Tonight's Planning Board meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. instead of the usual 6:00 p.m. The extra half-hour at the beginning of the meeting is for the purpose of discussing the proposed clarification to Section 325-17.1 of the city code. This clarifying amendment was sent to the city and the county planning boards, as a matter of course, for a recommendation, a recommendation that is in no way binding on the Common Council.
One wonders why this proposed clarification is causing so much uncertainty and angst. It actually seems pretty straightforward. The zoning in the city's Local Waterfront Revitalization Program (LWRP), which was adopted by the Common Council in November 2011, designates the dock operation as a nonconforming use. The reason for making the dock operation a nonconforming use was to prevent the expansion or intensification of the dock operations beyond what existed in November 2011, when the zoning was put in place, to ensure that whatever went on at the dock could coexist with the use of the adjacent park and the public and private investment happening in proximity to the dock.
During the five years the LWRP was being developed and finally adopted (2006-2011), O&G Industries, headquartered in Connecticut, in an agreement with St. Lawrence/Holcim, was hauling aggregate from the quarry to the river to be loaded on barges at the dock. According to the code, the activity at the dock that existed in 2011 was not to be expanded or intensified. When A. Colarusso & Sons purchased the property from St. Lawrence/Holcim in 2014, the LWPR zoning and its restrictions were in place. Unfortunately, no one thought to document and memorialize the level of activity that existed at the dock or the number of trucks traveling between the quarry and the dock in 2011.
Earlier this year, Donna Streitz did the hard work of investigating and piecing together available information to determine what the level of activity was in 2011--the level that, according to the code, "shall not be enlarged, extended, or placed on a different portion of the lot or parcel of land occupied by such use on the effective date of this chapter, nor shall any external evidence of such use be increased by any means whatsoever." Streitz's findings are the basis for the proposed amendment to clarify Section 325-17.1.
This isn't the first time problems have arisen because an initial set of data had not been established in 2011. In 2017, Colarusso widened its road through South Bay, from Route 9G to the dock. At the time, the question was raised if the widened road encroached on the Recreational Conservation (R-C) District. The question could not be answered because the actual width of the Core Riverfront (C-R) District, as it extends through South Bay, had never been established. It was simply a green line on the zoning map. There was no way to determine where the C-R District ended and the R-C District began in the protected wetland that was once South Bay.
The proposed amendment to Section 325-17.1 is an opportunity to clarify the intent of the zoning by establishing a baseline for activity at the dock, to ensure that the LWRP vision for the waterfront--a vision that restricted the existing industrial use and balanced it with the recreational and nonindustrial uses developing around it--could be realized.
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