ALTAMONT — Nothing was committed, only acknowledged to the developer of a proposed 30-room hotel on the site of the former Peter Young Center.

The Altamont Board of Trustees on July 17 passed a resolution confirming it has enough additional potable water to supply the proposed Inns of Altamont; it did not approve the request nor did it give the hotel the right to access the water. 

The resolution allows developer Kent Hansen to move the project forward with the town of Guilderland, where it is located, outside of the village, at 1180 Berne-Altamont Road.

The project was to have a public hearing before the Guilderland Zoning Board of Appeals on Aug. 7, but has since been pulled from the agenda,

Work at the 16-acre site would include renovation of the center itself into a  30-room hotel with a 45-seat restaurant and multiple event spaces, both indoors and outdoors. An 18-hole putting golf course is also proposed as well as indoor and outdoor pools.

The village has to be judicious with its additional water. 

Mayor Kerry Dineen said on July 17 there had been a lot that has happened over the years that has affected Altamont’s water supply: summer droughts; usage and availability had changed; issues with manganese; and “sometimes we’re on one well, sometimes we’re on multiple wells.”

The village no longer uses its reservoir, located in Knox.

Of the village’s water supply, Altamont’s engineer, Brad Grant of Barton and Loguidice, told trustees, “The real concern to me is summertime.”

Grant said village wells were subject to drought conditions. 

In 1965, he said, “Everybody in this area was without water practically.”

Grant said things got to the point where water from Thompsons Lake had to be pumped into Altamont’s reservoirs.

“It was a severe drought,” he said. “They call it the drought of record.”

Altamont has a daily production range between 180,000 and 280,000 gallons, trustees were told, depending on the time of year. Peak summer demand averages 220,000 gallons per day, with occasional usage exceeding 300,000 gallons on dry days.

The gallons per day the Inns of Altamont is looking for is only for potable water; there is still a sprinkler system that has to be supplied and water is needed to maintain the grounds and for operations — to which the solution offered was a greywater system and on-site storage tanks. 

There have been multiple water studies over the years, the mayor said, constantly readjusting the village’s available additional allotment. “We always put aside how much water availability we’d have for inside the village … and outside,” she said.

The village adopted a policy in 2013 that allows for 17,000 additional gallons per day inside the village and 8,000 gallons per day outside of the village — so, for example, if a house were built in the village, its estimated per-day usage would be subtracted from 17,000; the same process would be applied to an outside-the-village customer looking to tap into Altamont’s water supply. 

The Inns of Altamont has asked for 5,000 gallons per day. 

When project engineers calculated the hotel’s potable water usage, the board was told capacity came in under the potential allotment of 5,000 — but that was based on annual usage; the concern was that ABD engineers had not taken into account daily peak capacity, which could be significantly higher than the hotel’s daily allotted capacity. 

 The initial proposal was for a 30-room boutique hotel, a 50-person event venue, and a 60-seat restaurant, which together had an estimated usage of 5,000 gallons of water per day; the board was told the site’s current usage is about 800 gallons per day, so the project would actually be looking for an additional 4,200 daily gallons. 

But a new proposal submitted this month increased the estimated daily usage to 7,000 gallons per day — the resolution adopted by the board said it would commit a maximum of 5,000 gallons per day. 

The new proposal scaled down the restaurant, to 45 seats, significantly increased event-venue capacity, to 250 persons, but kept the room count the same — in one proposal, the project engineer had counted the hotel’s two-bedroom rooms as separate single rooms, making the room count 32, which were the factors used to determine the 7,000 gallons-per-day estimate.  

But Grant said it was unlikely the hotel would routinely hit daily capacity. 

Grant said, “Quite honestly, the hotel itself, I think it’s going to be pretty quiet there on a Monday or a Tuesday,” so it’s unlikely daily water usage would reach capacity. He told the trustees, “There would be days where you wouldn’t have anybody up there to speak of.”

Later in the meeting, Dineen said to Grant, “I think what you’ve been telling me is you’re confident that, for the nature of the project, this is not happening  seven days a week.”

He told her, “My guess is it’s five. And it may not even be that.”

The board was told by Hansen that capacity would likely be reached only one to two days per week. 

Dog law

Discussion continued this month about potential changes to Altamont’s dog law. 

The current code, article 1 of chapter 124, titled “Dog Control,” states, “It shall be unlawful for any owner of or any person harboring any dog in the Village of Altamont to permit or allow such dog to”:

— Roam freely unless it is on a leash or accompanied by its owner or a responsible person who can control it;

— Engage in frequent loud howling or barking, or behave in a way that habitually annoys anyone other than the owner or caretaker;

— Cause damage to property or create a nuisance on someone else’s property;

— Chase or harass people in a way that causes reasonable fear of harm or injury;

— Chase or bark at motor vehicles; or

— Leave feces on any of Altamont’s public roads, gutters, sidewalks, parks, other public areas, or private property without the property owner’s consent.

The proposed amendment takes the sentence, “It shall be unlawful for any owner of or any person harboring any dog in the Village of Altamont to permit or allow such dog to,” and changes “leash ‘or’ control of your dog, to leash ‘and’ control your dog.”

The amendment takes the second provision, which says specifically: “Engage in habitual loud howling or barking or to conduct itself in such manner so as to habitually annoy any person other than the owner or person harboring such dog,” and adds “crying or whining” following “barking.” It also adds “that lasts continually for a period of 10 minutes or intermittently for a period of 30 minutes” after “such dog.”

During previous meetings, there has been mostly opposition to the proposed change.

After receiving mostly negative feedback to the amendment again on July 17, the board tabled the current proposal and agreed to draft a revised version by September, potentially for a public hearing in October.