St. John the Wonder Monastery is looking to add a cloister, cemetery, workshop, and vegetable gardens to its facility off Route 10 in the Town of Richmondville.
Though they’d like to break ground on the work this summer, the timeline for the 5-10 year project depends on donors and financing, monks said Monday.
The project comes in part to update the existing facility—once off-campus student housing--and also as a way to make room for an additional nine monks.
Neighbors voiced concerns over traffic and drainage at a public hearing on the project Monday.
And though the County Planning Commission has advised requiring the mostly-private Heron Road to be brought up to town specs, Planning Board members said they’re not sure they have that authority.
Explaining St. John of San Francisco Orthodox Monastery’s proposed project, architect Clemens McGiver said its largest piece will be a cloister with a total of 26 “cells” as well as a library, bishop’s apartment, and infirmary.
Seventeen monks live there now, said Father Steve Anthimos, “in little basement apartments.”
“This is not the way monks live,” he said. “This is a movement toward a form of life that fits our calling better. We are building it for ourselves. It’s not an attraction.”
The fact that it could be—along with everyday traffic and even just the curious—is something that concerns neighbors.
While he said he has a good relationship with the monks, Kory Yorks, who lives at the end of Heron Road, said some days the traffic is “non-stop” and far more than the two to three trips a day for errands and Post Office runs the monks claim.
There have been serious issues on the road, Mr. Yorks said, including a roll-over and a tour bus stuck at the entrance during a festival.
During a fire at the monastery, the Cobleskill Fire Department’s ladder truck couldn’t make it up the steep hill, he said.
“We’re just trying to do things the right way,” Mr. Yorks said. “It seems like a major inconvenience to me. I thought living on a private road would be nice.”
Other neighbors asked about drainage—especially for the new cemetery and who’d be buried in it.
The cemetery, Father Anthimos said, is for members of the church only—though they may be from other congregations.
Typically, burial is what’s now considered “green,” he said, though it’s more accurate to call it ancient: there’s no cremation, typically no embalming, and the dead are buried in shrouds or pine caskets, allowing for quick decomposition.
The cemetery won’t mean additional traffic, Father Anthimos said; funeral ceremonies will be held at the home church with only burial taking place at St. John’s.
“We couldn’t handle the whole family [for graveside services],” he said. “If 30 people showed up…We couldn’t do it.”
Richmondville Code Enforcement Officer Mike Piccolo said he also has concerns about the driveway and private road and will oppose the project if they’re not addressed.
“It scares me,” he said. “The rest of the plan, it’s beautiful.”
Mr. Piccolo said by law, even private roads have to be able to handle the biggest piece of equipment a fire department has.
In its review of the project, the County Planning Commission recommended its approval on the condition that the road be improved to town specs and that drainage to the cemetery be approved.
The Planning Board will look into what those specs would be and whether they apply.
The Planning Board could over-rule the CPC recommendations with a majority-plus-one vote.