Should the central hamlet of America’s most famous small town be made more dense to accommodate more housing for the needy? Or should more such housing be strategically built in various clusters around the township?
Or perhaps a little of each?
Placing housing in town parking lots drew a mixed reaction from board members and audience at a March 18 meeting of the town board in which the findings of a consultant reviewed town-owned land as subsidized building sites were explored.
The most viable lot, as determined by Fisher Associates, was the Mountainview parking lot across Rock City Road from Colony Woodstock. The study was part of a plan to make town land and infrastructure more available for development.
“It’s central to the town and close to public transportation,” said town housing committee co-chair John Huber.
“There’s no floodplain or wetlands issues there,” Huber continued. “It’s on town water, it’s on town sewer. The zoning is relatively amenable and the environmental impact would be limited.” A big consideration is that it’s a parking lot, and we need parking in Woodstock,” he said. “We obviously are aware of how crucial parking is to the economy of the town, but we also don’t think we’re at the moment where we need to worry about that at this stage. And then you’d also have to figure out what to do with the farmers’ market, of course.”
A nearby site that ranked high was the Rock City Road lot.
“It’s two acres, and it has favorable zoning, and it’s a clear parcel that’s providing valuable parking,” said Huber. “So on all these same dimensions — the terrain for construction, its centrality, its access to public transport, wetland issues, water access, sewer access, zoning, and the environmental impact of building there — it’s ideal in relation to the other sites that are being evaluated,” Huber summed up. “The parking issue needs to be studied and we can’t just start getting rid of parking spaces without figuring out a way to replace them. And then you’d have to do things like consider noise .… That’s a particular potential issue because of the Colony and the music that goes on there.”
The third publicly owned site, 27 acres at 2441 Route 212, encompasses Big Deep and Little Deep, popular recreation areas. It abuts the town wastewater treatment plant. “They thought the terrain was not good because there’s a lot of unevenness in that lot, and that it’s not as close to the town center as you might want, or to public transit,” Huber said. “It has floodplain issues. It doesn’t have access to town water. The town sewer access is not completely clear.”
On the one hand, the sewage plant was right there. “On the other hand, Huber said,” you have to figure out how you would get it there, and if you would build below it, it’s a little bit more complicated than being right on the sewer,” he said. “It has unamendable zoning, R8, it’s very restrictive, so that would have to be changed. And the environmental impact was considered suboptimal.”
The committee agreed it was not a good candidate for further study.
“Three Mile Class LT21 is 31 acres on Zena Road near Stewart’s. “It’s heavily wooded and it’s flat in spots, but the spots where it’s flat are not connected to each other. There’s a lot of unevenness between the flat spots. And there’s wetlands in there,” Huber said. It also abuts the Bluestone Wild Forest.
The site had advantages. “There’s some places you could build that are nice and flat, but as a whole the lot has challenges because of these uneven sections. It’s not central to town,” said Huber. “It could be close to public transportation. There’s not a formal stop there, but you could flag down a UCAT there.”
An eleven-acre parcel on Lauren Court of Zena Highwoods Road, had uneven terrain. It was also far away from public transportation. “It has clear limitations, and you would have to do a bit of clearing. It’s not clearly in the town in the way it feels,” Huber said. “But there might be something you could do with it, maybe for workforce housing — that’s a little more low-density than we typically think about when we think about these kind of projects.”
Were the two town parking lots the most viable sites?
“It’s worked out this way, but it’s too bad that our choices have two parking lots. But it is what it is,” councilmember Anula Courtis said. “So I would just encourage the group to collaborate with Complete Streets and also to look at water capacity, just because town water is there. Let’s make sure that the capacity to house however many people is going to be there without causing problems to the rest of the town.”
Traffic remained a concern for her. “We all know what Woodstock’s like in the middle of the summer so now we’ll have residents potentially going in and out of their homes. And this is something for us to consider,” she said.
Former housing committee member Urana Kinlen felt discussion of the potential sites was premature because major proposed zoning changes were still in the works.
“If you guys are going to go forward making decisions, and it’s only looking at the current zoning when we’re still going to be working on [proposed zoning] this year, it seems like it will be a waste of money. Have you thought about that opportunity,” Kinlen asked.
Supervisor Bill McKenna said all would be considered in future phases.
Laurie Osmond, a candidate for town board, opposed the two likely hamlet sites.
“I will tell you that I do not support parking lots because we are a tourist economy, our residents need parking, and as you already pointed out, people who live here need cars, whether it’s to go to the doctor, go to the store, whatever,” Osmond said. “And to assume that you can house people in a parking lot is a very sort of urban idea.”
Courtis suggested substituting Rock City Road with the next best property because it was clear a majority of the board did not think that lot was ideal.
“Just get that input and insight, rather than looking at two parking lots, one of which we all know, or it seems like might not be suitable.”
Courtis felt that the housing should be more central to town.
“I tend to agree with Laura that Rock City Road makes less sense,” town supervisor Bill McKenna said. “And I think we should take a look at both and just decide, because either way, we’re going to lose parking, then we’re gonna have to figure out how to make it up.”
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