New Katonah cell tower plan moves forward

By JEFF MORRIS

At its Monday meeting, the planning board officially approved a negative declaration of environmental impact for a new cell tower in Katonah. It also spent time in a work session discussing the town’s draft comprehensive plan.

Homeland Towers

The board had already spent several meetings considering the application by Homeland Towers for a cell tower on New York City Department of Environmental Protection property adjacent to the Cross River Reservoir. The site on Maple Avenue, off Route 35 is on a town easement, and the tower is designed to fill a coverage gap between Cross River and Katonah and along Routes 35 and 22. 

After having previously reviewed the proposal’s environmental impact and arriving at a negative declaration for the environmental quality review, the board needed to adopt the negative declaration.

The only questions remaining were about plans for landscaping around the access road. Vincent Xavier of Homeland Towers said he thought leaving the access road as gravel, surrounded by natural plant growth and falling leaves, should be sufficient to keep the site from appearing industrial.

The board voted to adopt the negative declaration. The applicant still needs to return to have the board vote on the application for site plan and steep slope disturbance approval.

Comprehensive Plan

After the town’s new draft comprehensive plan was made public Feb. 5, the town board followed planning director Jesica Youngblood’s recommendation and authorized her to circulate it to the town’s permitting land use boards and commissions, including the planning board, for their review and comment.

Youngblood led off an informal work session on Monday with a brief summary of the plan’s development and intent. 

Board member Nilus Klingel said he supported the direction and recommendations of the plan. He said he particularly appreciated a recommendation to streamline the process for applying for accessory dwelling units. “There are elements in these approval processes that were well intentioned but then are clunky in practice, and need to be reconsidered,” he said. Klingel added he knows the plan isn’t executing those changes, but he likes that it is “teeing them up” and saying there are a number of such processes that can be streamlined.

Michael Tierney said he had only had time to gloss over the first 10 pages, and needed to get deeper into the plan before commenting. Jared Antin said he agreed with the general theme of protecting the continuity of more low density housing areas, and being able to increase the diversity of housing within hamlet centers. He reacted enthusiastically to a number of proposals in the plan, including extension of the “path to nowhere” to Katonah, and extension of Plainfield Avenue, “if it is in fact going to go behind where ShopRite was.” He noted how traffic had become worse on Route 117 since ShopRite relocated and the traffic light timing was adjusted, and said having a second route parallel to 117 would be incredibly important.

Antin said when certain approvals are issued, it could be useful and important to re-analyze how the approval might be attached to a certain owner and not the project. He called attention to a situation in which an apartment building that was approved in Katonah had subsequently been sold, and there was a disconnect between what was approved and what was actually built. “When someone else is purchasing these things, it can change the way that someone may deliver on what was agreed,” he said. “There seem to have been multiple examples where things may get approved, sold, transferred, and then reinterpreted when it comes to actually acting on them.” He said in the same way that they are trying to relax the process for certain approvals, if things are going to be transferred or changed within a certain period of time there could be benefit from more administrative oversight.

Chair Deirdre Courtney-Batson said some of the problems Antin cited were not necessarily from the project being sold, but were the result of other town agencies not consulting with the planning board; she said in the case of the apartment building, the new owner was not aware of the reasons the board “had said what we said about the size of it, and no one came to us to ask whether we cared about it.” She said in two other instances, the property did not change hands, and “in one case the owner absolutely knew what he was doing, and he was telling us what we wanted to hear, with no intention of doing what he said.” She added, “I also think that’s not something the master plan in particular can itself do anything about, but it’s the kind of issue I think we have to be aware of while implementing it.” 

Courtney-Batson said the only thing that concerns her about the plan, which she “loved” overall, is there are places where the vitality issues and livability issues may occasionally clash. “Part of the genius of implementation is going to be figuring out how to modify that,” she said. What she saw the public saying at meetings, she said, was “when people thought in terms of what it would be like if this happened in their neighborhood, they didn’t like it. When they thought about how nice it would be to be doing this kind of thing, they did like it.”

Antin called attention to a portion of the plan that talks about potential parking structures to support businesses and multi-family housing, and warned that caution would be needed in approving such facilities to ensure they are well-executed and not excessively sized. He referred to some recent parking structures in nearby towns that have achieved varying levels of success, and noted that if it’s in the plan, a developer may be more or less inclined to pursue such a project, seeing that the town is encouraging it.

The board members and Youngblood engaged in more discussion about affordable housing, environmental goals, and business development, and the complications of including specifics about those areas in the plan.

Youngblood said she was compiling the board’s feedback and thought there would be more time for discussion after their next meeting Monday, March 10. She noted the planning board had a broader view of a lot of topics than some of the other boards which are more focused on a particular area.

Courtney-Batson pointed to Youngblood and said she had done an amazing job in putting the plan together. “It’s a very nice piece of work, and even if it goes exactly the way it is without a change, I’d be 100 percent behind it,” she said.