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HomeMy WebLinkAboutPB Minutes 2018-05-15 TOWN OFITHACA PLANNING BOARD Shirley A. Raffensperger Board Room, Town Hall 215 North Tioga Street Ithaca, New York 14850 1pgs4n�M tyj 5,2M AGENDA 7:00 P�M. Consideration of a Sketch Plan for the proposed Cornell University North Campus Residential Expansion project located along portions of Cradit Farm Drive, Pleasant Grove Road, and Jessup Road in the Town of Ithaca, City of Ithaca and Village of Cayuga Heights. The proposal involves adding approximately 2,000 beds (1,200 beds for first-year students and 800 for sophomores) in five new 3-5 story buildings, each containing lounges, social spaces and other residential hall amenities. The new buildings will be located on areas of carnpus that currently contain parking lots(CC Parking Last and parking to the east of"Appel Commons) and athletic fields, (Appel South Fields), with one existing building(Signia Alpha MU) being removed. The project ject ae salsa includs a new dining facility and various outdoor amenities, including a plaza, amphitheater, open lawns, landscaped spaces, and walkways. Cornell University,Owner/Applicant; Kimberly Michaels,Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects LLP,Agent. 2. Pet-sons to be heard 1 Approval of Minutes: May 1, 2018 4, Other Business 5. Adjournment Susan Ritter Director of Planning 2,73-1747 NOTE: IF ANY MEMBER OFTHE PLANNING BOARD IS UNABLETO ATTEND,PLEASE NOTIFY SANDY POLCE AT 273-174?or SPOI'.CE'(o)�'ro�VVN.1'1'1[A(�'A.NY.CJS., (A quorum of four(4,)members is necessary to conduct Planning Board business.) Accessing MeetingMatenals Online Site Plan and Subdivision applications and associated project materials are accessible electronically on the]'own's website under"Planning Board"on the"Meeting Agendas"page LLtgend as). Town of Ithaca Planning Board 215 North Tioga Street May 15, 2018 7:00 p.m. PLEASE SIGN-IN Please Print Clearly. Than You Name Address I&Ad rq c 61) L)......................... (0 112 CA, 0 ry\ T V . TOWN OF ITHACA PLANNING BOARD MEETING Tuesday, May 15, 2018 215 N. Tioga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 Town Planning Board Members Present: Liebe Meier Swain (Deputy Chair), Linda Collins,Joseph Haefeli,John Beach,Yvonne Fogarty,Jon Bosak, Melissa Hill Town Staff Present: Susan Ritter; Director of Planning; Chris Balestra, Planner; Bruce Bates, Director of Code Enforcement; Susan Brock,Attorney for the Torn; Debra DeAugistine, Deputy Torn Clerk Call to Order Ms. Meier Swain called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. AGENDA ITEM Consideration of a Sketch Plan for the proposed Cornell University North Campus Residential Expansion project located along portions of Cradit Farm Drive, Pleasant Grove Road, and Jessup Road in the Town of Ithaca, City of Ithaca and Village of Cayuga Heights. The proposal involves adding approximately 2,000 beds (1,200 beds for first-year students and 800 for sophomores) in five new 3-5 story buildings, each containing lounges, social spaces and other residential hall amenities. The new buildings will be located on areas of campus that currently contain parking lots (CC Parking Lot and parking to the east of Appel Commons) and athletic fields (Appel South Fields), with one existing building (Sigma Alpha Mu)being removed.The project also includes a new dining facility and various outdoor amenities, including a plaza, amphitheater, open lawns, landscaped spaces, and walkways. Cornell University, Owner/Applicant; Kimberly Michaels, Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects LLP,Agent Katherine Wolf, Trowbridge Wolf Michaels Landscape Architects, said they are acting as an agent for Cornell, to provide landscape architecture services as well as assist with the municipal approvals. She stated that the project spans the City and Town of Ithaca as well as a small amount of sidewalk work in the Village of Cayuga Heights. The project will be constructed entirely on areas that have been previously disturbed within the Cornell campus where student housing already exists. On the first- year site, there's an existing parking lot as well as recreational fields. Ryan Lombardi, vice president of Student and Campus Life at Cornell, described the purpose and need for the project. He's been part of the Cornell community for almost three years, and it became obvious to him very quickly that student housing is one of greatest challenges facing campus and the broader community. In January of 2016, they launched a housing master planning process, and he's been trying to incorporate as much community input as possible.A result of that plan was to expose some of the challenges they face from a housing perspective. Since 1996, Cornell has guaranteed housing for first-year, second-year, and transfer students, but they have not been able to honor that guarantee. In 2016, they had to back away from the transfer guarantee of housing.They also have a significant amount of deferred maintenance in their residential properties and need to address those very specifically.All of these factors put students in a very difficult position. He spoke with one student who, in October of his first year, already had to begin looking for an off-campus apartment. The student didn't have a friend group, didn't know what to do, had just gotten to Ithaca, and because of the housing crunch, had to begin looking for an apartment. From this derived the North Planning Board Minutes 05.15.2018 Page 2 of 7 Campus expansion.This is their first step in trying to address these issues and meet the demand for on-campus housing for current and future students. He addressed future enrollment growth.While the provost is responsible for making decisions around enrollment growth, a commitment has been made for that to be strategic, as opposed to incremental, in nature: there will be a specific target in terms of enrollment and that target will not further exacerbate these issues.We'll be able to accom- modate the growth in the proposed expansion, so we will still relieve a significant amount of pressure on the housing community. North Campus is home to 99 percent of Cornell's first-year students; they're not required to live on campus, but if they do, they're required to live on North Campus. Unfortunately, not all of them live in developmentally appropriate housing, which means it's not the right type of housing for where they're at in their lives. For example, the North Campus townhouses were not designed for first-year students because they're apartments, meant for independent living. They are entirely populated by first-year students right now, and we would call that not developmen- tally appropriate because the whole intention of the first-year experience on North Campus was to build community: to help the students meet as many people as possible and to integrate effectively. Our vision and hope is that we have a fairly consistent experience and don't have people in those types of spaces. Some other buildings on North Campus are heavily configured with single rooms, and isolated in a single room is not the ideal setting for a first-year student.This project will allow them to remove first-year students from the townhouses and single rooms and put them in double occupancy units.Three-quarters of sophomore students live in a combination of Cornell-owned housing and Cornell-affiliated housing, such as fraternities, sororities, and co-ops.We want to provide more consistency for second year students moving forward. Talking to students about this process,we heard that, in addition to them always feeling like they have one foot out the door moving on to their next residential environment, the students thought more mentorship from upper-level students could be beneficial. So the site selection of North Campus allows us to fulfill the original vision of putting all of our first-year students in developmentally appropriate housing and to grow our on-campus sophomore population, so the percentage that doesn't live on campus right now will come back to reside on campus. Our intent is to require that all first-and second-year students live on campus in Cornell-affiliated housing. Regarding deferred maintenance, we have some beautiful historic build- ings with great architectural significance on campus and spaces we want to preserve that are in need of work and rehabilitation.We have not been able to do that in the past because we operate at 100 percent occupancy all the time. In order for us to renovate some of those buildings, we need to take them offline for a year or more,which will further displace a large number of students into the community that we just can't accommodate. Part of the challenge is that we haven't had this swing space that allows students to temporarily move into another space on campus so we're not pushing them into the community.This project will enable us to commit to the residential experience and strengthen it to provide a more stable foundation for our first and second-year students as well as address our deferred maintenance issues.This experience is fundamental to part of the holistic Cornell education that students get in and out of the classroom. Ms. Collins stated that she was at the presentation they gave at the county and learned that Cornell's founding philosophy was to have students live in the community. She asked whether the change was coming from Cornell or whether it's part of a national trend. Mr. Lombardi responded that the founders didn't want to be in the business of providing housing to students.We departed from that some time ago. It's both a local and national trend, and it's not uncommon for virtually all of our peer institutions to require and/or guarantee campus housing for up to four years. It's an expectation of students today that they'll have the opportunity to live on Planning Board Minutes 05.15.2018 Page 3 of 7 campus and have that stability and not to immediately have to enter the private rental market. There's a value in integrating in the community,but it has to be done at the right time.When students first come to campus, they're trying to get their academic footing and make connections to new people on campus. If you can take one element of stress out of their lives by creating a residential foundation, it helps enable them to thrive.When we surveyed our students as part of the housing master plan study, we found that a much greater number of students wanted to live on campus than we could accom- modate:virtually all our first-year and the vast majority of second year students wanted to live on campus. They see great residential options at other schools, and we want meet those expectations as well. Ms. Fogarty asked Mr. Lombardi to address the increase in the number of students. Mr. Lombardi responded that for the past ten years, enrollment has increased incrementally over time and the cumulative effect has been a marked increase in enrollment. Moving forward, the provost is working with the deans to strategically determine what size the institution should be, and getting a firm commitment that we're not going to exceed that.The planning assumption right now is that it will increase by about 900 students over what we have today; that number is not set in stone. So this will accommodate any future enrollment growth and still meet the commitment to house all first-and second-year students. Ms. Fogarty asked who the developers are. Ms.Wolf responded that Integrated Properties and John Novarr are assisting them as consultants in the development process, but when it's finished it will be owned and operated by Cornell. This project is intended to be consistent with existing local zoning and land use regulations. The site in the low density zone allows institutions of higher learning and dormitories with a special permit.The zone has a 36-foot maximum height, so the buildings will be three stories.The town's comprehensive plan identified a future rezoning and this area would include a campus zone, so this site is consistent with the town's long-range planning. Properties located in the city of Ithaca will be between four and five stories.They're wrapping up the schematic design phase and starting the design and development phase.The project is laid out to be an extension of the existing campus tradition of greens, quads, and an interconnected system of walkways.The buildings in the first-year site are organized around a traditional quad. The first floor of the buildings along the west and the south are all common spaces: lounges, a community kitchen, meeting rooms, study rooms. So the ground floor is social space with lots of glass and the ability to move in and out of outdoor gathering spaces that relate to the interior social spaces. The buildings on the east have residential units going all the way down to the ground floor. In that case, there's more landscaping along the edges to provide a sense of privacy. In the sophomore site, the inner block is the dining facility,which is a double-height one-story facility with a lot of glass.That is surrounded by a four-story residential facility. The outer bars are five stories.The existing dining at Robert Purcell Union will be relocated into the new facility. Robert Purcell will continue as a community and conference center with an enhanced package delivery center to meet the demands of Amazon. The dining facility will become the primary dining facility serving all of North Campus. The Appel Commons will continue to be an alternative.A new ADA-compliant continuous walkway is being constructed that will connect the first-year site to the dining facility in the sophomore site. Members of the team have met with Tom Parsons and Bruce Bates to discuss fire access to the project. Mr. Parsons said that there are definite improvements in the new site, one being that the walkway that connects the two sites could be used by emergency vehicles, including fire Planning Board Minutes 05.15.2018 Page 4 of 7 trucks. There will be extensive interior bike storage and exterior bike parking at both sites. Parking on North Campus will decrease from what it is today. The CC lot will not be replaced; the Donlon lot is mostly being replaced by expanding parking and reconfiguring parking in front of Robert Purcell Union as well as some strategic distribution to other buildings to provide for ADA-compliant and service and staff parking close to buildings.The parking lot adjacent to Appel Commons will be reconfigured and slightly reduced. There is currently excess parking on campus. It is a management and operation issue, and Cornell has done a campus-wide parking optimization study, where they are evaluating how to best optimize management of parking. CC lot is underutilized, so this should not be a problem for North Campus. Freshmen bring cars at lower rates and we are increasing the bike accommodation, and anticipate increased demand for TCAT services. There's a strong multimodal approach built into the design.The tennis courts will remain. Currently there are three recreational fields on the site; two will be eliminated and the remaining one will be relocated and upgraded with better drainage and synthetic turf so there's a longer window of useful time.The existing fields are a swamp and not usable in bad weather. Regarding utilities, one of the advantages of being located on the Cornell campus is that the infrastructure is all there.They have their own water and filtration plant; over the last couple of years, they've been upgrading the service to North Campus. That will be finished this summer, and as a result, there will be improved water pressure.The sewer will tie into the IAWWTP, and our team of engineers have been meeting with the municipalities and will coordinate with them on all of the utilities.The project will be cooled by the Lake Source Cooling plant. Heat and electricity will be provided by the existing combined heat and power plant, a highly efficient facility that generates electricity and uses the waste heat for residential heat.They've done some community outreach and have met with both the Cornell Heights neighborhood and the Forest Home Civic Association. They intend to continue to meet with these two neighborhoods, in particular,because they're nearby. They've also been meeting with torn, city, and village planners. This is the first board to have a formal presentation; next they'll meet with the city, then with Cayuga Heights. Right now, they're working on the environmental assessment forms.They've engaged a range of experts in the subject matter areas and are undertaking extensive studies in each.They've complet- ed an archeological study, which has been cleared, and will provide a traffic study and an energy study that will show impacts on greenhouse gases, what the carbon footprint will be, and how the project aligns with Cornell and the county's Climate Action Plan.They're also conducting a visual analysis to look at all the public rights-of-way surrounding the project.They're preparing visualizations to show what the project will look like from the various viewpoints.They'll also do a full stormwater analysis. The intention is to have the first-year project online in 2022 and the sophomore site online in 2021. Mr. Bosak said there are three issues he will be concerned about when they come back. Energy: he will expect answers to questions raised in the comments we got. He was particularly struck by the one person who pointed out that the timescale in getting the ground source heat online is about the same as the timescale of the expected life of an air source system, in which case it would make sense to put those in first and swap them out if and when the other actually came online. Parking: he has found parking on Cornell to be an unmitigated nightmare, so it's very difficult for him to believe that a reduction in the number of parking spaces will be an improvement.Timing: he doesn't want to hear again three years from now that they have established a deadline by promising beds to students that they can't meet unless we extend construction hours until midnight.We're three years out, so there should be enough time built in that if you run into framing problems caused by a hurricane, that's actually allowed for in your timing, and you haven't promised those beds yet. Mr. Haefeli asked about their optimism regarding the parking reduction. Planning Board Minutes 05.15.2018 Page 5 of 7 Ms. Michaels said that part of the optimism is Cornell's commitment to walkable places.These are undergraduates living on campus close to their classes, there are a very small number of freshman getting parking permits, and there are data for their campus-wide parking showing that they do have room in other lots. It's not going to be a significant problem. It's based on the knowledge of how freshmen operate now and how much capacity there is in other places on campus. Ms. Fogarty asked about bike storage. Ms.Wolf said there will be extensive indoor bike rooms. If you want to encourage people to bike, they want indoor storage. There's a Cornell transportation study being done for North Campus, which includes looking at TCAT and what they expect the increased demand to be;TCAT is part of the conversation. Mr. Haefeli asked for details on the financial mechanism. Jeremy Thomas, director of Cornell's real estate department, said they're utilizing their own financial resources, so this will be Cornell financed. Ms. Collins said enrollment is going up and hopefully will be capped. By 2022, there should be 2000 more beds available on campus to accommodate those incoming students.At the same time, there's deferred maintenance and Cornell will want to use these buildings to shift people. She requested that they present something that shows how quickly Cornell will grow and how this new housing will fit into that growth. She wants to see it spelled out. She doesn't want any of this to have any impact on our already crisis housing situation in the larger community. Cornell is going to increase its enroll- ment, but if there's deferred maintenance and Cornell plans to use these new buildings to shift people around, how are those two lines going to cross? Ms.Wolf said the information will be in the packet,but there has been discussion that the strategic growth won't begin until 2021 and then it would be incremental for a number of years; it can't begin until this project is on line. Ms. Ritter stated that this will be a coordinated review between the city and the torn, and given that two-thirds of the project is in the city,we anticipate the city planning board to declare themselves lead agency. Ms. Michaels said this will happen in June, because officially they can't do so until after we hand in some SEQR forms. Ms. Brock explained that once the city sends a letter to the torn saying it intends to be the lead agency, they have to wait 30 days, and the planning board needs to decide if it concurs. If you do, then you'll be an involved agency.The city would make the SEQR determination of significance as to whether there's the potential for a significant adverse environmental impact and whether to require an environmental impact statement. If an EIS is required, the city would run that whole process through to its conclusion. Once the EIS is done, each involved agency and the city would make its own findings based on the information in the completed EIS. If the city decides to issue a neg dec, Planning Board Minutes 05.15.2018 Page 6 of 7 you're bound by the city's determination of significance.That's the point of having a lead agency in a coordinated review. Ms. Fogarty pointed out that a significant portion of the project is in the town, and the zoning is different.Are there situations where we could come together and have a separate, coordinated city/town board that's lead agency? Ms. Brock said she thinks there is a mechanism; we discussed it for Chainworks, and decided against it. Ms. Ritter added that it's more complicated than we thought it would be. Ms. Brock said if there is any case law since that was explored with Chainworks, she's not aware of it. It's something she can look into if the board is interested. Ms. Fogarty indicated that she was interested; no other board members weighed in. Ms. Meier Swain said we received several emailed comments about this project and we'll provide them to the applicant. This is not a public hearing, so there is no opportunity for public discussion tonight, but there will be plenty of opportunities as we move forward in this process. Ms.Wolf pointed out that under the coordinated review, the board would continue to have their own site plan review and approval as they normally would for the portion that's in the town. AGENDA ITEM Persons to be heard - No one came forward to address the board. AGENDA ITEM PB Resolution No. 2018-020: Minutes of May 1, 2018 Moved by John Beach; seconded by Linda Collins RESOLVED, the Planning Board approves the minutes of May 1, 2018, as amended. Vote Ayes: Meier Swain, Collins, Haefeli, Beach, Fogarty, Bosak Abstentions: Hill OTHER BUSIINESS Mr. Bosak asked for an update on Chainworks. Ms. Balestra responded that the city is still reviewing the comments provided as part of the final EIS. She thinks they're looking at the transportation comments, which is the last part. Planning Board Minutes 05-15-2018 Page 7 of 7 On a motion by Jon Bosak and seconded by Melissa Hill, the meeting of June 5th was cancelled. Adjournment Upon a motion by Jon Bosak, the meeting adjourned at 8:1.0 p.m. Respectfully submitted, L- �DeAugist�mr,"Deputy To ""n C)" Ik � _") _