The Syracuse Planning Commission held a regular meeting on July 28, 2025, addressing several land-use items including a resubdivision, a zoning map amendment, a major site plan review, a time extension for an affordable housing project, and a controversial set of text amendments to the city’s zoning ordinance. The meeting featured extensive public comment and debate, particularly over the adequacy of public notice and the substance of proposed changes to Planned Institutional Districts (PID). The commission ultimately approved all items, with the text amendments subject to a condition that staff and Syracuse University work in good faith to resolve concerns before the matter proceeds to the Common Council.
This evening's meeting of the Syracuse Planning Commission. We have a number of public hearings that we will attend to momentarily. First, we will uh take action on the minutes of our July 7th meeting earlier this month. Those minutes have been distributed in advance of this meeting to the commission members. And I will ask now if there is a motion for action on those minutes. Move approval of the minutes of July 7th, 2025. Uh the like to uh make to the motion. Uh under uh the first item that reads uh Jeremy Thurston, the owner included uh introduced the project and explained that the business is about ten thousand square foot and would include restaurant, it says and bowling lanes. That statement should also actually say restaurant, uh, a full service bar, eight five iron golf simulation statements, a pudding green and bowling lanes. Thank you for that addition. Are you having that? Yeah. Discussion on this motion before us. So I second them in. So we have a motion, it's been amended and seconded and amended. Discussion on this motion now before is for the July seventh minutes. If there's no discussion, then all in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. I abstained because I wasn't understood. So noted for the minutes. Uh portion of our meeting. Just by way of background for anyone unfamiliar with our process. Following questions from the commission members, uh, we will invite members of the public who wish to speak in favor of the application to do so. Not necessarily the applicant presenting the overview of the project to keep their comments to three minutes. Um that you can remain in the cool council chambers, but we won't be discussing the couple of items. Could you uh tell us Jake which ones they are? The first two new business items on the agenda uh will not be heard tonight. They'll be postponed. So we do apologize for anyone here uh for those two items. First up is a major site plan review uh for 455 Lafayette Road, postponed at the request by the applicant. Uh the developer here um had a conflict and um could not make it, and uh both the developer and the city felt it was uh uh important for the owner to be here for that project. So we expect that to be back before us at a later uh date pretty soon. Uh similarly, another major site plan review uh at 311 uh Gennant Drive was also postponed. Um we're still working with the applicant to get some additional information, and we'll get that back on a future schedule as well. So with that, that leads us to our first item tonight. It's a resubdivision, R-25-28 at 2012 and 205 South Beach Street. Owner is the uh Syries Land Bank applicant. Um this is in the MX2 zone district. Good evening. I'm Terry Luckett from the Syracuse Land Bank at 1941 South Salina Street. Uh 201 South Beach Street is a vacant lot located at the corner of um South Beach Street and East Washington Street. It measures only only 37 feet times 109 feet, so um, it's not really suitable for development. Um, it doesn't meet the size requirements for zoning. Uh properties located in MX3. The adjacent property owner, Leo's R.E. Rental owns the five-unit apartment building at 203 South Beach Street, and um the accessory parking lot at 205 South Beach Street. So she intends to merge all three of those parcels together. Um her goal is to enhance tenant security. She's had a lot of break-ins to cars for her tenants there.