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Old Posted Jun 20, 2013, 10:25 AM
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This sounds semi-encouraging regarding a couple of projects (one big one downtown and one gateway type change to the city's West End). I guess it's a wait and see. From the Ithaca Times:

Harold's Square, Purity projects in review phase

Posted: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:00 am

Harold's Square, Purity projects in review phase By Dialynn Dwyer reporter@ithacatimes.com Ithaca Times |


ITHACA — Development projects continue to move forward in the City of Ithaca.

And the approval of changes to the city’s downtown zoning by Common Council at its June meeting will make it easier for some projects like the Harold’s Square project to go through the site plan approval process.

The city’s Planning and Development Board continued the environmental review of the Harold’s Square project at its May meeting. The proposed project is comprised of a mixed-use, 137-foot-tall building (11 stories), which is permissible under the new downtown zoning, with an entrance on the Commons as well as on Green Street. The floors would be broken down to house ground floor retail, three stories of upper-story office and six stories of residential. The residential tower would be set back 62 feet from the building’s four-story façade on the Commons using two one-story step-backs.

If the downtown zoning changes had not gone through, the project would have been required to seek a substantial height variance.

Lisa Nicholas, senior planner for the city, said the main concerns of the board about the project are aesthetic particularly due to the project’s situation in a national register district.

“It isn’t a locally designated historic district, so it doesn’t have any protection locally,” clarified Nicholas.

While the project includes the preservation of the Sage Building, it also includes the demolition of two buildings in the national historic district.

The board wants to make sure the new building is compatible with the district, according to Nicholas.

“It should stand alone as a piece of architecture and have its own statement, but just making sure that its compatible and doing the environmental review in such a way that it’s logical why this was allowed to happen,” said Nicholas. “We don’t want to see buildings with more integrity on the Commons being torn down.”

While there is no local historic designation, meaning the Ithaca Landmarks Preservation Commission does not have any jurisdiction, the board can require mitigations.

Nicholas said so far the board has talked about having the ILPC review the project as well as ask for its specific review of any exterior renovations to the Sage Building.

Once the environmental review is completed, Nicholas said she expected site plan approval to happen quickly.

“Because the building is in such a prominent position and so visible a lot of the environmental review elements cross over with site plan review elements,” said Nicholas. “They’re going into much more detail about building materials and the way it looks than sometimes they do during the environmental review. So I think it would go quite quickly after.”

At the same May meeting, the board also continued the environmental review of the proposed Purity Ice Cream project. The proposed project involves the expansion of the Purity Building’s ground floor, the addition of four stories to the existing building and the development of two, off-site parking lots. The ground floor would continue to house an expanded Purity Ice Cream store, but will also offer new retail space on the ground floor. Between 20 and 24 one and two bedroom residential units would fill the upper floors.

“The main issue has been there are two off-site parking areas,” said Nicholas. “One on Esty and Fulton and one on Cascadilla and Meadow. The one on Cascadilla and Meadow is on a corner lot. It is allowed by zoning, but it’s definitely not the most desirable use on a corner lot to have a parking lot. There should be a building there for all kinds of reasons – urban design, creating a street wall, protecting the neighborhood. But it is allowed by zoning to do it, so the board has been working with the applicant on that – on how to design it and trying to get the applicant to find eleven parking spaces someplace else. That has been a lot of what’s been going on. And if they can’t do that, working with the applicant to design it and mitigate any impact to the neighborhood.”

The proposed Fulton lot would contain 30 spaces for the residents of the new project. The corner lot on Meadow would be for employees.

Final approval was given at the same meeting to the new car rental facility project for Enterprise on Cascadilla and Fulton. The owner of the project is the same owner of the Purity Project, so Nicholas said the board asked the developer to look into perhaps fitting more spaces on the new car rental site as it evaluates other options for parking spaces for the Purity project.

“The board has asked them to look at all of those things and so far it doesn’t look like any of those things are feasible,” said Nicholas. “That’s why the environmental review is taking so long. They’ve had to demonstrate that they’re looking at all this and trying every option before the board. If another option isn’t found, then the issue will be what is the impact of this lot and what has the board asked for mitigations.”

According to Nicholas, possible mitigations for the corner parking lot could include “beefing up” landscaping on the lot and requiring a higher level of design than normally asked for with a parking lot because of the prominent, corner location.
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