The developers of the commercial project proposed for the “pit” property at Plattekill and Hasbrouck avenues in New Paltz will have to reach an agreement about what rights are reserved to village government as that parcel of land has changed hands over the years. Village officials are maintaining that a row of parking spots in the municipal lot may remain, despite the lot line running across them; Lalo Group attorney John Capello maintains that the deeds located by the developer indicate otherwise. There’s also a deed from the 1960s that severely restricts the amount of development in the pit at all.
Mayor Tim Rogers had initially asked for a title search to answer the question of parking, but after finding one deed to support the position that the parking should remain, abandoned that research. A title search is a look through all the land records on file in the county clerk’s office to establish what rights are held by whom. Deeds show ownership and also restrictions that are agreed to when land is sold, but these searches also show liens that are placed for mortgages, rights of way and other agreements that might impact development. Once anything of this sort is attached to the land, it remains until a new document is recorded that modifies or eliminates it. The mayor obtained a deed from 1988 (recorded in liber 1824, on page 338) that reserves to the village a permanent easement for encroachments “now possibly consisting of a guardrail, parking lot and sidewalk,” which appears to directly address the question of those parking spaces.
However, an even older deed has additional language that appears to have been inadvertently left off of subsequent documents. It can be found in liber 1215, beginning on page 1107, and appears to be when this land, which had been public, was sold to a private developer. It includes several covenants and restrictions, including this one: “The purchaser may construct a building upon said premises as near as possible to the east line of said premises not exceeding 15% of the square footage of said parcel on the basement or ground floor.” It’s likely that a full search of the records would disclose whether that and other restrictions — such as the one limiting parking to half of the remaining land and reserving the rest for “park purposes” — were subsequently removed. Such a change would require a vote by trustees, which would then have had to have been recorded in the county clerk’s files.
Discussion about how to proceed with this application fell into the not-uncommon push-and-pull between attorneys about how much information is necessary to make a decision. The more detailed and extensive the plans for a project are, the more money it cost the developer to have them produced. Capello made that argument in this case, but board attorney Rick Golden sees the current submission as nothing more than a concept plan, insufficient for making any decisions. Capello admitted to attempting to find a “sweet spot” of the absolute minimum of information necessary and appeared to suggest that the decision to voluntarily provide an environmental impact statement should be taken as an indication of good faith. It’s not clear that there would have been much possibility of an EIS not being required in this case, but agreeing to it up front does eliminate the time it takes to make that decision. Golden read through the minimum requirements in the zoning code and explained that nothing more than making that determination of environmental significance is possible until all of the mandated information is required. Board members agreed to allow the consultants to continue the conversation about that bare minimum at another time.
Board chair John Litton anticipates that there will be significant public interest in this project, based on the lively Facebook discussions that already have occurred.
Join the family! 
