What Do You Do With A Warehouse Nobody Wants?
Notes From This Week's Chester & Woodbury Planning Board Meetings
I’ve got updates for you from two different planning boards: Chester and Woodbury. Since I was at the Chester meeting on March 6th, we’ll start with that one …
Town of Chester Planning Board
Basically, every project presented — including Oak Woods Subdivision LLC — will be put on ice if the building moratorium passes on March 13th.
The question is: How long do you have until the moratorium expires?
A year? Less?
It is possible for the projects presented this evening to appeal to the Town Board to get an exemption from the building moratorium.
So, the only way to know how long we have is to go to the Chester Town Board meeting on March 13th and let them know how you feel.
I don’t want to put too fine a point on it, but if you live in Chester and have any interest in protecting what’s left of the environment? This is your moment. It will not come again.
The planet is only going to get hotter from here.
The rain is only going to get heavier from here.
And we’re all going to wish we stopped building on Lakes road (and other roads) when the infrastructure fails and they flood again.
Speaking of …
Tracy from The Preservation Collective flagged this. A member of the Chester Planning Board asked the representatives from Oak Woods Subdivision why they (Oak Woods) would want to circumvent the Orange County Department of Health.
The Board member didn’t get a straight answer. You can watch the exchange here.
The long and short of this is, by changing the acreage slightly for the proposed project, the development goes from one classification to another, and the new classification circumvents the need for water testing from the Orange County Department of Health.
The advantage to doing this is that it saves time and money for the developer. Further proof that our planning boards need to change their thinking from what’s good for the developers to what’s good for the environment.
I reached out this morning to speak to representatives from OCDH, and have not yet heard back on what Oak Wood is trying to avoid. My guess is that the Henry Farms land might be fucked up from the old unlined landfill and the winery.
And to complicate matters for the developer, Mr. David Breier, Mr. Joseph Breier, and Abraham Berkovic, these proposed houses are right in the stormwater’s path.
All the more reason to get that water tested.
I’ll have more on the history of the Henry Farms site soon. Right now there’s a lot going on and it’s hard to cover everything. I still owe you all a post on the Monroe-Woodbury School budget for 2024-2025, which is coming this weekend.
Town of Woodbury Planning Board
I know the hotel is a big topic of conversation, but I confess I don’t yet know much about it. I’ll do my home work and we’ll re-visit the hotel proposal (which drew a crowd for this meeting.)
What I do know is that Woodbury Common is back before the board for their expansion.
And there’s still no word on the train station.
You know how I feel about this: No train station, no expansion.
I fully support the Commons expanding, provided they have a handle on the water situation.
But Route 32 and Route 17 have so much traffic on them already, that it’s impossible to get around on the weekend.
Expanding the Commons without any kind of mass transit plan is insane.
And before you think this request would somehow create a burden for Simon Property Group, I assure you it won’t.
In February. they authorized a $2B stock buyback program. Over the next two years, the company can purchase up to that much in common stock. Great news for shareholders. But …
All stock buybacks do is benefit a small group of investors, the executives who are compensated in part based on the stock price, and artificially raise the stock price of the company for everyone else.
I’m going to share with you some in-depth reporting on Simon Property Group’s financials to further illustrate this point. So that’s something to keep an eye out for soon.
For now, the $2B stock buyback should be enough to prove my point: This company can easily afford to build it. In fact, New York State offered them free money to make it happen.
They just don’t want to do it unless we force them.
And maybe, we should tell the politicians who own shares in Simon Property Group (SPG) to help us. There are four publicly known congressional representatives that hold shares in SPG: Victoria Spartz (R-IN), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Bill Keating (D-MA), and Daniel S. Goldman (D-NY). I plan to reach out to all of them and will let you know what, if anything, I hear back.
Until then, I encourage you to let the Woodbury Planning Board know how you feel. Because if nobody says anything, that’s how the wealthy developers continue to roll all over us.
You can send your emails to buildingdepartment@villageofwoodbury.com and address them to Mr. Christopher Gerver.
Here’s an example letter you can send him:
Subject: No Train Station, No Expansion For Woodbury Common
Dear Mr. Gerver,
While I support Woodbury Common as a key economic driver for our area, we also have to remember that Simon Property Group’s pretax income in 2023 was $2.3 billion. This is a company with a lot of cash. So much so that they recently approved a $2B stock buy back, which will reward a small group of their shareholders and executives while artificially increasing the price of the company, making it even more valuable in the days and weeks to come after I’ve sent this email.
This is a long way of saying that Simon Property Group can easily afford to build a train station at Woodbury Common that connects to the Harriman Metro North station just under three miles down the road from them. If they have billions to spend on stock buybacks, they have enough money to build a train station.
Any expansion of the mall will negatively impact traffic conditions on Route 32 and Route 17 — and for the record, adding a third lane to Route 17 will only increase traffic, not lessen it.
I’m urging you oppose any expansion of Woodbury Common unless Simon Property Group includes a plan to add a train station. Doing so would improve mass transit options for the many travelers who come to the mall from New York City, and get more cars off the road, which is what we need to do in order to help meet New York State’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030.
The construction of the train station at Woodbury Common may also unlock other opportunities through New York State to put together the near $300M we need to get the Port Jervis Line operational.
For these reasons, I think it’s time we ask Simon Property Group for something in return for allowing them to expand and further their bottom line. I urge you not to approve any plans for expansion until a plan is presented with the train station included.