A meeting held to dispel rumors, allegations, and anger shared on Facebook over the 62-unit Middleburgh Meadows drew about 100 people Friday, about half of them listening on Zoom.
Most who spoke criticized the Middle Fort Road project at the 12-acre Valley Market site off Route 30 as “ugly” and accused the Village and Joint Planning Boards of sweeping changes in the original project, approved in July 2016 “under the rug.”
“Something smells fishy,” said David Jeremenko, who lives across River Street from the site—where crews broke ground on April 30.
Others, like Shane Foland, a village trustee who said repeatedly he was speaking as a taxpayer, praised developers Carver Laraway and the Becker family for stepping up and building the Valley Market when no one else would.
“It was zoned commercial,” Mr. Foland said. “What did people think was going to happen?”
Before the meeting, Mayor Trish Bergan said there was so much misinformation and confusion out there that she wanted to give people a chance to get the facts from the Joint Planning Board.
As approved in 2016, Middleburgh Meadows was initially designed as “attached” condominiums, Carver Laraway rep Nick Laraway said Friday.
But when pre-marketing efforts showed that idea wouldn’t fly, they revised it; Middleburgh Meadows will now be 62, customizable freestanding townhouses in the $229,000 price range with three built and sold, and then another three built and sold until they’ve gone as far as they can, Mr. Laraway said.
That raised concerns over what would happen if the units don’t sell and whether they could become rentals or Section 8 housing.
Joint Planning Board Chairman Fred Risse said the changes weren’t substantial enough to require developers to go back to square one for an additional site plan review.
A JPB waiver of an additional site plan review was granted in April.
“Why is this going so quickly?” Mr. Jeremenko asked. “Why is it being swept under the rug? 6:20 in the morning, I get woken out of bed.”
Except all Planning Board—all Village and Town Board—meetings are open to the public, Mr. Risse said, and public hearings are advertised as legal ads; no one attends the meetings or hearings and several insisted they “don’t read the paper,” where the projects have been reported on from the start.
Kim Smith, another neighbor, asked why the sketches for the townhouses “like a barracks.”
She also asked what happened to the original park, trees and landscaping, and community center.
“When I look out my kitchen window, the first three homes will be right there,” she said. “I can throw a Frisbee at them. I was told they’d start at the grocery store and I’d never see them.”
Several in the crowd charged that the townhouses are substantially larger than the condos approved in 2016; not true, said Code Enforcement Officer Lloyd Standard, they’re about 800 feet smaller.
Mayor Bergan called on the developers to come to the table.
“We have a huge opportunity,” she said. “We can still change this and work together.”
Construction has already begun.
Mr. Laraway said they’ll work with individual landowners to address their concerns, but they have to move ahead with their contractors.
Supervisor Wes Laraway said he knows of 15 other supervisors who’d “love to have this problem.”
“What will it mean if we revoke a permit that was done legally?” he asked.