The Syracuse Planning Commission met on October 20, 2025, to consider a full agenda of planning applications, including amendments to prior approvals, special use permits, resubdivisions, and major site plan reviews. The meeting featured extensive public comment and several items were held to allow for further community engagement and resolution of outstanding issues.
This meeting of the Syracuse Planning Commission. We will begin our public hearing schedule in just a moment after we've taken care of our minutes from the previous meeting. And those minutes have been distributed in advance to the commission members. Is there a motion for action on those minutes of our last meeting? Move approval on the minutes of September 8th, 2025. Thank you. Is there a second? Thank you. Discussion on the motion before us. If not, all in favor of the motion, please indicate by saying aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say nay. Any abstentions? The minutes of the September eighth meeting are approved. We will begin the public hearing schedule of our meeting next, just by way of introduction for anyone unfamiliar with our process. As each application is announced, we ask that the applicant or the representative come to the podium in the center of the room, provide their name and address for the record, and then a summary of the application involved. Following any questions from the commission members, we will then open up the opportunity for members of the public to speak in favor of the application, and then similarly an opportunity for those who wish to speak in opposition to the application. We want to get through it all so no projects are held up and ask if you could confine your comments either way to about three minutes. That would be really helpful. We do.gov. Thank you. May I uh approach and share a document. Certainly. I'm an attorney at Bonshinick and King, and I represent the applicant, Albany's. The property at issue has two addresses, 800 South Wilbur and 802 South Wilbur. As was mentioned before, the project concerns the former Syracuse Developmental Center, which closed in 1998. That property has been vacant for some time and was rezoned PDD by the city recently in connection with this project. What we're here to discuss is the project plan review approval, which was granted this past May 5. That approval included as part of phase one three different components to the project. First, 27 townhomes. Secondly, two multi-dwelling buildings, apartment buildings that add up to 261 units. And then finally, associated uh commercial park space and parking. The request we're making here today is for amendments to that previous approval, which occurred on May 5th, in order to clarify certain provisions of the approval, which would be necessary for the project to go forward. So what I've handed to you is my letter. It's a summary. I want you to have the same thing in front of you that I have in front of me. It's a summary of the issues, and I won't read it at you, but I'll I'm gonna summarize the three issues, and um please interrupt me if you have any questions. First, the crossing of approvals. So this project can essentially be summarized. You've got the townhome portion of it, the 27 townhomes, and secondly, the 261 apartments and two buildings. These uh are all part of one approval, but they're really two separate construction schedules, two separate projects, there'll be two different um entities will finance each part of that, and there'll be different equity um members owning it. So a lot of capital in terms of uh both private money loans and then um uh public money too that go that is going into those into those projects. So um, in order we're coming very close to the beginning point for the construction of the apartment buildings, and we have to close on the financing imminently, and that'll be a different lender and equity member than for the townhome portion. So it's come up that uh some of the conditions, it's not clear from the wording that they may apply like a default um on one portion of the project would render um the other portion uh unfinanciable, right? They can't lend money if there's something they don't have control over that could cause a default or a removal of the project sign approval. So we have proposed behind my letter. I have a proposed red line of the resolution that clarifies that yes, all the conditions apply to every to all parts of the project, but any default on one would only affect that part, not the other, so that the uh the lenders can have that have that clarification. The second issue is the um construction. I'm gonna skip to the construction deadlines. The initial approval had a 12-month deadline.