Building demo gets OK by Cooperstown board
May 14—The village of Cooperstown Historic Preservation and Architectural Review Board approved a permit to demolish a vacant warehouse to make way for an affordable housing development at its meeting Tuesday, May 14.
The Vecino Group has proposed razing the building at 217 Main St. — formerly Where it All Began Bat Co. — and replacing it with a three-story, 50-unit apartment building.
HPARB granted the permit with several contingencies, including making the permit nontransferable, having all applicable village boards review design plans, creating a document on the history of the building by an architectural historian acceptable to HPARB and requiring that salvageable elements be incorporated into the new structure, reused elsewhere or recycled where feasible.
HPARB also went through the state environmental quality review process, determining that while there were some anticipated impacts to the quality of the community, specifically vehicle traffic, the impact would be small.
The 1.17-acre parcel is zoned commercial, which allows multi-family housing. Building height is capped at 42 feet, which allows for three stories.
It's currently owned by James Florczak, of Schenevus, and is used for storage, according to the zoning permit application. Vecino Group has an option to purchase the property.
Two weeks ago, the village Board of Trustees held a public hearing to discuss the Restore NY application for $1.78 million in funding for the demolition and redevelopment.
The supporting services partner Springbrook would be a minority partner, paying 50% of construction costs on the eight units.
Springbrook would have eight units dedicated to house its clients, plus an office.
HPARB held a public hearing on the demolition application Monday.
Resident Jason Tabor, 19 River St., raised concern about approving demolition without proper due diligence.
"You sometimes put citizens through hell just to simply replace a window in their homes," he said, "and here you might be making a decision to tear down a whole historically contributing structure affecting our entire community, just based on a rudimentary concept at best."
He added that he had concerns about Vecino Group "as an unknown partner."
"They currently do not own the property in question, only a contingency agreement," Tabor said. "So really, there's no skin in the game to preserve our history. We might end up with an empty lot, with no remnants of history at all."
He also said that after 15 years are up, Vecino Group can sell the property, however Rob Holzman, Vecino Group vice president of planning and acquisitions, corrected this statement.
"It's not a 15-year ownership, it's 50 years," Holzman said. "... At that point, it's going to be a discussion [about whether] it gets sold to another developer or another entity, do we keep it in our possession and keep going forward."
"We don't take the demolition requests lightly," he added. "We value the historic value of buildings themselves. But in all of our evaluations, what we found is, this particular building does not have the integrity to be restored for multifamily development."
Three other letters concerning the demolition permit were submitted to HPARB.
Cooperstown Zoning Officer Chris de Ville said that one person wrote against demolition. A second letter was submitted agreeing with the first letter.
The third letter included a recommendation to photographically document the structure before demolition, but was not opposed to the building coming down.
