After months of battling over the fate of the Ingersoll Home, town officials are poised to decide whether they will require a full-blown environmental impact study (EIS) before developers can put a shopping mall on the property. A vote on the issue is slated for Tuesday night’s town board meeting, and advocates on both sides are declining to comment on whether they have the necessary support.
On Tuesday, March 6, town board members hedged their bets by leaving the door open to act on two different resolutions next week. One would require developers to conduct a complete EIS before they could get a special use permit to build the proposed shopping mall. The other would skip that step by declaring that the project would not have a significant impact on the environment.
I think it’s too early to say how the vote will go on this, town board member Bill Chapman said after last week’s meeting. `Members of the board are still getting comments from members of the public, with letters, phone call and e-mails still coming in. I am sure we will also hear members of the public during the ‘Privilege of the Floor’ portion of the meeting next week.
`The board is taking this very seriously and I’m not prepared to predict which way it will go,` said Chapman.
Requiring a full environmental study could mean months of additional work for Highland Development LLC, the company seeking to build a shopping mall on the 12.5-acre wooded parcel situated at the corner of State Street and Balltown Road. But critics have said a formal EIS would require developers to spell out how they would address concerns about the project ranging from the impact on traffic to the aesthetic impact on local residents.
Each side in the contentious battle has indicated that a lawsuit is possible if they don’t get their way, with attorneys for the development company noting that the property has been commercially zoned for decades. The critics, led by Niskayuna’s former town historian, Linda Champagne, have responded by calling the two-century-old home a `unique historic resource` that includes several wooded acres of `essential greenspace.`
Several key aspects of the project would be reviewed in detail if a full EIS is required. They are:
Traffic
Lawyers for the development company have already submitted a traffic study to the town board that addresses the impact new stores will have on the surrounding area. The study highlights existing traffic patterns and indicates that most shoppers are already traveling through the area or shopping at the Mohawk Commons retail hub located across the street from the Ingersoll Home.
Critics have hammered the study, saying it doesn’t go far enough and questioning some of the assumptions on which it is based. The mix of retail uses in the area would change if a new strip mall is built on the Ingersoll parcel, they have said. Traffic patterns at the busy intersection will also change if new stores are added to the mix.
Archeological
Highland Development LLC has taken the rare step of hiring an outside firm, Hartgen Associates, to conduct archeo-logical digs on the property. They have also revised their original proposal for developing the parcel. Under the revised plan, shopping mall developers will no longer move the historic Ingersoll Home from its existing site. They will, however, still remove part of the existing structure. That has left many opponents still expressing concern that the building will not ultimately survive if a shopping mall is added to the site. A formal EIS would address that concern.
Aesthetics
In a series of speeches and presentations before the town board, critics of the project have spent much of their time pointing to the visual impact a new shopping mall would have on the area. Pointing out that construction of the shopping mall would require tearing down of acres of trees to build stores and a parking lot on the parcel, Champagne has said that the impact would be devastating on the aesthetics for homeowners along Albany Street, Linda Lane and other nearby streets. If a complete environmental impact study is required, developers would have to provide a plan for mitigating and minimizing the aesthetic impact of the new mall. “