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Upper Nyack Planning Board Focuses On Options To Mitigate Traffic Disturbance On Route 9W; Residents Oppose Any Plan To Allow Permit To Open Day School
Residents and members of the Nyack School Board (and School District counsel) raised strong objections last week at an Upper Nyack Planning Board public hearing on an application for a Special Permit to open a boys day school at 350 North Highland Avenue.
Residents are urging the Planning Board to deny the application because of a raft of complications surrounding traffic flow. However, the Nyack School District’s attorney Jennifer Gray of Keane & Beane raised a legal issue, suggesting that the board’s “Type II” environmental determination is erroneous because the school is not a commercial use, and therefore the exemption for re-use of a commercial property doesn’t apply.
The meeting was held at the Nyack High School auditorium to accommodate the large number of residents in attendance. However, many who’d signed up to talk at the last public hearing were absent, some due to summer schedules.
The site, formerly the home of the Alliance Theological Seminary, primarily provided adult education. The proposed use being considered by the Planning Board is for a pre-K through 8th grade day school run by Congregation Ramapo Cheder for 440 boys and 90 staff members. The building’s footprint would remain unchanged, but the interior would be reconfigured for the new use, and the façade would be updated. Day schools are allowed by Special Permit in the OB zone, where the property is located.
Changes to the grounds, including reconfiguration of the parking lot, internal drives, and the addition of a second access road for emergency vehicles, are included in the plan.
The Planning Board as lead agency under New York State’s Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) determined the application is a Type II Action under SEQRA, essentially exempting it from a formal environmental review process. In making that determination, the board relied on a provision of SEQRA that provides exemptions for the “reuse of a residential or commercial structure …. where the residential or commercial use is a permitted use under the applicable zoning law or ordinance, including permitted by special use permit.”
As the building is being re-used, and day schools are permitted by Special Permit, the Planning Board determined the application exempt from environmental review.
But residents disagreed with the determination, including the Nyack School District, who said the exemption only applied to residential or commercial uses, not institutional, community, or educational uses. The school district attorney urged the Planning Board to reconsider its SEQRA determination.
The Upper Nyack Village code definition does not define properties as “commercial.” Part of the code establish different categories and requirements for “Residential Uses,” “Commercial/Industrial Uses,” “Marine Uses,” and “Community/Institutional/Educational Uses.” Day schools are included in the “Community/Institutional/Educational Use” category, essentially supporting the argument that day schools are not considered a “commercial” use.
It remains unclear as to whether the board will revisit its SEQRA determination. Environmental considerations remain part of the Special Permit process but the review is less rigorous and more informal. No scoping document is required to assess environmental impacts, and no Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) is required under the Special Permit review. Public participation in the process is limited.
Like the previous meeting, the hearing focused on safety and traffic, with the applicant submitting tweaked traffic options for consideration by the Village and Stonefield Engineering, the Village’s traffic consultant. Residents expressed anger and concern over proposed changes, and said the traffic studies did not consider bicyclists and pedestrians. They said the plan will compromise the safety of residents and high school students who walk to school because they are ineligible for busing. Students walk along the existing sidewalks on Route 9W and feed out onto the side streets where there are no sidewalks. The study also did not consider accident history in the Route 9W corridor.
The Village Code for a Special Permit requires the creation of a second means of access to the property along Route 9W. As built, there is only one point of access. Any changes to access would require the approval of the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) as Route 9W is a state road.
None of the options seemed to satisfy the residents in attendance.
The first option was limited to the addition of a second access road that would be gated and controlled, just to the north of the existing access, between the existing access and the high school entry.
The second option was to add a left turn lane (heading north to direct traffic into the day school site). The traffic engineers noted this option would preclude residents of Riverton from making left turns across the turn lane and head south on Route 9W.
The third option relocates the existing access just to the south to line up across from the north entry to Riverton Drive.
The proposals also considered future plans of Nyack High School to modify its Route 9W access by creating a four-way signalized intersection across from Birchwood Avenue with a left-turn lane into the high school from Route 9W. This scenario would create two left turn lanes (one for each school) along northbound Route 9W.
The application cannot advance until input from the NYSDOT is received and the Planning Board is not bound by any decision from the DOT.
Other issues raised at the meeting related to the ownership of the property. Yeshiva Viznitz Dkhal Torath Chaim Inc.’s (Viznitz) sold the property at 350 North Highland Avenue to Nyack Building, LLC for $6.5 million earlier this month while the application for the special permit was pending. However, residents continue to complain about transparency. They contend they’d been misled when they attended an open house at a school 667 New Hempstead Road that was represented as affiliated with the applicant. But according to documents presented to the Planning Board, the site, run by the Greater Yeshiva of Monsey, has no affiliation with the applicant.
Other residents raised issues related to taxes and the ever-increasing tax burden on local residents, but those issues, as pointed out by Upper Nyack Village counsel Noelle Wolfson, are beyond the purview of the Planning Board. According to the applicant, students attending the Yeshiva will be coming from other towns and villages.
The Planning Board kept the public hearing open. No future date for the application was set.
