In the past few months the Lloyd Planning Board has spent a considerable amount of time reviewing a proposed senior living project called the Village in the Hudson Valley. Specifically, the board is considering an application for a Special Use Permit and Site Plan approval that has been submitted by Florida-based developer Marc Sanderson for a 135 bed Assisted Living Facility [ALF] and an Adult Day Care Center. The ALF building will have a footprint of 125,700 sq/ft and is estimated at approximately 350+ feet long by 60 feet deep and will sit directly on Route 9W opposite the Bridgeview Shopping Plaza.

Sanderson also has a conceptual plan on the table to construct approximately 174 cottages, each up to 1,400 sq/ft, that will run up and across the 60+ acre site. Sanderson, through his attorney John Furst, has made it clear that he intends to seek approval to build out the entire project, the Assisted Living building and the cottages, and he has provided the Planning Board with hefty binders containing engineered maps, data and renderings of the entire project.

In March and April the Planning Board focused on whether the project would have any significant adverse environmental impacts, a review that is required by the State Environmental Quality Review Act [SEQR]. During this review, a majority of Planning Board members identified key project items that they believe would have moderate to large environmental impacts, chiefly from an increase of traffic, impacts upon the land including building on slopes exceeding 15%, soil erosion, a lengthy construction time, and the deleterious effect the project will have upon the town’s aesthetics because of the prominent visibility of the ALF building and the residential cottages.

These impacts would typically trigger a Positive Declaration [Pos Dec] for this project. That designation would require Sanderson to compile a detailed draft Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] that would identify all of the environmental impacts and how they would be mitigated. But after the Planning Board held two attorney-client closed door meetings with the town’s land use attorney Paul Van Cott, the board, voted 5-2 for a Negative Declaration [Neg Dec] at their open April 22 meeting. Members Sal Cuciti and Gerald Marion voted no on granting a Neg Dec designation while Chairman Scott McCarthy, Larry Hammond, Carl DiLorenzo, Lambros Violaris and Franco Zani voted yes. Member Charley Long was absent.

A Neg Dec is a finding by a city council or a local government that a proposed development or project would have little to no impact upon the environment and therefore the developer is not required to prepare and file a detailed environmental impact statement.

At that April 22nd meeting Cuciti explained his opposition to granting the Neg Dec, “because basically the drawings don’t match any of our discussions or have any acknowledgment of our discussions, so that’s where I am.”

In the text of the Negative Declaration document, attorney Van Cott went through the board’s previous identified impacts from moderate to large, pointing out how these will be mitigated. A number of times Van Cott told the board they will be able to conduct further SEQR reviews when the cottage phase of the project is proposed, something that may run counter to SEQR requirement of reviewing all of the potential impacts of the entire project at the same time.

When Van Cott compiled the legal Negative Declaration document for the board to vote on, he characterized the construction of the cottages as fact, after repeatedly telling the board that it is not known if Sanderson will ever develop the residential component of his project up on the hillside.