VILLAGE OF FAYETTEVILLE – The Village of Fayetteville Planning Board has scheduled a special meeting for Aug. 23, during which the proposal for a “campus-type” development at 547 E. Genesee Street will be the main topic addressed.
As planned, the special meeting will commence at 7 p.m. on that Monday inside the village hall down the road from the approximately 30-acre industrial site in question, a site formerly occupied by the O’Brien & Gere manufacturing building.
The proposal turned in by Millstone Development Group LLC details the intent to build a 56,550-square-foot grocery store reported to be a Hannaford at the site as well as a 40,000-square-foot senior living facility and a separate 3,500-square-foot commercial building.
The development would comprise three distinct parking lots: one with 280 spaces, one with 95 spaces and one with 30. Drive-throughs for the grocery store and sidewalks for all three buildings would additionally be incorporated.
The project would also include a road that begins at a signalized intersection on East Genesee Street and ends at a parking area for residents and visitors looking to explore future walking trails.
The site is bordered to the west by a railroad bed, to the east by residential housing, to the north by Bishop Brook and vacant wooded land, and to the south by commercial properties and a cemetery.
The board intends to center the special meeting around an in-depth evaluation of the proposal and a discussion that will ultimately lead to the preparation of a final written scope, which needs to be readied for a decision by Aug. 28, the 60-day mark from the time the draft was received on June 28.
At the July 12 meeting, no other official actions were taken in regard to the proposal, though the planning board did make clear that public comments pertinent to the topic need to be submitted to the village by Monday, Aug. 16. According to deputy clerk Karen Shepardson, this timeline for community input allows the board a full week to “digest everything.”
Fayetteville’s planning board will be holding its next regular meeting on Aug. 2, but acknowledgement of the East Genesee Street development will not appear on that day’s agenda as it stands now.
The link to the draft scoping document can be found in the “Document Links” section of the village’s website, fayettevilleny.gov.
The segments of the July meeting concerning 547 E. Genesee Street and a deck expansion at a Knighthood Circle residence were not captured via livestream due to technical difficulties related to the initial use of the Zoom platform, but the remainder—which includes discourse on other site plans, sign permits and driveway modifications—can still be viewed after clicking the tab on the website labeled “Livestream Links.”
