Woodstock Planning Board vice-chair Judith Kerman is more than curious to know what the owners of over 500 acres of Woodstock land plan to do with it.
“It would be helpful, for example, if you knew what you were thinking about doing with the remaining acreage in Woodstock,” Kerman said at the board’s June 3 meeting. “If, for example, it were to go into conservation, that would make a big difference in our sense of what the future might be versus if you’re saying, well, we don’t know, maybe some time.”
Zena Homes co-owner Evan Kleinberg responded.
“We’ve made public offers to conserve hundreds of acres of the Woodstock land on several occasions, even in front of the ZBA when we got caught in that sort of process,” said Kleinberg, who partially blamed Woodstock Land Conservancy for a delayed process. “We have asked in exchange for a lot of conservation simply that they allow the town’s review process to run its course. That was rejected.”
The only viable access to a proposed 30-lot housing subdivision on the landholding completely in the Town of Ulster is through Eastwoods Drive, a gravel road off Zena-Highwoods Road in Woodstock.
Kerman suggested to Kleinberg that a solid commitment to conservation would go a long way.
“Our job is planning,” she explained. “So when we look at a project that includes this amount of acreage of very sensitive lands, we have to think about what might happen and what may not happen. A commitment gives us something to plan with. Maybe we will, maybe we won’t’ doesn’t give us anything to plan with.”
Kleinberg noted that the project had been significantly scaled back from the 190-plus homes, 18-hole championship golf course and helipad included in the original concept for the 500-plus acres of Woodstock land and 106 acres in the Town of Ulster.
“So in this meeting now, we have submitted something on less than 20 percent of the acres that we own by design, but I’m just a little frustrated because we purposely reduced the scope, so we don’t want to plan anything on that land,” Kleinberg said. “If you’re asking me to conserve the rest of it through perpetuity, then we’re going to have a discussion on that.”
Kerman responded that was “kind of what I’m suggesting.”
Alec Gladd, the developers’ attorney, was unenthusiastic.
“If we basically did a GEIS [generic environmental impact statement] on what could be done on the rest of the property, it would actually make it easier to develop in the future and open it up for development,” Gladd said. “You want to try to keep it to a future project-specific review because then you have more control over the development.”
Dogs and biodiversity
Kerman took issue with the developer’s amphibian study because a surveyor had brought his dog on the site.
“You won’t get a natural reading of the environment if you’ve got a dog in it,” she said. “I think the question of whether the presence of a dog changes the behavior of local
animals is a question that needs to be looked at.”
The town commissioned Hudsonia Institute to assess the development’s impact on
biodiversity. In addition to several wetlands on the property, Hudsonia noted rare plants and animals, and indicated it is a biologically important area for federally listed bat species.
Amphibians and dragonflies will be particularly disturbed, it noted. Owls, which are known to swoop low over a road to catch prey, may be hit, it cautioned.
Construction of an access road into the Town of Ulster “will break up a large block of
currently unfragmented forest. This fragmentation, combined with the noise and visual
disturbance caused by road vehicles, construction equipment, pedestrians, and free-ranging domestic dogs and cats, would disturb wildlife including breeding songbirds,” the report noted.
Project opponent Zoe Keller submitted her own report, which called attention to nearby bald-eagle nesting sites, endangered bats, amphibian habitats and Monarch butterflies. She noted discrepancies in the developers’ habitat study that may impact its finding of no effect on the northern long-eared bat.
Traffic concerns
While the town-commissioned traffic survey generally agreed with the developers’ findings of no significant impact to traffic, it did note the development would be 4800 feet from the nearest intersection at Zena Highwoods Road. The road is well beyond the length allowed in Woodstock’s subdivision regulations, a restriction Gladd said he believes can be waived by a vote of the planning board.
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