Two years in, the Wright Planning Board is still deciding on whether the proposed 10,000 square-foot Dollar General is a good fit.
The small audience—eight—at what’s become a monthly Planning Board session held specifically to work through the project’s impact—was just about evenly divided.
Neighbors Frank Weber and Linda Briggs remain concerned about lighting and accidents; Linda Zimmer argued that “change is good” and too much of Wright is in rough shape.
Tuesday, Planning Board members continued to work their way through SEQR, revising some earlier determinations about the Primax proposal’s likely impact now that they had more information from Bohler Engineering’s Caryn Mlodzianowski.
In the end, about five concerns were determined to still have a “moderate to large” impact; Part 3 of SEQR will look at whether that impact is significant, said consultant Nan Stolzenburgh and whether it can be mitigated.
On that list, questions the Planning Board is still struggling to answer: the project’s visual impact on neighbors and local historical sites and whether it fits into the Comprehensive Plan.
“There isn’t going to be an easy answer in that Comprehensive Plan,” though, warned consultant John Lyons; Planning Board members are going to have to work through it for themselves.
“I think the hardest thing,” said Planning Board member Kim Shoemaker, “is when you read the Comprehensive Plan, I think it’s difficult because you take what you want out of it sometimes.”
“I think your task is to figure out the goals and spirit of the Comprehensive Plan,” answered Mr. Lyons.
“It is some element of interpretation.”
For Ms. Shoemaker, that leans toward “seeing my community grow. I don’t know where I am on this…”
Fellow Planning Board member Craig Blevins said he doesn’t believe the project matches the Comprehensive Plan, written in 1994 and revised in 2017, which focuses on keeping Wright rural and residential and preserving farmland.
From the audience, Vicky McCaffrey said she worked on both Comprehensive Plans, and no, something like Dollar General was never anything they envisioned.
Primax Development’s Neal Bates was frustrated by the discussion.
“We’ve had north of 20 meetings and 60 hours of back and forth,” he said. “We’ve implemented everything we could implement,” referring to changes in their initial plans for things like stormwater and lighting, but also in addressing “community character, based on community input.”
The Planning Board will continue its work at an August 20 meeting when it begins measuring the significance of those remaining concerns by looking at things like duration, magnitude, whether they’re permanent or temporary, and the likelihood that they’ll happen.