JAMES MARTIN (Chairman): Before you start, I will note for the record, that I have letters authorizing North American Properties to proceed with this rezoning application for the subject property, signed by Robert Fallone, Jr., representing Fallone Enterprises and by the minister of The Fathers House at 741 Paul Road, so they are duly authorized to represent the landowners.

MR. PAPE: Good evening. My name is Jeff Pape. I am with North American Properties and I appreciate you all giving us the opportunity to present our proposal tonight...We also wouldn't be here this evening, I don't believe, if we didn't feel strongly in reading your Master Plan that this area was, in fact, suited from a Master Plan standpoint. Our reading of your Master Plan shows, and the various verbiage in there regarding Chili Center references the potential for these type of retail and major retail uses in the area, and I believe it does show General Business for those uses... So with that, I guess I would prefer -- engineers can get into a lot of detail, but our preference really this evening would be to provide and hear your input, hope that we can answer your questions, and hopefully at the end of the evening answer those to your satisfaction so that we can proceed to the next level with a recommendation to the Town Board. So with that, I would like to leave it to your questions, if I could.

JAMES MARTIN : Okay. I guess a couple of things to begin with. For the information of the audience, before we go much farther, just as a matter of clarification, the Planning Board does not have the authority to rezone property. The only authority to rezone property in the Town of Chili rests with the Town Board. So I don't want anybody out there to have in their mind an assumption as we move forward tonight, that the Planning Board has the authority to rezone the property. So I just wanted to get that clarification up front.

Secondly, many of us here on the Planning Board I think worked for almost two years with Fallone Enterprises on the concept of a Planned Neighborhood Overlay District, which comprises I believe about 37 acres of the proposed development that you have brought before us tonight. And I believe we went through several iterations, all right, in that process that we finally arrived at a design for the area that we felt was a significant asset to that particular location. And it was a very nice transitional plan from the high intensity commercial, the Wegmans operation to the residential neighborhood that surrounds it, particularly the property.

We also worked very closely with The Fathers House in studying their proposal, their site plan proposal which obviously is the property next-door to yours and of which I believe 16 acres could potentially become part of this particular project.

A couple of clarifications. You [referring to Jeff Pape] stated that in studying our Master Plan, that you felt that this particular area was in a state where a General Business type of zoning was appropriate. However, if I read the Master Plan, and in Chapter 1, Executive Summary, the recommendation at the time the Master Plan was put in place was to rezone the area in question to a Planned Neighborhood Overlay District, which subsequently did happen. It was rezoned from Restricted Business, I believe, to the PNOD zoning. So I'm not quite sure whether your interpretation is correct from a master planning standpoint. Certainly, I would not agree with that statement. You know, there is also a statement earlier on, that future land use would lend itself towards a General Business type of application for this particular area. Again, I don't concur with that impression...

As far as what you have presented tonight, you have indicated 350,000 square feet of retail. I believe the two major tenants constitute almost 300,000 square feet of that. A very, very large retail type of activity there. I don't know how many parking spaces are on the site plan proposed -- the sketch plan I guess I should call it, but there has got to be well over a thousand. So certainly traffic would be a major concern on the part of anybody who is looking at this particular project...

....So at this point, I am going to turn it over to my fellow Board members for other questions and concerns at this time.....
 
JOHN HELLABY: ...What are the terms of your purchase agreement time frame wise?
 
MR. PAPE: We have the option on the contract until late fall of 2006, I believe. I don't have the stuff in front of me.....

JOHN NOWICKI: ... I will take a different tact. I happen to concur with what the Chairman said earlier in regards to the interpretation of the Comprehensive Plan and to get into a site consideration for traffic. At this point I think this may be not appropriate at this point, because once I get into that, I'm going to be taking a very, very hard look at this site, the architectural treatment, the drainage, the whole thing, and I don't think at this time I want to get into that. I would rather want you folks to be aware of the committee that has been involved, the Comprehensive Update Committee. I think because of the way the Comprehensive Plan is written and stated this committee should get this for their review at this time before we do anything else and have a recommendation with their statements coming back before the Planning Board. I think it is too premature to talk about any of the other issues at this point in time until the committee has had a chance to look at it and to refer it back to the Planning Board. That's all I am going to say at this point in time.

DENNIS SCHULMERICH: Several points, some of which I think you may be able to answer and some of which may be deferred to the applicant himself. If I take a look at the progression of zoning in the area, what I see transpiring, and initially it started out as Residential, migrated to Restricted Business, 2003, migrated to PNOD and now we have application pulling in some R-1-15 tonight, wanting to take it all to GB. That migration over the time frame we're talking about is surprising to me. That is an observation. Back in September, September 16th, 2003, to be exact, the applicant presented a market study showing that the economic viability of PNOD was positive for the type of services that are put before the Planning Board. What has changed in the applicant's position that said that market study is not viable?

MR. PAPE: That was not an application by us. That was the current property owner that is not involved with this proposal right now. I have no information on that initial economic development study. We're simply moving forward with a project that we feel is economically feasible and is a need here. We have no connection to that -- this is not modification of an old application. This is a brand new application coming in.

DENNIS SCHULMERICH: The prior applicant indicated the desire for PNOD to enable the consistency of commercial transitioning from Wegmans to some low level commercial to residential providing solid buffer between the commercial zoning for the commercial applications and the zoning for Residential. When I look at the plan you have got, you mention a buffer to the Residential. We still have GB. How does the type of buffering that you're talking about here align with what would have occurred with the PNOD?

MR. PAPE: Again, we have no information on the PNOD. We were not part of that application. We don't know what they had in mind when they were talking about buffers. All we can do is do what we typically do. If we need to provide buffers, we'll do it with berming and landscaping and try to create an aesthetically pleasing type buffer....

DENNIS SCHULMERICH: Another point is the provision of State Law -- this was stated back in August of 2003 by the Planning Board, and still is viable. Provision of State Law regarding comprehensive plan and rezoning. If rezoning is not consistent with the Master Plan, we have to revise the Master Plan before we can consider rezoning. If you consider Chapter 1 from the Master Plan, a recommendation to rezone the targeted area as a Planned Neighborhood Overlay District so as to buffer adjacent single-family neighborhoods will compliment the more intense uses such as in Wegmans Plaza. Chapter 5 notes the Chili Center sub area includes an area where a Mixed Plan Overlay District and General Business District would be used using the wetland area and single-family residence towards Archer Road. So I concur with the other two members of the Planning Board that mentioned it is not obvious how this is aligned with the Master Plan and by my definition it is not obvious how we can take an action on it tonight since it seems in direct contrast with our current Master Plan.

The final point from my perspective, and I'm open to be swayed in this, I want to see the residents of Chili have the right type of shopping. The community continues to grow. With that said, I believe the zoning we have in Chili is set by the Town Board, and what I see happening is we have had an applicant come before us on several occasions, motivating us to convert the property to PNOD. He has not been able to deliver on that. Now he is seeking to rezone it to GB for his own economic gain...