Photo by Howard Owens.
Town planners in Batavia heard from multiple Lewiston Road residents about potential traffic issues and a perceived lack of transparency before the board voted to approve a site plan for a new Tractor Supply location.
The site plan approval was the last step in a long process for developers, who are building a location at 8727 Lewiston Road, which will allow the company to close its smaller, older store on East Main Street Road in the Town of Batavia.
Lewiston Road residents expressed concern that the busy corridor already produces a significant number of accidents, a few deadly, and the town is planning too many projects for the area.
"We are not upset about potential growth in Batavia, the potential of people moving into the area, all of those things," said Tanni Bromley. "But these projects that you're bringing affect the people that have lived here for 30 years who are putting equity in the properties that will be affected by these things."
A proposed road that connects Lewiston Road with Veterans Memorial Drive, running behind The Home Depot, has been part of the master plan for decades. The Tractor Supply project will start to make the first part of that road a reality, with some other potential developer building out the remainder of the road for some future, as yet, unknown project.
The property behind The Home Depot is farmland owned by the Call family. It is earmarked in the master plan for commercial development.
So is the property on the other side of Lewiston Road, with another road proposal to connect Lewiston with Route 5.
There is also the potential of a solar farm going in near Lewiston Road and the Thruway.
"It doesn't seem transparent to the people affected, because you're not allowing us to know the information ahead of time," Bromley said. "I understand you have a process as far as lead agencies and all of those things that need to be approved. And you have to take it all into account at the same time. Otherwise, the traffic study that you paid for is totally obsolete. It doesn't make any sense to do one traffic study. And then another traffic study when something was already built, because it didn't take into account the other traffic study that might have to happen. It's all connected."
Photo by Howard Owens.
Terry Marshall said, "As everybody's talked about, you can't take each piece at a time. You have to look at the full plan when you're doing these things. This piece of a road here is going to go all the way up to Veterans. Now it's going to go all the way across the street, and it's obviously a very dangerous area. Right now, we're all very concerned."
Other residents raised similar issues.
Board member Steve Tanner noted that it isn't possible to do traffic studies for projects that don't exist.
"I think the issue is we haven't seen any of that, nor have there been any studies that say what that road would look like," Tanner said. "What would be the proposed businesses along the roadway? What kind of traffic? Would they connect to the roadway? What would it do to the traffic that would make improvements required or not required? We don't have any information. I can't show you something we don't have. Is there some sort of plan to put a road there? I don't know. It sounds like there is. It's in the plan, but it might be 10 years from now. How do I study so it might not even ever happen?"
Board Chair Kathy Jasinski said that the board has rules and laws it must follow that limited its ability to act in the way, perhaps, residents expected.
"If we were to turn a project down because we didn't like it, the town could be sued, and probably would be," Jasinski said. "We have to make sure it fits in the comprehensive plan, that it meets all the requirements of the town. And that's what we're here to do. We can't say who can buy land or sell land or any of those things. We're just here to review the projects."
Town Engineer Steve Mountain said that while these potential changes have been on the books for a while, there have also been studies, and there will be more done.
"There are a lot of accidents and the whole corridor of Lewiston Road," Mountain said. "As I mentioned, several meetings ago. We've done a traffic study for just Tractor Supply, but we also have in the works, a full corridor study, which will identify all of those future needs for all the future expansion."
After public comments, Peter Sorgi, attorney for the developers, made his planned presentation in advance on the board vote on the proposed site plan.
He noted the original application for the project was submitted seven months ago, on Oct. 4, and since then, the developers have gone through six required steps, with public meetings all along the way, to get to this final approval stage.
The project has been to the County Planning Board. It received an area variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals. It's been through the environmental review process. It had traffic studies completed. It's been approved for a water hook-up by the county in accordance with the county's Smart Growth plan.
After his presentation, the board approved the site plan by a unanimous roll-call vote with a contingency for final engineering review.
Photo by Howard Owens.
