Among the issues still to be addressed for a redevelopment of the former New Paltz Savings Bank in the Village of New Paltz, its recent alleged use as a drug trafficking stash house was low on the list.
The building at 27-29 Main Street most recently held a Wells Fargo branch, but that was shuttered several years ago with only ATM service remaining. The property was purchased by Wells Fargo NP LLC, with a primary John Joseph, owner of Warwick-based Southern Realty & Development in late 2021. The purchase came with a stipulation that a previous tenant could continue using the basement storage area for an unspecified period of time. In June 2022, that basement was raided by authorities following an investigation by the Ulster Regional Gang Enforcement Narcotics Team (URGENT) and a task force under the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James.
In the raid of the former Wells Fargo and a separate alleged stash house, police recovered a combined eleven kilograms of cocaine with a street value of about $1.2 million, over 20,000 pills, 39 firearms and $120,000 cash. Among the 12 people arrested were Village of New Paltz resident Christopher Pulichene.
The stash house came up during a meeting of the village planning board held on Tuesday, May 7, where Joseph, representing Wells Fargo NP LLC, was seeking approval for a change of use special permit which would allow part of the former bank to be converted into a gym operated by Anytime Fitness.
“When I acquired the building, the previous owner had the right to continue to use the basement for a period of time because he had a lot of things stored there,” Joseph said. “I acquired the building in December of 2021; the drug bust happened shortly thereafter.”
Joseph said that once he was given permission to do so by police, he changed the locks. He added that he was not notified in advance of the planned raid.
“The landlord’s always the last to know,” he said, adding that the basement has since been cleared out, with very little debris remaining. And the basement is not in the plans for Anytime Fitness.
27 Main Street is the home of In Good Taste, a wine and liquor store. That is not slated to change in the new plans. 5,978-square-feet of the vacant bank would be converted into an Anytime Fitness, with a variance necessary due to village code requiring that no individual retail use be greater than 3,000-square feet. There are also plans to use other space for two two-bedroom apartments and one studio apartment. Wells Fargo would continue to operate its ATM services in the proposal.
But while the various interior plans raised few concerns, planning board members were less enthused about what’s proposed outside, particularly in the parking area, where Wells Fargo NP LLC proposes six spaces, four from relocation and the other two in space currently occupied by a dumpster enclosure. One of those spaces could be used by people who don’t have legal handicapped parking rights, Joseph said.
“In addition to the handicapped, you have elderly people that don’t have a handicapped designation,” he said. “You have persons with mobility issues that don’t have a handicapped designation, you have mothers with young children, expecting mothers, those type of people who park in these spaces as are the most convenient to the front door. I am willing to sign it, say only permitted for these people.
Rich Souto, the planning board member who voiced the most opposition to various parts of the proposal, said identifying such a space wouldn’t have any legal backing. Souto’s issue, in part, was the idea of paving over a grassy area for the space.
“That list of people are just people,” Souto said. “They don’t have any particular designation and requirement to provide dedicated parking for. I understand that it’s convenient, but those are not examples of people that we would consider to be in need of handicapped parking, which is the designation that the code provides for, that the law provides for, all the types of people in the letter.”
Even though developers found that their parking plans worked within the standards for the Gateway District, Souto and other board members objected to getting rid of grass on the east side of the property for the sake of parking spaces.
“I think it really does a disservice to what we’re hoping to enhance in our community, which is more green space, more opportunities for potential beautification of this location,” Souto said. “And adding unnecessary parking spots in a situation that has potential to be green is actually the opposite of beautification. And I recognize you’re pointing to the gateway standards. There’s no aesthetic argument you can make that that would be a better thing, and there’s also no accessibility argument you can make for it. And so taking one spot doesn’t improve it. Taking all of them would, and I won’t approve a project that does this. So we can go as far as we want and you can have as many votes as you can get, but it won’t be mine.”
Fellow board member Rachel Lagodka agreed.
“It’s like an asphalt desert over there, entirely paved,” she said. “There’s no islands, nothing.
So every little piece of grass of turf is important to us because we have so little of it left right there. And it gets very hot in the summer. And more asphalt is going to make it hotter.”
There were also issues with circulation in the parking area, particularly related to deliveries. Board members asked for a traffic study to address those concerns. Joseph said he belonged to Anytime Fitness in Warwick and said he’d never seen the gym take deliveries. Souto argued that apocryphal observations aren’t precedents.
“That’s not the way it works,” Souto said. “The way it works is if that gym is going to accept a UPS truck, that’s going to bring them a box of t-shirts that they sell at the counter, then there needs to be a place where those trucks are going to pull up and drop off that box of t-shirts. And you have to show that in the site plan and include it in the traffic study.”
Despite the disagreements, Joseph said he was interested in making the proposal work, and would work with an engineering firm to create a traffic study of the property.
“I think procedurally, I’d like to go through the process,” he said. “I’d like to have a public hearing. I’d like to have the record correct. We have to have the record properly documented.”
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