Bedford Planning Board signals support for Katonah project

An architect's rendering of the propose apartment complex at 150 Bedford Road. The state recently relaxed environmental review regulations for such projects in hopes of spurring new housing development. THE HELMES GROUP PHOTO

By JEFF MORRIS 

A change in environmental law that was included in the recent state budget agreement has already had an effect locally, though how much of an impact is unclear. The issue was raised at the June 8 Planning Board meeting at which a public hearing on a proposal for Katonah apartments was reopened.

SEQRA changes

The Planning Board meeting began with an announcement from Director of Planning Jesica Youngblood. She summarized the newly adopted New York State Environmental Quality Review Act changes — and, as Chair Deirdre Courtney-Batson noted, they do impact a number of applications before the town, including one that was on that night’s agenda.

“The state has come up with five new categories that you need to meet one or more of in order to be exempt from SEQRA review,” Youngblood said. One is an exemption for certain housing projects in municipalities outside of New York City, with one of the criteria that the application has to be connected to an existing public water supply or in a sewer system at the commencement of habitation. She noted there are only two sewer districts in the town of Bedford — downtown Katonah and downtown Bedford Hills — which will include some of the housing projects on the board’s agenda. “It’s important to mention that there would be impact to those properties and SEQRA would be exempt,” said Youngblood, “however, we’re talking very small areas, considering about 1% of the entire town is sewered.” 

The state has also now created a deadline for determining whether an application is actually going to qualify for this exemption, said Youngblood. “Once an application is received and it’s complete, there is a 120-day clock that runs, during which the agency must determine whether or not it is exempt from SEQRA review,” she said. The exemptions do not preclude the planning board from undertaking any other required actions, such as site plan review, she said.

“It is not a blanket exemption for project review; it is just from the SEQRA component,” said Youngblood. It also does not preclude either the zoning board or wetlands control commission from making any of their determinations, “so the existing applicable laws, rules, and regulations that exist outside of SEQRA are still in effect.”

150 Bedford Road

The SEQRA changes immediately became relevant as the board reopened a public hearing on the proposed 15-unit apartment building at 150 Bedford Road, Katonah. Courtney-Batson said they had been intending to go through Part Two of the Environmental Assessment Form. 

“There will be no part two of the EAF because the state has taken the position that this is going to be exempt from environmental review,” she said. “On a personal level, I’m not the least bit pleased about this. I don’t think it’s the right decision, but that’s why I’m just on the Planning Board.”

Courtney-Batson said her remark was not saying anything negative about the project or where that environmental review would go; it was simply about the policy. 

“I suspect that some folks out there are upset by this, and you should be. But there isn’t anything that we can change about that,” she said. “We’re lucky in that our zoning laws and our site plan review laws are specific enough that, at this point, I don’t think there’s really anything that we would have covered under the Part Two that we won’t cover anyway. So, what we are doing essentially is beginning the site plan review process.”

Architect Steven Helmes summarized the project, details of which had been presented at several prior meetings. He introduced new renderings showing the planned building in the context of its surroundings, including the Arroway Tractor building just to the north, and the retail/office building just to the south. He emphasized the facade design having deliberately been broken into smaller sections, both to reduce its bulk and to provide light and air to the apartments.

A question of scale

Courtney-Batson raised the issue of the scale of the building, which she said was one of the main objections that had been made. 

“I have to admit that I do not think that this building is out of scale,” she said. “I almost felt, during some of the discussions, that we were all walking through different Katonahs. I’ve lived here for more than 40 years and walked Katonah Avenue once or twice. I live right on Bedford Road in the middle of town. And the descriptions of Katonah that would put this building way out of scale just didn’t match my feeling about the community.”

She said she did not think that this building “was going to be the ruin of Katonah or turn it into southern Westchester.” 

Directly challenging objections that had been raised by the Katonah Village Improvement Society, Courtney-Batson said they had claimed it would be the largest building that the town had ever built on a lot that small. 

“That’s actually not true,” she said. 

She cited the size of other larger buildings in Katonah for comparison, and noted as well that the size of the lot has no impact on the building itself. 

“You can’t tell on the ground what the lot size is,” she said.

Courtney-Batson also noted that the section of Bedford Road where the building is planned is zoned for commercial business, and a residential building would not be detrimental to the overall character of its surroundings. “If this were an attempt to put this kind of a building in the middle of a single-family residential neighborhood, I’d be there arguing against it myself,” she said. “That’s the purpose of zoning.”

Impact on schools

A public comment raised concerns about the impact of additional school children on the district, and specifically Katonah Elementary. Courtney-Batson responded that all the district’s demographic studies show enrollment continuing to decline; board member Jared Antin pointed out that most of the apartments are one and two bedrooms and do not lend themselves to families with children. 

Helmes asked for clarification of where the board stood.

“Just so my client understands that the Planning Board is behind the project,” he said, “because we’re going to go to the next level then to address the balance of the engineers’ comments.”

Courtney-Batson responded, “I would hope that you would get the vague idea that I was somewhat in favor of it at this point.” 

She said she wasn’t trying to be subtle.

“I know some people are going to feel that we had our minds made up from the beginning, and that isn’t really true,” she said. “I was concerned about the size of the building until I started looking at what was around it. I think I went into it wishing it could be smaller and I’m at the point now where I would object to it being made smaller, frankly.”

The public hearing was adjourned, with the applicants being asked to come back with additional plans for landscaping.