The City of Ithaca Planning & Development Board fielded complaints Tuesday from neighbors of a proposed child care and workforce training center at the SouthWorks development. 

While neighbors expressed support for the plan, concerns about traffic circulation have swayed the board to ask for a more thorough analysis and consideration of alternatives before any further votes on the project.

The board’s business at Tuesday’s meeting also included redevelopment plans for the former NYSDOT property on the Ithaca waterfront, and a pair of smaller proposals on the West End and near Cornell’s campus.

Below is a roundup of August’s Planning Board meeting; a copy of the agenda can be found here.

The Water’s Edge was back before the planning board to provide an updated presentation in its plans, as well as seek an amendment to its environmental review documents.

The applicant proposes to demolish three former New York State Department of Transportation (DOT) buildings on the 8-acre site to develop the southern portion of the site into a mixed-use development that will include 200 residential units and about 4,000 square feet of retail space between two buildings. 

The southwest five-story building would include 160 market-rate residential units on the upper four stories with a mix of parking, amenity services and retail facing the city’s Cayuga Waterfront Trail. The smaller five-story building located on the southeast side of the site would contain 40 apartments. Site improvements and amenity spaces include outdoor seating areas, landscaping, lighting as well as several new terraced stairways and ramps along the waterfront trail. The property would have about 219 parking spaces, of which 53 would be covered and 166 would be along street curbs and in off-street lots.

Arnot Realty’s Ian Hunter was back before the board, alongside architect Brian Buczkowski of Eric Colbert & Associates and landscape architect Jacob von Mechow of Whitham Planning and Design. Von Mechow noted that the smaller building was pulled back from the waterfront trail and the 100-year floodplain, increasing the setback from eight feet  to 22 feet.

The board still had concerns about the building’s shared retail and lobby space, as well as questions about the stormwater plan and the removal of a rain garden from previous site plan iterations. Board Member Mitch Glass wanted to see a lower parking to housing ratio, but Hunter said the location would not be economically feasible unless there was one parking space per unit.

Also up for discussion was subdividing the former DOT property into two lots of 3.57 and 4.59 acres, as the project will be developed in two phases. Firm plans have only been developed for the pair of apartment buildings in phase one.

Up for a vote Tuesday night was a revised environmental review, almost a year to the day of the initial negative declaration was issued. The revised environmental review passed 5-0, which allows the project to pursue site plan approval as soon as next month. The project team plans to be back before the board in September to pursue both subdivision approval and site plan approval.

SouthWorks “Gateway Apartments” (620-640 South Aurora St.)

The SouthWorks Gateway apartment buildings are part of the first phase of the massive new development on South Hill.

Developers proposed constructing two new five-story, 50-unit apartment buildings called “G1” and “G2.” The apartment units would be mixed-income, targeted at households making 50-80% of the Tompkins County Area Median Income.

As proposed, site amenities would include a courtyard with tables and chairs located between the buildings, an area for dogs, lighted pedestrian paths and 40 parking spaces located behind and beneath the buildings. Additional parking spaces would be located nearby in the factory’s former parking lot.

Meanwhile, further uphill on the SouthWorks site, a 130-unit apartment and townhouse development has also begun the site plan review process — albeit separately. The SouthWorks development includes projects in both the City of Ithaca and Town of Ithaca, which each have their own planning boards and processes.

Up for review this month was the determination of the environmental review, as well as a proposal to subdivide the 1.64 acres of this apartment project from the larger 95-acre SouthWorks site, as Beacon Communities would be a co-owner of this portion.

The revised plan includes additional trees and more lush landscaping and revised treatments to account for the site’s slope. Construction staging and circulation plans for traffic, pedestrians and bicyclists were also shown to the board. 

The project plans to utilize a combination of corrugated terra-cotta-colored metal and aluminum-steel panels, with grey, dark brown and off-white fiber cement accents: “Light Mist”, “Baked Clay” and “Navajo Beige.”

Members of the board felt the treatment of the north facades was a missed opportunity, and there were concerns about the mechanical screening, given the rapidly changing heights on this side of the city. The board said that a wheelchair ramp between the two buildings likely wasn’t feasible given the steep grade. It would have required several switchbacks, a challenge both financially and for users.  

The board voted unanimously for a negative declaration on environmental review, meaning the impacts are mitigated and the project is consistent with the SouthWorks zoning and GEIS from last decade. As for the subdivision, there was some concern about getting it finalized in time for the project to apply for the next round of NYS affordable housing grant funding in October. 

The board approved the preliminary and final subdivision unanimously.

A $4.8 million renovation plan for an existing building at the SouthWorks project was also discussed at this month’s planning board meeting.

The “Empowerment Center,” to be housed in a 43,400-square-foot building, would include a “construction incubator,” a workforce-training center operated by Ascend Workforce Solutions, and a child care facility, all with the goal of supporting workforce development and economic growth. 

The project would be housed in the structure currently known as Building 21, which was built in 1919 and is located at the end of Turner Place. The renovation would return windows and a more open feel to the building, as well as repair its concrete base and facade. Most parking and a bus drop off would be west of the building. 

The upper floors would also house a “construction incubator,” a collaborative workspace for contractors, training staff and industry partners. The child care center would occupy portions of the first and second floors, with approximately 35 staff and 150 children at full occupancy. Dedicated outdoor play space will be located on the south side of the building. The center would be operated by First Learning, a Rochester-based child care provider.

Rather unusually, the board received about 10 letters of opposition not to the project as a whole, but to the proposed entry from Turner Place and the proposal to reuse the abandoned South Cayuga Street connection as an exit from the site. 

Multiple residents from the surrounding neighborhood supported the idea of a workforce training and child care facility in the building, but wanted the entry and exit to be limited to Aurora Street, also known as Route 96B. Several residents were also present to speak about the traffic circulation issue during the project’s public hearing.

Meanwhile, a letter from Board Member Jennie Sutcliffe, who could not be at this month’s meeting, stated her opposition to the project, explaining that while renovation of the existing building into an office space would be fine, a child care center generates too much traffic for the adjacent roadways to handle, and a workforce training center may create too much noise.

Project engineer Jamie Gensel of Fagan Engineering walked the board through the results of a basic traffic study, the reworked parking area, and shared updated site plans that still displayed the controversial entry and exit from Turner Place and South Cayuga Street. 

Given the widespread public opposition to the Turner Place and South Cayuga connections, the board made it clear that they wanted a more in-depth traffic analysis to see if South Aurora could work. Most board members felt that the workforce training and child care aspects were appropriatel; they just wanted a traffic pattern that would mitigate some of the traffic impacts. 

As board member Emily Petrina said, “the writing is on the wall.”