Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutPB Minutes 2019-05-07'I .'OWN OF vrHACA PLANNING BOARD Shirley A. Raffensperger Board Room, Town Hall 215 North Tioga Street Ithaca, New York 14850 7 i1gshy.,.M.4y.IJ 1Q) 19 AGENDA 7.00 P.M, Discussion of the draft Findings Statement for the proposed Chain Works District Redevelopnient Prqject. 'I I lie proposed Chain Works District Redevelopment Project seeks to redevelop the 800,000 +/- square foot former Morse Chain/Emerson Power Transmission facility and construct new buildings on portions ofthe 95 -acre site within the City andTowri of Itharca, 2. persons to lie heard 3, Approval of Minutes: April 16, 2019 4. Other Business AdJOUrriment Susan Ritter Director of planning 2,73-1747 NOTE: IFANYMEMBER OFTHE, PLANN ING BOARD IS UNABLETO Al -f END, PLEASE NOTIFY SANDY POLCT AT273-1747 or (A quorum or four (4) members is necessary ro conduct Planning Board business.) Accessing Meeting Materials Online Site Plan and Subdivision applications and associated project materials, are accessible electronically oil the Town's website under "Planning Board" on the "`Meeting Agendas" page (lit jj://W %VIA',, t0li'a.i t1KWaJ1VJ IS/0101i 1W-UgC hhlS). TOWN OF ITHACA PLANNING BOARD Tuesday, May 7, 2019 Final Minutes Town Planning Board Members Present: Fred Wilcox, Chair; Jon Bosak, Yvonne Fogarty, Liebe Meier Swain and Alternate Jennifer Karius Absent: John Beach, Cindy Kaufman and Joseph Haefeli Town Staff Present: Susan Ritter; Director of Planning; Chris Balestra, Planner; Susan Brock, Attorney for the Town; Paulette Rosa, Town Clerk; David O'Shea, Engineering Call to Order Mr. Wilcox called the meeting to order at 7:03 p.m. Agenda Item: Discussion of the draft Findings Statement for the proposed Chain Works District Redevelopment Project. The proposed Chain Works District Redevelopment Project seeks to redevelop the 800,000 +/- square foot former Morse Chain/Emerson Power Transmission facility and construct new buildings on portions of the 95 -acre site within the City and Town of Ithaca. James Gensel, Fagan Engineers, Chainworks Project was present to answer questions. Mr. Wilcox said he read the minutes from the last meeting and recapped by saying the Board spent some time on energy and transportation and he thought energy was wrapped up and the focus tonight is transportation. He asked where the Board would like to start. Ms. Balestra said there are changes in the handouts provided. There is a version from April 161h which staff has looked at to incorporate the earlier comments and we found a lot of other changes we thought were important to make. She said the version you received in your mailout contains all of the redlined changes from the April 161h document which are now blue, and the changes not discussed yet are in red. Ms. Fogarty said she loves this project and she is looking forward to seeing it come to fruition, but reading about the transportation was mindboggling to her because there are so may if(s) and maybe(s) and would have(s) and perhaps(s) and should(s) and so much of what is written in here, particularly about the mitigation, has to do with DOT and as we all know, DOT is slow and hard to get to and she asked Mr. Gensel to speak to that. Mr. Gensel said in a wholistic way, the difference between this kind of project and mitigation versus site plan mitigations is there are still a lot of generalities and in each of the major impact areas, transportation, environmental, stormwater, we use a toolbox approach. What we did is we threw the whole toolbox at it, so you have that whole list. He said I can understand how that is confusing but what happens is that when you get to the point of actually doing site plans and actually doing mitigation, you have that toolbox available to start using the applicable types of mitigations or tools in that box. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 1 For example, in Stormwater, we have put the whole NYS Stormwater Design Manual in there. We are going to look into that, but sometimes those things are not useable. Like infiltration is not an acceptable practice in certain cases, so in the Environmental section, where there are potentially hard packed soils and we can't do infiltration, there are other options. But, if the Town's side gets removed from the ROD and we are able to do some of those infiltrations there, we want the full toolbox available to us. He said you will see that there is a list, which was developed by Steve Franz who is working with the City, to do transportation management holistically, to try and reduce the traffic demand and the thresholds that are in the GEIS; if we don't perform with some of the TDM steps, we are not going to be able to develop it. We get stuck at a certain level, or, we have to reopen the EIS all over again. Mr. Gensel said he has had the same issue with the document when looking at it, but the approach was you are given these items that you are going to work on and you are going to have to work with all the agencies; not just the developer, but incorporate TCAT and DOT. He said we have set those thresholds and we have set the number of vehicles we can have come out of that site and if we don't meet those, we are going to have to implement more demand management such as carpooling or others on the list. He said he understands it is a very holistic list, but the specifics have to work out before we get to certain points and that is why there is a Phase 1 piece with the smaller mitigation because then everything after that has to meet those thresholds. Ms. Fogarty said she is still wondering what DOT is saying about this project and Mr. Gensel responded it has been just the one letter we received, and to be frank, the DOT almost didn't respond. They dropped the ball. Ms. Fogarty said there are very important issues with them (DOT) like signage, turning lanes, stop lights and so it seems like DOT really needs to be a part of this issue in a big way. Mr. Gensel said they are permitting each of our drives on 96B and they gave us a list of what we have to do for Phase 1 and unless they change their mind, that's what we have to do. He added that when these drives come along, there will be fresh eyes because you have new engineers coming along every day, but the minimum requirements are set in the FGEIS. Ms. Fogarty asked if DOT is amenable to the idea of turn lanes etc. and Mr. Gensel responded that they are the ones that gave us that list; they are saying that those things can be done if there is funding which is up to the developer to find, through municipal, state or federal funding with other stakeholders. He said at the end of the day, if these mitigation efforts don't happen, the development doesn't happen. Mr. Wilcox addressed Mr. Gensel saying, you will be required to put in these turn lanes, etc. etc., as part of getting your curb cut permits and you will pay for it and Mr. Gensel agreed and added that all of their estimates assume no funding from outside sources. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 2 Ms. Meier Swain said she was surprised to see there is no turn lane or crosswalk or any mitigation for the crossing to the elementary school. There is no traffic signal at that pedestrian crossing. Mr. Gensel said if there are pedestrian facilities on the other side when we go to do the signalization on that, there will be, but that would be dictated by DOT on whether they will allow us to do that. Some discussion followed on the school and access points. Mr. Wilcox added that the Ithaca City School District has some plans for reconfiguring that in their Capital Improvement Plan that is out for vote next week. Mr. Gensel said we would want those safety measures, but DOT would tell us and or require us to. Ms. Meier Swain asked about the stop sign further down in the City and the timing of the lights as you get to Aurora St. Everyone agreed that is a horrible intersection and Mr. Gensel said that was discussed with DOT. Ms. Fogarty asked if somebody would be hired with the position to be involved in all these transportation ideas and Mr. Gensel responded that there is someone and there will be a set Chainworks team to be part of that process. Ms. Fogarty said she would like to see that stated because there is a whole list of mitigations, but unless there is someone to do them and negotiate with all those people and make it happen it won't work. Mr. Wilcox asked if her concern was that the mitigations are just listed in a document and never implemented, and Ms. Fogarty said it is not listed in a document. The different mitigations are in the document, but they are not very coordinated, and she thinks there needs to be someone coordinating those. Mr. Gensel said from the applicants' side, that will be our team and in conjunction with other groups such as the Downtown Ithaca Alliance Center who just received a grant and other similar entities. Each grant has different groups that can apply for them and we may have to form groups to apply for grants but the City is taking the lead with some of them. Ms. Fogarty said she would think that once you are up and running there would be a person in charge of reaching out to TCAT, and Carshare and the City etc and Mr. Gensel said that will be the property management team and in fact, every tenant will have to be involved and in fact there are some incentives in the tenant agreements to reduce the parking and things like that. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 3 Ms. Fogarty said she just felt there should be a dedicated person to do that and Mr. Gensel said they just don't have that level of detail yet and he can't tell what that will be but he did not think it would be just one person but rather a team. Ms. Meier Swain asked at what point in the implementation, process where some of these measures are assigned to particular phases, how do those other measures come into place and have teeth? How do we continue to measure the effectiveness of the mitigations? Ms. Balestra responded that she can't speak for the City, but what we generally do when we have a Finding Statement is we take the mitigations and they become conditions of approval to the extent we can do that. Some of the conditions of approval are very specific and some need to be fleshed out before Final Site Plan approval and then it is a matter of staff making sure those conditions are met. Ms. Meier Swain said then if the traffic falls to that F rating, which was below a C previously, and when that gets triggered, if they have done all the things they were supposed to do, and at six months down the road, and they do a traffic study and see it has fallen below the required level, is that when the applicant comes back and does something else to mitigate it? It is the down the road aspect of this that has to be explained she thought. Mr. Wilcox said he is confused; he is thinking of Holochuck, and in some ways Holochuck is illustrative. One, we have a single major road with a lot of traffic that is going to be impacted by a major development. With the Holochuck development, we worked with the developer and we imposed various mitigations and it is my assumption that the City will work with the developers and impose mitigation measures whether that is everybody who rents an apartment gets two bus passes, or whatever get works out between the applicant team and the City of Ithaca; they will work something out just like we worked something out with the Holochuck developers. We didn't impose monitoring or subsequent tracking and now you want to implement monitoring measures? Ms. Brock responded saying that those monitoring measures are written in their process. Ms. Brock turned to page 28 of the Statement; they have Phase 1 where they want to reuse the buildings and renovate them, that is Phase 1. Below the highlighted information, it says, "Phase 1 specific mitigation" which is stuff they have to do before or during Phase 1 construction and these are the things that DOT has specified, A B and C and then on pg. 29 is says "Post Phase 1 Mitigation" so as part of the Phase 2 mitigation if and when they come back for Phase 2, they have to do a post Phase 1 traffic study. They will "adapt and scale the Washington State Commute Reduction Program, and then additional transportation demand management or commuter trip reduction initiatives will be implement as follows," and we need to specify more about who makes that decision, but, they have to do that study first, so we can't say right now what will be required, but that is part of the Phase 2 approval process. She turned to pg. 30 where there is the Monitoring and Mitigation Implementation Plan after Phase 1 that they are also going to be doing. Then if you look at pg. 31, "if traffic conditions at those above intersections degrade to Level of Service E or higher for any approach, then mitigation will be required...." and it keeps going from there. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 4 Ms. Brock said she thinks it is all in here and we just need some more language to specify who is responsible. Maybe putting in the "the City and Town Planning Boards as they consider Phase 2 and subsequent Phases and or US DOT" that will make it clearer. Mr. Wilcox said he didn't want to specify what the mitigation will be 10 years down the road and Ms. Brock said she thinks the Statement is written with a very passive voice and so we often don't know who it is who will be doing it so that makes it confusing. Are we doing it? Is the City doing it? and so they should have said something like "as part of subsequent Site Plan applications agencies will be reviewing and making decision about whether these mitigations need to be implemented." We just need one or two sentences in these different places, and it becomes much clearer. Mr. Gensel said one thing to note is that at every phase we are doing a traffic study and getting real data on the trip generation so we can tell how many are from this project. We will keep a running total so each phase as we submit it will show real data. Sometimes initial estimates are way off in either direction and here we will have real data to review and use to see if we have to rethink things. Ms. Brock asked Ms. Balestra if it would be helpful if Mr. Gensel could provide information on who is doing these evaluations and at what stage they are doing it to help change the passive voice. Mr. Gensel turned to where it says "Traffic study updates will be reviewed by NYS DOT and a City Traffic engineer" and suggested that that needs to be added in other places. Mr. Wilcox said it should be "the City Engineer" and Ms. Balestra said or NYS DOT, but Mr. Gensel said he doesn't totally trust in the DOT only and that is why they added the City Engineer. Obviously, DOT has totally bought into the whole idea of adding another lane, but we are trying to take a more holistic view of the whole TDM approach. Ms. Balestra said Mr. Gensel had sent some proposed language: "TDM strategies are to be implemented by the Project Sponsor in collaboration with municipal agencies and the tenants. TDM is a toolbox approach similar to remediation of stormwater mitigation, the entire list may not be implemented, however, the result needs to be the same." Mr. Gensel said the big thing is the traffic studies and counts that have to happen before we go on to the next phase and that is your check in that the system is working and that we are actually doing what we are saying we are doing. It might just take one of the tools out of the toolbox to mitigate issues or it may take all of them. It is going to be experimental and we are going to have to try different things. That is the approach NYS is taking and that is why they are funding these types of initiatives. He added that we are test cases for them to watch and to demonstrate whether they work so they can then show others. Mr. Wilcox asked if the Board was ready to move on and Ms. Fogarty asked if the question had been answered. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 5 Ms. Balestra said she is going to add some language such as "by the project sponsor in collaboration with municipal agencies and the tenants" and Ms. Brock asked what that meant? Ms. Ritter said if it is TCAT, that has to be in coordination with TCAT and if it's Rideshare, they need to coordinate with Rideshare and if they are doing anything with the streets they need to collaborate with the Town of the County. Mr. Bosak said he would like to get more specific. There is nothing about the passive voice construction that let's you leave out an agent but often it used that way so you don't have to say the "who" and almost all of these are that form and in some places we are just not making any sense. He looked at E "Emergency ride home. In case of an emergency ride home during the daytime... transportation to.... will be provided at no cost." You can't leave the agent out of that. Who is going to do that and who is going to pay for it? I can say that about most of these items. Mr. Bosak said that from the earlier part of the discussion, I may have heard that this is just a list of things but not specific requirements, and if so, ok, if this is a list you can choose from but it begins with a sentence that reads "Will be implemented as follows." Ms. Brock again wondered if Mr. Gensel could take the transportation piece and edit it and get rid of the passive voice and tell us who is doing what. If these need to be implemented, who is doing them and then we could look at that at the next meeting. Mr. Gensel said it is the Project Sponsor who needs to do it at the end of the day, but, it may be in coordination with outside agencies and could be outside agencies working for us. We do not have a defined agency that is going to handle each of these things. Ms. Brock clarified by saying so if TCAT needs an extra bus, they may have to pay for it? Mr. Gensel said yes, if they want to invest in a bus in the hopes of more ridership in the area, they can choose to pay for it, but it would help with the mitigation. Ms. Brock said then maybe we can rewrite this to say that the applicant will be responsible for ensuring that these happen and paying for them if they are not paid for through other collaborations; that basically the buck stops with the developer, that is the intent. Mr. Gensel said they have kept the word "grant" out of the Findings Statement so people didn't think we were relying on grants to get this project done. Ms. Brock suggest adding "if other funding streams are not identified and procured" and Mr. Gensel agreed. She said that clears it up for her. The applicant is committing to doing this, they don't have to do it themselves, they can do it through another agency or company that they are hiring or contracting with or creating to do it, but they are going to be responsible for doing it and paying for it, in the end, if nobody else is doing it. Mr. Wilcox said they are responsible for ensuring its completion. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 6 Mr. Bosak turned back to page 38 and wanted to clarify that they would be responsible even if they do everything on this list and if it doesn't change the traffic level, because he believes it will take a complete restructuring of public transit on that section of the road, including putting actual bus service on 96B instead of commuter service, so is the requirement that we want to put in here, is that enough to say that if these things aren't enough, you still don't get to do Phase 2 unless you do something else to make it right. He asked if that is the implication, because that is the implication he is getting from the language. Ms. Balestra said yes, that is the requirement. We could add a sentence there to say "Additional mitigation shall be required post Phase 1 or before Phase 2 development." Mr. Bosak said if you tighten that language up, then to his mind, a lot of the rest of the discussion is pro forma, because we don't know what is going to happen after Phase 1 and that's what this says. Mr. Wilcox said that is part of the issue we are dealing with. We are dealing in the future and we can't commit ourselves, or the applicant, to certain actions in the future, but we do need to know the process. Ms. Brock said that is what, because of the passive voice, it was hard to figure out. Mr. Gensel said one thing to point out is that when you are talking about Loss of Service (LOS) of a particular intersection, if it is caused by this project and not subsequent projects. So, if there are subsequent projects that create this issue, that is not our problem, so please keep that in mind. He added that that is why there is a lot about the trip generation rather than the LOS. There is a lot of development in the area and we can't control that and that is why we focus on trips. We are looking at a snapshot of right now versus ten years from now; my client thinks we aren't going to have cars ten years from now. Ms. Meier Swain said is it worthwhile then? To change the standard listed from LOS to trips generated? Mr. Gensel said there is language in the GEIS, and we can snip that and add it to this; it is a fuller definition. Ms. Fogarty asked if we should discuss the words "should' and "consider" or are we going to let them stay because we don't know which things are going to get done? Ms. Brock said she considered that, but you have to do the evaluation before you can say what is going to be required. Ms. Fogarty said the onsite trail section says it "should" be considered and she thought that was a done deal. Mr. Gensel said you can strike the "should" there, that is definitely happening. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 7 Ms. Fogarty looked at page 34 under Mitigation Measures; NYS 96/Coddington Rd where is says the Project Sponsor "should" work with NYS DOT and the property owners, and she thought that should be "will." Ms. Balestra said when she and Ms. Brock were looking at all the mitigations, we got to this chart and she thought if we can just put everything in a chart, wouldn't that be easier. She asked if the chart was just part of what the mitigations are? Mr. Gensel said they looked at a chart format, but with the TDM it got confusing. This chart is more structural changes. He suggested saying TDM Strategies as a generic header, but there are the real meat and potatoes DOT changes in this chart. Discussion followed. Ms. Ritter said she was questioning the Phase 2 elements and maybe this needs to be clarified: "Cayuga Street and Seneca Street and then Cayuga Street and Clinton Street" and then it says "system -wide update of the signal timing" but she was sure that didn't mean City-wide timing and Mr. Gensel said that is that section and if they get a grant they are going for, the City will do it but if not, it would be us. Ms. Fogarty said the other one is "consider the installation of a 3 -color traffic light" and should that be "consider?" Mr. Gensel said DOT won't let us do that unless we hit certain warrants and that is why we say "consider." We aren't able to put that in unless we meet that warrant. A lot of developers want a signal at their entrance, but you have to meet their guidelines or "warrant" to require a signal. It is an actual science so you could take the word "consider" out and say if the warrant is met. Ms. Fogarty then turned to page 32 and asked what an "automated transit" is where it says "and potential automated service between the Commons and the site." Mr. Gensel said that is, for example, the people going there that we can use as an indication. Ms. Fogarty said it is things like that that are making me so uncomfortable about this. You can put in all sorts of things like that but it is so generic and it doesn't feel like it has any teeth to it. Mr. Wilcox said haven't we made significant progress putting teeth in it? Ms. Fogarty responded we have, but it still, this is kind of la di da about it. Mr. Gensel said that could be taken out; the whole idea of people movement. Ms. Balestra said she highlighted this section because it is talking about City mitigations, and what should we include in this document since the City has them but we can't enforce them? PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 8 Mr. Wilcox said no, they should stay because these are findings and part of our findings is that the City has agreed to or committed to these mitigation efforts. The Board agreed. Remove "potential automated transit system." Mr. Wilcox said transportation remains THE issue of this project, at least in the Town. Mr. Gensel agreed, saying that is the biggest impact for the Town. Environmental is being addressed by DEC. Mr. Wilcox asked what we know about Ithaca College expansion plans because they have been very quiet lately. Ms. Ritter said they had a Master Plan under the previous President and they recently had a lot of public meetings, but it seemed like they were more about strategic planning and we will hear more about that at the end of the summer. They will then see how that applies to their Master Plan. Ms. Fogarty asked about the format of the document and Ms. Balestra said she organized it in sections with General Mitigations, then specific Phase 1 Mitigations and then Post Phase 1 Mitigation. Ms. Fogarty said most of what she sees in this document is City of Ithaca and might it be better to have a specific Town section. Ms. Balestra responded, saying a good portion of it is in the City of Ithaca and Phase 1 is only in the City and renovating and rehabilitating the existing buildings that are there for manufacturing and then for Post Phase 1, somewhere off in the future, there is all this new development that may happen in the Town which brings all of the assumptions and so, it might be hard to have town -specific mitigations whereas Phase 1 is definitely going to impact the City. Mr. Gensel added that TDM is more focused on commercial and less on residential. You can pretty much assume that every house is going to have a car but you can have 50% of commercial not driving to the site; they either live their or take public transit etc. He added that that is a problem for the applicant. We need to get to that critical mass before we start applying these types of things. Ms. Balestra said she could simply say the Town and the City where applicable and specify singularly where applicable. Discussion followed. Mr. Wilcox said he is less concerned with the order in which they are stated; the fact that they are there, that the verbiage exists, is the key. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 9 Ms. Fogarty said she has read it and understands it now, but when you just look at it, you see City, City, City, and Ms. Balestra said she added the word "City" so we could talk about it. She didn't plan on keeping the words "City of Ithaca" in there because it is the overall project and the various pieces are going to affect both the Town and the City. Mr. Wilcox said what he hears is that instead of saying "City" or "Town", you will just have the mitigation. Ms. Balestra agreed, saying those were added to clarify for the Board and will be taken out in the final document. Ms. Balestra said she found it helpful from a staff perspective that the easier the document is to read, the easier it is to enforce. Mr. Wilcox asked if we needed to cover anything else? Ms. Meier Swain said she had a question about the air quality piece; "investigate alternative energy methods to reduce building emissions of carbon dioxide" and her problem is what would be implemented because "investigate" is not a mitigation. Mr. Gensel said the backside is the mitigation where we then meet criteria to improve the reduction of fossil fuels based on our 2030 Challenge. He thought the "alternative energy methods" may have been added in reaction to the North Campus Residential Housing project. Ms. Brock asked if they are looking at solar or wind powered energy and Mr. Gensel responded that to meet the 70% reduction, we will have to have it and we actually have a grant for it already. Ms. Balestra asked what to do about the sentence then and the Board said remove (A) because (B) is much more precise. Ms. Fogarty asked what the statement below (B) meant; Note: Only a portion of this would be for ongoing site emissions? Mr. Bosak said he assumes that means reductions that are not on this site can be used for the 2030 Challenge goals. Some discussion followed and Mr. Gensel said that was a comment for City staff and it can be struck. He said there is a table in the DGEIS that states "or energy reductions." Ms. Balestra and Ms. Brock looked at sections in the DGEIS to confirm the concern was addressed. Ms. Brock said it does not say anything about onsite vs. offsite and she thought it was a note they had to themselves. The Board decided to strike the parenthetical sentence at the end of former B. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 10 Ms. Fogarty added that pg. 40, 2 "A conceptual site plan layout mitigates visual impact with the careful placement of....." should be struck also. The Board agreed. Mr. Bosak asked about the reference to "new buildings" having to meet LEED criteria but nothing about "old" buildings. Mr. Gensel replied that new buildings would be built to LEED standards and any additions to existing buildings will meet the standard. Ms. Meier Swain asked about whether there needs to be an indication to the effect that any new construction will conform to the character of the community or oriented around our Comprehensive Plan so we do not end up with brick structures and so forth? Ms. Balestra thought 43 gets to that and Mr. Gensel added that 42 also addresses it. We are going to locate taller buildings down the hill. Ms. Balestra thought it was covered in the section. Mr. Wilcox said in summary, we are very happy with the document, except for, essentially, the Transportation section, which needs some work. Ms. Fogarty asked if Ms. Balestra was going to fix the other items where she indicates "Chris will fix." Ms. Balestra said she would, and some are questions for Ms. Brock, and she has answered some of them, but her overall plan is to incorporate what the Board has agreed upon tonight and revise the document and then submit a new revised document with those items that have been agreed upon being in black ink, and anything new or still to be discussed would be in red. Ms. Balestra asked to turn to pg. 45 to talk about hours of operation. We have a noise ordinance that allows 7a.m. to 7 p.m. which is a little late and our noise ordinance does not distinguish between interior and exterior work. Mr. Gensel said we don't have a problem with the Board's standard. Ms. Balestra said the Board has specified hours of construction based upon the project that are more restrictive than our law. Mr. Gensel recommended changing the wording to "as traditional, or as agreed upon during Site Plan review. He added that there are sections of the project that are nowhere near anyone. Ms. Brock said some of the most important things are the thresholds on pages 48-49 and a lot of these we couldn't understand what they meant to say. She said it would be very helpful if Mr. Gensel could work with Ms. Balestra to clarify what the intent was and she can put it into language that everyone understands. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 11 Ms. Balestra responded that she has contacted Lisa Ellis and sent her this chart with that question. She said this is almost verbatim of what is in the DGEIS so there is no change from that. She just responded today and this is still a work in progress. Some discussion followed and the Board will look at this at the next meeting. Ms. Balestra said the only other thing she has is that she still needs to coordinate with Public Works about what the stormwater section and utilities section should say. She didn't know how specific we have to get with the utilities and stormwater section. Mr. Gensel said to keep in mind that there is a reference to NYS Stormwater Manual and if that Manual changes, we have to change. Mr. O'Shea said it is more about the utilities. Mr. Wilcox asked for an example and Mr. O'Shea responded that all of these flows are directed straight to the City and there are going to be Town customers at the top so that is going to take some of our allocation at the plant so we have to know these figures. He said everything he has read is slanted more toward the City, but we can easily serve that area and he didn't believe we are going to give up our right to serve that area. Some discussion followed. Ms. Fogarty asked about the reference to a "10 -year storm" and thought it wasn't sufficient given the rain we have been having. Mr. O'Shea explained there are swales and sewer collection systems and it is not allowed to leave the site unless it meets preconditions which are covered int eh DEC Manual. Ms. Fogarty again said it doesn't seem sufficient and Mr. Wilcox said we cannot require anything other than State regulations. Mr. Gensel said it won't be to a 10 -year storm; he doesn't design that way and Mr. O'Shea said it will be a 100 -year storm for leaving the site, that is a State requirement; just conveyance on the site will be a 10 -year. Mr. Wilcox added that this is the way it has been historically. Mr. Gensel said the bottom line there are a number of year storms in different areas as DEC requires. We can't do any worse than what the DEC requires and when our company designs, we always add a conservative factor. We do work in this area, not all over the country, and this is our reputation and local knowledge. Ms. Karius spoke to the stormwater section and asked if this has already been approved because the soil runoff water, water lines and surface waters and she was wondering how the process looks right now because there are a lot of processes in here and she wondered how those processes will take into consideration the contaminants and volatility of the site. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 12 Mr. Gensel responded that he is not excited about using those bio techniques but they are starting to do the higher ends now so the clean up side of things is starting right now. Everything will be documented and this is why the applicant paid a lot of money to document a lot of the site because all of that is on Emerson's dime right now. If they start cleaning up and they think they are going to get 10 cubic yards out of there but it looks like you need to go 20, that is on Emerson. Anything after the IRM will be under the applicant's dime. We did a lot of pre -testing; over $lmillion in investigation work done on the site to characterize it. Mr. Gensel said on the stormwater side, what that has done is it has told us where we cannot do certain functions, we can't do infiltration in certain areas. We actually have millions of gallons of water (can't make out the word) that we are going to be talking to you about using that as stormwater collection from Ithaca College and collecting it there and potentially using that water for gray water systems and other things. We aren't into specifics yet, but that is one of the things we are looking at; trying to use some of these alternative structural measures because we can't use green infrastructure as much as we would like and as much as the DEC wants. The DEC has implemented a lot of credits and runoff reduction based on green infrastructure that utilizes infiltration practices and infiltration is a no - no when it comes to contaminated sites. Mr. Gensel said it is going to be an interesting process and when we get into the actual designing of the stormwater systems, there is going to be a lot of work in that and that is going to involve the Stormwater Officers from the City and the Town. Mr. Wilcox said it is a unique site but there is a demand and a desire to clean up the site and we will have to see what compromises the various permitting agencies are willing to make to come up with a stormwater management system that will work that also respects the environmental issues on the property. Mr. Gensel said the only thing they have done so far is to calculate how much water is coming through the site and there is a large tributary coming off of Ithaca College's site that impacts our site so I am hoping that the Master Plan that is coming from Ithaca College will address some of that and we can participate in that process. We can do a lot with retention types of mitigations because we are at the top of the hill and slowly discharge out from the top and if we can participate offsite, that might be a benefit to everyone. Ms. Karius said she would like to follow up on the interest that the Planning Board should get information, for instance, when you are going to take measurements about vehicle trips per hour, or about water and the approach, before you get to the next phase of site plan approval. Mr. Gensel responded that any of those types of approaches would be discussed through the Town and City agencies. Ms. Karius said there is so much so it would be nice to see what the key measures are for such an extraordinary project and it would help us to have this information. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 13 Ms. Balestra said that is what the chart is, and Mr. Gensel said that needs to be clarified. Ms. Karius responded that should be spelt out because there are things like "structural aspects" in here that need to be explained because I don't know what that means. I should know why that is an important measurement for this project. Ms. Balestra responded that that is her job and she is going to be working with Town and City staff to flesh -out the threshold chart and also with Ms. Brock and that will be part of the redlined version you get at the next meeting. Mr. Wilcox thanked Mr. Gensel for coming. 2. Persons to be heard — None 3. Approval of Minutes: April 16, 2019 Mr. Bosak moved approval, seconded by Ms. Fogarty, Mr. Wilcox abstained. Unanimous. 4. Other Business Next meeting will be May 21" with a small parking and paving project at Cornell and continue discussion on the Findings Statement. Ms. Ritter congratulated Mr. Wilcox on his award for being the Best Chair in New York State by the Planning Federation. The Board discussed the recent Planning Federation Conference and Ms. Meier Swain stated that she had an interesting conversation about the Planning Board Chair position and why someone should want to be the Chair and she wanted to say publicly is that she is interested in continuing her role and putting her hat in the ring to be Chair. They said you have to make sure you are not choosing the nicest person or the person with the most experience. She wanted to reflect on that for a moment because it was very interesting to her watching the dynamics on our Board and in our Community and knowing that she doesn't represent physically most of the people or most of the applicants coming forward, but she wanted to say that she takes her decorum very seriously and it has a different meaning to her. Ms. Meier Swain said that she feels that she is qualified to say has the project been heard, are we doing the things that we are supposed to, are we mitigating to the greatest extent practicable, are people being heard, are we being fair and are we listening to the public and my composure is very purposeful sometimes because I am aware of my social surroundings and I don't want to be perceived as the quote "angry black woman who was navigating a Planning Board meeting" so it is a sensitivity that I have, and it was brought up to me in a very interesting way during this conversation and it was good to be able to reflect and to make this public statement that I think I have the skills to do what is asked of the Planning Board Chair and I would love to have the opportunity to do that. PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg. 14 Ms. Rosa asked the Board members to make sure they have sent any changes to then- Ethics DisclOSUre forni or air email slating there are none, 5, AdJournment Meetine was ad.journed upon a motion and a second at 8:58 pii, U ry Paulette Rosa, Town Jerk PB Minutes 2019-05-07 Pg, 15