NEW SCOTLAND — Stewart’s Shops was recently before the New Scotland Zoning Board of Appeals, seeking a variance to expand its Delaware Turnpike store in Clarksville. 
Tyler Fronte, speaking for Stewart’s, told the zoning board during its June 22 meeting that the granting of the variance and subsequent expansion would “allow us to improve the interior. Our food-to-go program is growing and … the need for additional space is necessary.”

The 833-square-foot addition is minimal by Stewart’s standards, which, for example, fought and won a lawsuit to build a new Altamont store and filed and lost and then appealed a lawsuit to build a new shop in Voorheesville, but Fronte chalks that up to the property’s layout. 

“There’s some elevation issues on just the overall site,” he told The Enterprise. “When you’re looking at it from the street, there’s topography issues.”

Fronte said the shop is “very functional how it is now,” and that it “just needs some standard upgrades.”

The building will be receiving facade upgrades as well, he said, with new siding and a stone veneer. 

The interior will also see upgrades, he said.

Stewart’s is requesting relief to allow the company to build a proposed addition closer to its neighboring property than New Scotland’s zoning code allows. 

Zoning in this commercial district calls for 15-foot side-yard setbacks.

 Stewart’s is looking for 2.5 feet of relief to allow for the new 833-square-foot addition to be built 12.5 feet from the property line.

The 2.6-acre parcel is located at 2475 Delaware Turnpike. 

The existing shop is about 2,300 square feet. 

Chairman Jeffery Baker asked zoning board attorney Crystal Peck, “After we, you know, presumably grant the variance, this goes to the planning board for site plan [review]? So we don’t have to deal with the issues of appearance?”

Peck told Baker he was correct. 

The project will be before the planning board at its July 20 meeting for an initial review. 

The zoning board set a public hearing for the variance request at its next meeting, on July 27.