Plumber Problems

A little-remembered aspect of Woodstock zoning is that each of the town's neighborhoods has a small, sometimes downright miniscule Neighborhood Commercial District within it, allowing for local businesses. They were built in around what once were little grocery and supply shops. The Willow Store was next to what's now the garage. In Lake Hill, the little red store flanked the entrance to Mink Hollow. Bearsville has both the restaurant/theater complex once owned by Albert Grossman, and then the soon-to-be-reopened Bearsville Market (see Page 10), and several more properties once owned by Grossman across the creek. Zena has a group of lots that included Fred Thaisz' store and the stone house that has been home to several restaurants, along with the old Woodstock Times office across the way.

And then there is Wittenberg, with its recently re-opened store, the property adjacent to it touching on Cold Brook Road, and a pair of properties along the road in the pines, just before the bend at the corner of the Glenford road.

An Article 78 lawsuit against the town and its Zoning Board of Appeals will help decide the future of one of those lots, formerly owned by local attorney and developer Jerry Wapner (a partner of town attorney Rod Futerfas, who will be defending the town in the case). The suit was filed by local plumber Geoff Hanowitz, whose Woodstock Plumbing & Heating bus celebrates its tenth anniversary this year just as Heckeroth Plumbing goes out of business. Hanowitz wants to put in a 4,000 square foot structure in which he can base his business, consolidating the parts and equipment he now stores in rental units around the area. He wants to rent out half of what he builds to a local craftsperson or artist until his business is big enough for the entire structure he says he's been planning for a half decade now. Hanowitz's suit says that a ZBA ruling has unfairly restricted his plans.

The other lot closer to the Wittenberg Store, formerly owned by local surveyor Bob Cross, Sr., could become home to an eight-unit apartment block, if Shokan-based builder and developer Jim Nelson gets his permits from the town Planning Board, where he's initiated preliminary discussions in recent weeks.

Combined with proposals for renovations to structures within the Bearsville Neighborhood Commercial District, and rumblings about getting new businesses into similar slots now open for development in Zena, Willow and Lake Hill, it all augers for consternation among those in the town's planning and zoning worlds about increased attention on the entire Neighborhood Commercial concept. It also highlights what some have thought of as a number of faults in its initial codification that could mean more problems, and possible lawsuits, in the year to come.

"The whole issue of Neighborhood Commercial Districts brings up some of the key weaknesses in our laws that need to be changed," said Planning Board chairman Michael Mullally of the coming reviews that will, for the first time, cast serious scrutiny on them since the town's Zoning Ordinance was first passed in 1989. "This will put us all in a bit of a conundrum."

Mullally summed up the problems posed by Hanowitz's lawsuit and the Nelson apartment proposal in terms of several key elements. First off, definitions of what can and can't go into NC districts have been somewhat vague, to date. Secondly, the mapping for these districts has been uncertain in several cases, including the two now rising to the fore in Wittenberg. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the entire issue of allowing, and even encouraging commercial clusters outside the main "village" hamlet cluster is a master planning issue that needs addressing in the town's long awaited Comprehensive Plan rewrite, which, with town supervisor Jeremy Wilber's latest comment, could be finally gaining steam on an official basis for resolution in the coming year.

"Things could end up being a bit helter skelter," Mullally worried. "We're looking at a likelihood, now, that six months to a year from now, the entire character of a place like Wittenberg will have changed significantly and the forest we see there now is gone... There's a question of what we really want in these outlying areas. Do we encourage good design or just density?"

A member of the town Zoning Board of Appeals, who could not speak on the record because of the pending lawsuit with Hanowitz, went further by noting how "the zoning law is pretty screwed up on these matters" regarding NC Districts, and serving as something of "an antithesis of what should be there" according to that law's original intent, as best discerned from its original language.

"The idea was to allow for some business outside of the center of town to keep the hamlet from getting strangled," added the zoning official. "The idea was to put in businesses that meet the daily requirements of nearby residents. How do new apartments do that?"

According to the town's Zoning Law, the handful of lots included in the NC Districts are entitled to much the same uses as those in the hamlet, with a few extra stipulations designed, it seems, to retain rural character where they exist. For instance, apartments are allowed, via a Special Use Permit from the Planning Board. You can have roadside stands and schools, art galleries and both public and private rescue squad facilities. A justice court. Newspaper offices and doctors' clinics. Any offices, really. Funeral homes and B&Bs and even motels or hotels, given the Planning Board's permitting process. Film Theaters are similarly allowable, as are pretty much all retail or wholesale businesses, audio and video studios, or laundries, gas stations and auto repair shops. Restaurants are okay without alcohol service...excepting one property in Wittenberg next to the store there.

Contractor's yards are verboten. As are research labs and light industrial facilities of any kind.

CALL IT A 'WAREHOUSE?'

The way the whole zoning process works in town, according to town Planner Dara Trahan, is that all inquiries go through Building Inspector/Zoning Enforcement Officer Paul Shultis' office first.

"He's pretty much the gatekeeper, the first stop" she said. "He tells who else to go to."

Does that mean he determines what uses are okay or not and, as a result, which route an applicant with a project should take: for a starting variance from the ZBA or a Special Permit and/or site plan review from the Planning Board?

Trahan was adamant that the Building Inspector didn't make determinations or opinions. He didn't interpret the law.

But she also added that the laws appeared muddy to her when it came to some areas...like Neighborhood Commercial districts, particularly in the Wittenberg area where the two lots in question, via Nelson's and Hanowitz's proposals, were complicated by second district lines running through them for stricter R-3 residential requirements which, until clarified, made the allowances descried for NC Districts moot until cleared up.

Furthermore, Trahan pointed out, the town's zoning maps never addressed a split in the one property once owned by Cross later split into two properties at the time the surveyor and Wapner sold what they had to Nelson and Hanowitz.

Hanowitz, for his part, said that when he first started eying the Wittenberg property he would later buy years ago he figured he'd be able to move his business there, as planned, because it was an NC District. His problem, for years, was to convince Wapner to sell in spite of the lawyer's own vague plans for eventually developing his lot.

"When I finally got it, he insisted I buy it with no conditions to the sale," Hanowitz says. "My mistake was going through all this without contacting an attorney much earlier."

Although his case against the ZBA is in limbo, pending a decision from Supreme Court Justice Michael Kavanagh, one that could be long delayed due to the judge's recent appointment to a higher seat and a growing backlog of all such cases caused by Judge Vincent Bradley's recent death, Hanowitz outlined how he felt wronged by the current confusion in the laws, and how they affected his being passed to the ZBA by Shultis when the Building Inspector decided that what he wanted to do didn't fit the property's legal zoning requirements.

"I guess you could say I made a mistake calling what I wanted to do a 'warehouse,'" the plumber said. "That landed me in front of the ZBA, who ruled that what I wanted to do fit the NC criteria...but then placed a pair of conditions on me, that I keep the building to 3,000 square feet, and that I remain the sole occupant of the building and not bring in a renter."

It was these latter stipulations, based on the confusion in lot lines, it seems, that caused Hanowitz to consult an attorney to "protect the value" of his property, as he put it.

"My lawyer said I could build to 12,000 square feet if I wanted," Hanowitz said. "Why should I have more restrictions on my property than anyone else?"

Because Hanowitz's case is in litigation, zoners and others in town offices would not discuss it other than to suggest that his memory of what he proposed and what his lawsuit is stating offer differences.

Yet the plumber asks where, given the town's need for a plumber, and his need for a space to run his plumbing business out of as it grows, could he now go if not an NC District? His frustration, during a recent interview, was palpable.

"I thought what I was doing, and planning to do, were services to the neighborhood," he said. "I've always been conscientious of my neighbors. I really love this town and want, more than anything, to be able to keep my business here in Woodstock."

He added, again, his thoughts about maybe having hired a lawyer to help him in the process earlier...while decrying such a need in the next breath.

Nelson, meanwhile, noted how his plans for an apartment building were still in a very early stage, with no formal proposal made as yet...just talks with Shultis and a preliminary discussion with town planners. He called what was happening to his new neighbor "unfortunate and unnecessary" and suggested someone should have helped him along instead of leading him into a sandtrap, a legal bog.

"My worry is about the mixed up lot lines," was all he'd say about his own proposal, which he didn't want to likewise jinx.

Mullally, for his part, decried the way the Zoning Law, as written, is requiring that Nelson build his eight units in one big building instead of two smaller, more appropriate structures befitting the neighborhood.

"The law is putting design pressures on the developer here where he could otherwise work towards something much more neighborly," the Planning Board chairman said.

WILBER'S COMMENT

So where does all this leave the town as it struggles with the two proposals, legal stalls and all? Will new efforts be made in the coming year to deal with the current legal flaws, loopholes, and muddy areas to avoid similar problems as others start to look into the last remaining open lots open to commerce outside the hamlet?

Supervisor Wilber, when asked about the subject, referred back to his recently released document of comments on the Comprehensive Plan to avoid any further confusion. In particular, he pointed to a section meant to clarify the intent of the Neighborhood Commercial Districts' intentions.

"Given the role of the hamlet of Woodstock as the town center, the hamlet areas in the remaining portions of the town become important 'satellite' centers offering small-scale neighborhood commercial services to adjacent neighborhood areas. The plan recognizes the unique character of these areas and seeks to preserve them as important attributes to the community," Wilber has written in a section of his document entitled "Hamlet Preservation." "With the hamlet of Woodstock serving as a center for all community residents and the outlying hamlets serving as small service centers for surrounding residential areas, consider preserving the following roles for the hamlet centers: Woodstock as the 'full-service' center of town; Bearsville as a limited commercial center; Zena as a residential center area with limited neighborhood commercial development in the district near the firehouse and at the intersection with Route 28, currently zoned NC; Willow, Wittenberg and Lake Hill as 'satellite' clusters of residential activity with presently zoned Neighborhood Commercial Districts."

So how does this affect what goes into the few lots up for grabs? Did Hanowitz buy badly? Does he need to change businesses? Whither goes a town plumber?

"This objective may be achieved by maintaining existing Neighborhood Commercial zoning districts, and the adoption of design guidelines to ensure that any new development compliments rather than detracts from the existing neighborhood character," Wilber has written. "Uses in the Neighborhood Commercial districts should be restricted to businesses that will serve the daily needs of near-by residents, which will provide a convenience to those neighborhoods, and also relieve traffic in and out of the Woodstock hamlet."

Which puts us, in many ways, back at square one in terms of both Hanowitz's and Nelson's stalled and just-starting cases.

And turns all eyes and ears, as suspected, towards Master Planning and the clarification of this previously beneath-the-radar scattered-about zoning district.