One of the “gateways” to Gardiner, Ireland Corners, will get a new look in the foreseeable future, if a proposal currently before the Town’s Planning Board receives approval. A Highland-based applicant doing business under the name of Shawangunk, LLC has submitted a site plan to demolish the “dilapidated” structure at 592/596 Route 208 and rebuild it to house a retail business to be called Mohonk Valley Wine and Liquors.
Zoned Highway Commercial, the proposed site is located on the northeast corner of the intersection of Routes 208 and 44/55, diagonally opposite the former Benson’s/Gold Fox tavern and restaurant. The parcel’s previous owners were John and Teresa Shand, according to maps posted with the other application materials on the Town of Gardiner website (link available at www.townofgardiner.org/planning-board-agenda). Locals may remember the long-abandoned existing woodframe building as having been most recently active as an antique store.
The application as it now stands proposes to replace the structure on essentially the same 40-by-54-foot footprint, or about 1,800 square feet, repurposing the existing foundation. The new building would be one story tall, like its predecessor, with vertical board and fieldstone siding and a cupola over the main entrance, according to the visual renderings submitted with the application.
The plan includes seven paved parking spaces: one for employee parking on the Route 208 side and six for customers, one of them designated handicapped parking, on the 44/55 side. There would be two driveways, one a one-lane entrance only from the westbound lane of 44/55 and the other a two-lane entrance/exit on 208. Curbs and screening plantings would be added.
However, according to the applicant’s attorney, Charles Gottlieb of Whiteman, Osterman and Hanna, LLP, the primary rationale behind limiting the building’s size to the existing footprint, as well as not making it any taller, was to keep the construction a Type II action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act and avoid triggering a long-form environmental review. At the October 25 Planning Board meeting, he argued that the new business would not constitute a “change of use,” characterizing it as “retail-to-retail.”
Gardiner’s environmental consultant, Andrew Millspaugh of Sterling Environmental Engineering, PC, contested this interpretation. Noting that the proposal is for a “preexisting nonconforming site,” he suggested that the expansion of the paved apron for the building, as well as the addition of a second entrance, were a significant enough change to qualify as an “unlisted action” that would require long-form review. The full area being disturbed and redeveloped would be more than 10,000 square feet, according to Sterling’s preliminary review of the application.
In response to this pushback, Gottlieb indicated that his client might want to rethink the design of the new building if a full review is deemed necessary in any case. The small size and narrow setbacks of the existing lot, which Planning Board members noted already limit flexibility with regard to placement of a septic system, will also put constraints on how much bigger the new building itself could be horizontally.
Ireland Corners is one of the “hamlets” designated in the Town of Gardiner’s Comprehensive Plan as a node for commercial and light industrial development. In its application, Shawangunk, LLC argues that “modernization” of the former antique shop would conform with the Plan’s vision to “encourage the continued growth and enhancement of Gardiner’s central hamlet, outlying hamlets, Commercial/Light Industrial and Ireland Corners’ Highway Commercial Zones to serve local needs and targeted regional needs.”
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