By Bridget Halloran
EAST AURORA — The senior housing debate on Quaker Road is coming back to Village Hall.
A legal notice posted on the Village of East Aurora’s website says the Zoning Board of Appeals will hold a public hearing at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 12. The hearing is on an application from Sean Hopkins “at 260 Quaker” for a variance from the village’s maximum lot coverage rule, which counts impervious surfaces and structures. The code allows 35%. The request is 52.6%, a variance of 17.6 percentage points.
Hopkins is the attorney who has represented Young Development on its plan for a 118-unit, market-rate apartment building for residents 55 and older at 270 Quaker Road, the former Delevan property. The notice does not describe the project or say whether it is tied to that plan. The Buffalo Chronicle is seeking comment from the village and the applicant on what the new request covers.
If it is tied to the plan, it would be a bigger request than the last one. At a nearly three-hour meeting on Sept. 10, the zoning board granted Young Development lot coverage of 48.9% on the 270 Quaker parcel, the East Aurora Advertiser reported.
A separate village notice says the Planning Commission’s November meeting has moved from Tuesday, Nov. 3, to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10. The commission’s review is one of several still ahead for the project.
How the project got here
The site was zoned for general manufacturing. Young Development’s first idea for it was 120 apartments with no age limit. Early this year it came back with a senior proposal instead.
“We went completely back to the drawing board and have changed the project,” Hopkins told village officials in February, according to the Advertiser. “We think senior housing is in strong demand.”
Planning commissioners were torn between keeping the land for jobs and using it for homes. “There are not many shovel-ready sites in the county that have water, sewer, road access,” Commissioner Daniel Castle said at the time. “I don’t want to delay anything because I know delay is money… But, we get one chance to make this right.”
On July 6, the Village Board voted unanimously, with Trustee Steve Lazickas absent, to rezone the property to general residential and to split the roughly 15-acre site into parcels of about 11 and 4 acres, the Advertiser reported. The approval carries a deed restriction and a clause that sends the zoning back to manufacturing if the project doesn’t go forward.
“Rezoning is not something we take lightly,” Mayor Luke Wochensky said. Trustee K. Grace Viger said she was comfortable “knowing we have the opportunity to re-look at this once they submit the full packet of the plan.”
Trustee Ryan Kamp said he was “excited about… the potential for this to create more housing stock in the village.”
The September variances
The village code would allow 96 units on the parcel. Hopkins argued that building fewer, larger units would work against the people the project is meant for. “Our issue with that is the units would become too big and we think would become less affordable,” he told the zoning board, according to the Advertiser. “Our concern with that is it just simply raises the rent.”
Board member Rod Simeone voted against both the lot-size and lot-coverage variances. “Just looking at the number of units, if they were reduced to the allowable, that takes away a variance,” he said.
Acting Chair Tony Hoffman pointed to the odd shape of the site, where the building would sit about 624 feet back from Quaker Road. “I think this is similar to the front yard setback, it’s a peculiarity to the shape of the lot,” he said. Member Susan Russell said, “I do think you have to look at the whole picture.”
The board also approved a six-car garage in the front yard and a larger sign. Young Development withdrew a request for an internally lit sign.
What’s still ahead
Even after the variances, the project needs a special use permit, site plan approval and an environmental review. The Nov. 12 hearing on the 260 Quaker lot coverage request is open to the public, in the Board Room at Village Hall, 585 Oakwood Ave.
For neighbors, the main questions are simple: what the new 52.6% figure covers, whether it applies to the same building or to the remaining four-acre parcel, and how much more of the site would be paved. The Buffalo Chronicle will update this story when the village or the developer responds.
Image: Main Street in the Village of East Aurora. Photo by Dougtone / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 (cropped).
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