|
NEXT STEP TAKEN FOR GREENPORT HOTEL COMPLEX
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
12-02-09 - 6:30 a.m. - After months of inching forward, a proposal to construct a hotel, entertainment, and retail complex on Route 66 in Greenport turned a corner in the review process. On Tuesday, November 24, the Greenport Town Planning Board declared itself the lead agency in the review.
The declaration will allow developer Harbalwant Singh to move forward in seeking a NYS Department of Transportation (DOT) review, as well as take other steps necessary for the development of the Greenport Crossings project. “We haven’t been able to start with DOT yet because they wanted to know who was the lead agency,” said Singh. “This is also important for the banks.” The declaration followed several new questions from the board to the developer and his representatives regarding parking and traffic flow into the facility, to be constructed on the site of the former V&O Press building.
Singh is seeking approval to construct a 100-room hotel with a 52,000-square-foot entertainment center and a separate retail facility. The project would include a restaurant and conference rooms in the hotel, which could be used for weddings, parties, and meetings, and an attached two-story entertainment center. The center would include a bowling alley, with 18 to 24 lanes, an indoor play area, a climbing wall, a laser tag facility, an arcade, and sports bar.
Singh introduced a new complication into the project when he revealed that a 32-foot strip of land within the project may be owned by the Columbia County Chamber of Commerce. According to Singh, the land was acquired more than a hundred years ago by the Hudson Chamber of Commerce to ensure that a railroad siding could be brought to the site. Greenport officials, who conducted their own title search, say the title to this strip of land may be owned by a now-defunct real estate firm. Singh says he has no construction plans for the land in question and has easements to use the property. Showing title of ownership for this strip of land is one of the issues Singh was asked to address at next month’s Planning Board meeting. |
|
|
On the issue of parking, Singh proposes 349 parking spaces for the facility, which town Planning Board Engineer Paul McCreary confirmed would be enough.
The developer was asked to address concerns about traffic flow into and from the property, which Planning Board Member Michael Bucholsky said has changed since the project was first proposed earlier this year. Singh said an offsite survey is being prepared that explores an exit from the property onto Route 66 that would include right-out and left-out lanes, as well as a turn-in lane.
Another issue that was raised again on Tuesday was the need for cleanup of the site, which is believed to be polluted with metals and oils from its past industrial use. Singh assured planners that “we know we need to do a cleanup, and we want to do a cleanup.” He said, however, that for the process to begin, he needs a conditional site plan approval from the planning board so that his engineers can determine where the development will take place and which areas need to be remediated and to what degree.
On Tuesday, Singh also initiated steps to subdivide a parcel approximately 200 by 200 feet from the two five-acre lots that constitute the development site. Singh said the smaller parcel would be the site of the convenience store and gas station. The subdivision, he explained, is necessary for “financing purposes.”
|
