By Ashley M. Casey

Associate Editor

Developers presented their updated proposal to build 194 homes on the Seneca Golf Club to the Van Buren Zoning and Planning Board last week, but the board said the plans are still too cozy. The board has asked Brolex Properties to consider larger lots.

Jake Harrington, general manager of land for Ryan Homes, said at the April 9 planning board meeting that there was “significantly more density” in the previous iteration of the project.

“We could easily lay this project out for another 30 to 40 lots, but it doesn’t maximize…the back yard,” Harrington said.

The new plan calls for 69 patio homes and 125 standard home lots about 65 feet wide by 160 feet deep, or a little over 10,000 square feet.

ZPB Chair Tony Geiss told the developers that just because their plans showed 10,000-square-foot lots did not mean the town would agree to change the zoning from the current R-40 to R-10. He said the town is leaning more toward R-15.

Geiss explained the Seneca Knolls development in the 1960s focused on R-10 lots, but subsequent projects have tended more toward 80-foot lots. He said lots in the Marion Meadows development are mostly 75 feet wide.

Harrington said Ryan Homes has found a great demand in Van Buren for smaller “empty nest” homes and that the cost of developing infrastructure has skyrocketed, so builders are tending toward smaller lots.

“If every municipality said, ‘You have to do a 90-foot-wide lot minimum,’ we just wouldn’t develop the rest of the town because we just can’t,” Harrington said. “If prevailing wage gets placed on developments and building infrastructure like this, your lots are going to be $75,000 or $80,000 if the land is free. … That’s $400,000 starting price for a home, and I don’t know how many people can afford that. … Every linear foot of road is $450 per lot.”

Harrington said the average new home is now only 40 feet wide, compared to 60 feet wide in the past, and homebuyers would prefer a large back yard over a large house. He pointed to Orange Commons in the town of Clay as one of Ryan Homes’ most successful projects in the Syracuse area, noting that the lots there average 68 to 70 feet wide.

Geiss countered that empty nesters’ desire for smaller homes does not equate to a desire for a smaller lot.

“Everything on one floor is what empty nesters are looking for,” he said.

Geiss also criticized the homes’ proposed covenant, or homeowners association-type restrictions that would be built into the deed.

“You put Radisson to shame. … The only thing I didn’t see in there that Radisson does is make sure the garage doors are closed all the time,” he said. “You had a lot of other HOA restrictions in there for every home. I have no idea how that would sell houses. Personally, I would not like that.”

“It only takes one bad neighbor to upset the apple cart,” replied Tom Oot, attorney for the builders.

Despite Geiss’ objections to the Radisson-like restrictions, ZPB member James Virginia said the developers know their target market.

“When you go around and look at what’s being built all across Syracuse and north and south, this is what you’re seeing,” Virginia said. “This is where new homeownership is going, unfortunately. I don’t want to live in a subdivision like this — that’s why I moved back here from Dallas — but there’s a lot of people this would appeal to.”

The zoning and planning board next meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 14, at the Van Buren Town Hall, located at 7575 Van Buren Road, Baldwinsville.