But traffic volume will eventually make a single entrance inadequate, according to Clough Harbour.
PICTURESQUE FARM FULL
The only full road access to the site, at least initially, would be from the existing State Farm roundabout on Route 67. The environmental review will identify which road improvements the hospital should be required to pay for. The additional traffic, if the property is fully developed, could impact as many as a dozen intersections, said Schwartz, who reviewed the hospital’s draft environmental impact statement for the town. “What it looks like is going to define how people feel about it,” said Nick Schwartz, a landscape architect with Clough Harbour & Associates, one of the town’s engineers.
The hospital wants to concentrate its buildings near the center of the property, preserving the meadows closest to the highways. The upcoming environmental impact review will include a lot of attention to how the hospital buildings will look from the surrounding roads, and whether some existing horse paddocks, barns and pastures can be kept in the plans. That means either of them will need the town to approve a new planned development district.
“We’ll be evaluating the situation in terms of the overall diocese plan,” Goldfarb said.īoth the hospital and church properties are zoned for residential development. Local planning groups in the diocese are making recommendations, but Bishop Howard Hubbard isn’t scheduled to announce decisions about those recommendations until January. Church representatives haven’t met with the Town Board since December 2006.ĭiocese spokesman Ken Goldfarb said last week that the future of the property is part of the current “To Be a Church” review the diocese is doing to determine the future of various churches and other properties in its 14-county area. However, rezoning legislation has never been finalized, and the church is waiting for the results of a diocese review of future needs before pursuing plans for the site. The diocese in 2005-06 pursued town approval of near-term plans for a new cemetery, with an eventual vision that could include a church and classrooms. Church officials thought a new parish might someday be needed to serve growing central Saratoga County. Meanwhile, the 100 acres immediately west of the hospital land are owned by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese, which paid $3 million in 2002. Plans for a new hospital will also require an approval, called a certificate of need, from the state Health Department. “It is a significant project that we expect would unfold over the next two decades,” said Matthew Jones of Saratoga Springs, the hospital’s land use attorney. The hospital plans for the 140-acre site include medical offices, long-term assisted residential care and eventually a full-service hospital. A final decision on the project is likely to take several months beyond that. The Malta Town Board is scheduled to vote Monday night on declaring the hospital’s proposed environmental impact statement complete, launching the formal public review period.Ī public hearing is set for Monday, July 28, at the town hall, and written public comment will be accepted through Aug. Hospital consultants have spent nearly a year studying those issues and recently submitted reams of new environmental data to the town. Public review is starting on an environmental impact statement looking at the effects on everything from local traffic to wildlife habitat. The hospital’s plans, revealed with great fanfare more than a year ago, are about to step back into the public eye. “My personal view is it will be a very positive use of the property,” Sausville said. Sausville said there’s a lot of support for the hospital plans from both town officials and the public. The hospital land had earlier been eyed for corporate offices and for a Cabela’s outdoor sports destination store, though town officials didn’t support those ideas. Saratoga Hospital is committed enough to have paid $8.5 million last summer to buy the land outright, taking the last of the farm off the market. The first phase of the project, an urgent care center, could be in place within three or four years. The plans would culminate, if all goes as expected over the next couple of decades, in a new five-story, 200-bed full-service hospital. Saratoga Hospital wants to build a $350 million multi-use medical campus on the part of the farm closest to the Northway.
0 kommentar(er)
