Applicants revise Water’s Edge plan: Southeast building becomes market-rate, retail consolidated; board asks for unit, square-foot, parking details

Developers for the Water’s Edge project at 683 Third Street updated the City of Ithaca Planning and Development Board’s Project Review Committee on Sept. 12, presenting a reconfigured site plan that changes a previously proposed mixed‑income southeast building to market‑rate units, shrinks that building’s footprint and shifts it north and west to provide more buffer from the Cayuga Waterfront Trail and to avoid the newly delineated floodplain.

The applicant said the change reduced the southeast building’s footprint and allowed ground‑floor units near the waterfront trail to have small outdoor amenity areas. The project team also described consolidating retail into a larger space at the northwest corner of the southwest building—replacing a prior micro‑retail approach—and expanding tenant amenity space at the corner plaza to better activate the public area along the trail.

Why it matters: changes in unit type, footprint and retail layout affect how the site interfaces with the Cayuga Waterfront Trail,…