Two of the Keith Libolts associated with Affording Housing Concepts brought an update to Village of New Paltz trustees about their proposed senior citizen apartments on South Manheim Boulevard. There is a known plan to ask for board members to agree to a payment in lieu of taxes, but that request won’t be coming for awhile yet. First, the environmental review must be completed, but before that the concept plan needs approval by the trustees. The reason for the extra step is because the density bonus is quite large, at 30%. Since this is proposed to be entirely affordable housing for senior citizens, the developers are entitled to add more apartments than would normally be allowed as a “density bonus” for keeping the rents under a limit based on median household incomes. The bonus was high enough that this extra layer of approval was triggered.
Board members also could have ruled on exceeding the height maximum for the zone and offering fewer bicycle parking spots than is required, but decided that members of the Zoning Board of Appeals are better qualified to tackle those issues. They nevertheless offered some feedback, such as the suggestion that if all the proposed bicycle parking was covered, it might make a variance from 51 to 25 easier to grant.
“It’s not a money issue, and I appreciate the comment,” said the elder Libolt. “It’s not a huge ask.”
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