At Tuesday’s meeting, Hershberg referenced a three-year accident report for the intersection of Winding Brook Road and Western Avenue that he had gotten from the state’s Department of Transportation and given to the board. Barber sent that same report, which covered all of 2015 through 2017, to The Enterprise on March 16.

On March 20, The Enterprise also received from the DOT, separately, a five-and-a-half-year accident history for the intersection, for which it had submitted a Freedom of Information Law request; it covers accidents from Jan. 1, 2012 through the end of August 2017.

Over the course of the six years, from Jan. 1, 2012 through Dec. 31, 2017, there were 41 accidents at the intersection. Fifteen accidents occurred during the three-year period of the accident history Hershberg submitted.

Barber said at the board meeting that the DOT’s accident report shows a frequency of 0.327 accidents per million vehicles entering the intersection, based on the intersection’s traffic counts as compared to the number of accidents. The DOT’s statewide average for similar intersections is 0.32, he said.

The accident history shows that the cause of accidents there is not the design of the intersection but driver inattention, Barber said at the board meeting.

Hershberg noted that the accidents that had involved pedestrians being hit by cars involved pedestrian inattention.

Many of the accidents over the six years involved driver inattention or following too closely, or both. Some neighbors had earlier told the board that drivers race up from the YMCA in an effort to beat the light there.

Still no town planner

“We’re still looking into it,” said Barber this week of the town’s search for a planner, a post that has been vacant for more than a year, following Jan Weston’s retirement at the end of 2016; she had served as town planner for almost three decades.

“We may decide at some point to post it,” Barber said. “I’m not sure what the next step is going to be.”

The town has had a lot of “unexpected distractions,” he said, referring to the search for a new justice, following the arrest and resignation of Richard Sherwood, accused by the New York State Attorney General’s Office of stealing from estates he managed as an attorney in private practice.

The town received 14 applications for the position of justice and has been interviewing all candidates this week. Barber was not sure if the board would hold a second round of interviews, or if this round would provide enough information for the town board to decide.

In addition, the town is also looking for a new highway superintendent following the resignation, before the end of his term, of Steve Oliver. Applications for that post are due next Monday. (See related story.)

Hiawatha Trails opposition mounts

A petition to the Guilderland Town Board was started on the website change.org on March 16 called “Stop Mega Commercial Development at Hiawatha Golf Course — Oppose Re-Zoning!”

The petition makes note of the town’s lack of a planner in its opposition to an application for a rezone, to Planned Unit Development, of a 44-acre parcel across from Farnsworth Middle School that is now mostly a golf course. The petition had a goal of 500 names and had reached 436 as of Wednesday afternoon.

The project would build 256 independent-living apartments for seniors and a mixed-use office building. The developer would pay for installing a traffic signal at the project’s main entrance, across from Presidential Way, the road that leads to Farnsworth Middle School.

A crowd of neighbors turned out to oppose the project at a planning board meeting in January.

The applicant on this project is listed in documents at Guilderland Town Hall as Hiawatha Land Development, LLC, with Ira Mark Dean of RDC Equities in New York City named as a contact person.

The Hiawatha Trails project would transfer about 24 acres to the town for recreational purposes and declare another 11 acres open space, not owned by the town. Barber has said he wants to see a trail constructed through the property that would lead from Route 155 to Winding Brook Road.

The organizers of the petition have also created a Facebook page, called Guilderland Citizens for Responsible Growth, “to keep you informed on our opposition to the Mega Project at Hiawatha Trails Golf Course,” it says on the site.

A first public hearing on the matter was initially to be set for April, and then for June, but the board decided Tuesday to wait until the planning board has had ample opportunity to review the application, before setting a date for a public hearing.

Notice for hearings

The town will send out a notice to all neighbors living within 750 feet of the Hiawatha Trails project, said Barber this week, since it always sends out notice for a first public hearing.

Earlier in March, for a continuation of the public hearing on the Winding Brook project, notices were sent to all of the Hiawatha Trails neighbors, creating some confusion.

Barber told The Enterprise at the time that the confusion seemed to have arisen because of Hershberg’s role in both projects and because Hiawatha Trails had at one point been scheduled for a public hearing that day, on March 6.

He clarified at the time that, for a first public hearing, the town publishes a legal notice in The Altamont Enterprise and also sends a card to neighbors within 750 feet. The law requires the town only to place the notice in the newspaper, and does not obligate the to mail notices to residents. The town sends out notices partly because, Barber said, “Not everybody gets The Enterprise, so we supplement it.”

Information is also posted on the town’s website, he said.

For a second, or continued, public hearing, notice is not sent out, Barber said, because the town presumes that people heard about the continuation date at the first meeting.