HomeMy WebLinkAboutMN-CAC-2014-03-14City of Ithaca Conservation Advisory Council Minutes
March 10, 2014
7:30 – 9pm, Second Floor Meeting Room, City Hall, 108 East Green Street
Present: Jesse Hill, chair; Tom Shelley, co-chair; Matt Yarrow, Maureen Bolton, Michael
Culotta, George McGonigal, CJ Randall
Absent: Augusta Christensen, Noah Demarest
Peter Trowbridge presented on the 1 Ridgewood Road CA Student Living Project.
Zoning stays as an R-U zone. Under R-U, you can have up to 135 units – only 45 planned; 17%
coverage by buildings – 35% allowable
Parking – as little as 38 parking spaces. Designing for 57 so don’t have to go to zoning board.
Anything we do is going to be in the R-U zone. Parking at lowest level possible for zone. Hard to
prove hardship to zoning board – preferred option is 38 parking places.
Bike parking meets and exceeds requirements – met with Tim Logue. Focus on trail so students
can walk to campus. Reconstructing sidewalk on Ridgewood Road. Improving path from 55
Ridgewood.
No lawn – mitigating trees taken town, native trees and shrubs. On site trees- complete
accounting. Flora/fauna assessment is coming. Construction fence around buildable area. On
steep slope – some canopy, mostly shurbs and old garden plants.
Series of holding tanks under parking lot… will meter out water at slow rate.
Developer will have an agreement with city to not build currently undeveloped steep part of site.
Language will be developed by city attorney to make this happen.
McGonigal – Who needs to ask developers to remove invasive species?
Trowbridge – the CAC could request this.
Culotta: Letter to planning board saying we support project and formalization of certain
suggestions by developer, i.e. species list, invasive removal, covenant.
Hill: I can put this into a letter to the planning board and circulate it to the committee.
Hill: Anyone have additional comments on site plans?
Culotta: 748 South Meadow. Where Chipotle is – as you walk along meadow, you can see
landscaped island. They plan to take this out and fill with parking places.
Randall: Strong recommendation – replace pervious surface only with impervious pavement.
Bolton: Ithaca Tree Master Plan – will this project confirm to these recommendations? Page 42
of master plan has details on trees in parking lots.
Hill: I’ll submit a comment on this project as well.
Culotta: A quarter acre of veg removed on new Elmira Rd Hotel. Backing up on Spencer Rd.
Some confusion about which 4-story hotel. 339 Elmira – submitting SWP soon.
Hill: Reflecting on purpose of subcomittees. Parking design controls. Current ones are 14 years
old and outdated. Steep Slopes – also comes up in site plan review – no tools to plan or enforce
these. Sent email to planning staff to see format they would like steep slopes “ordinance”. I’ve
compiled what we’ve done. We have done quite a bit. Maybe we need to make a presentation/
report on water quality in the southern Cayuga Basin. I’ve created an outline of our work
Randall: Scott Gibson working on stormwater plan. Forthcoming.
Hill: Cayuga Watershed network – Hillary Lambert – meeting coming up.
Culotta: Water resources council did a sedimentation report from local streams. Related to
dedging. (EcoLogic) Another organization is the Cayuga Lake Intermunicipal Organization.
Culotta: Given that there are a lot of other organizations out there working on this, we need to
focus in on what we can do as a city committee.
Hill: Old SW Parking design controls… already components in place to update this. Structural
soil, City Tree Master Plan.
Randall: New SEQR forms are coming out. UNAs and CEAs and Natural Areas are
distinguished.
Hill: I don’t want this to become an issue of protecting vs. developing but rather developing
responsibly. Changing language could help us get there. Easier than all out zoning reform.
Randall: We are expecting the new DEC SEQR forms. An applicant needs to be able to figure
out what’s on site and what needs to be done for site plan. Show areas of protection in city and
see if city code makes sense.
Hill: EPA Green parking design is a good document – very inclusive. Another document is
county stream buffer ordinance.
Randall: City is hesitant to do buffers. Comprehensive Plan – needs to refer to buffers or steep
slopes stuff. Then city can have an approach to dealing with it.
Hill: One strategy is to think about changing UNA to CEA.
Meeting adjourned: 9:00pm