Planning board presses Hemlock Woods developers on traffic, safety and ground‑floor housing

Developers of the Hemlock Woods mixed‑use project on South Broadway presented revised site plans and a traffic study and asked the Saratoga Springs Planning Board to send the application on for design review. Instead, after nearly three hours of technical questioning and debate, the board closed the presentation portion of the public hearing and directed the applicant to return with tighter responses on site layout, commercial program and traffic mitigation before the board will decide whether to refer the project to the Design Review Board.

The project team — represented by attorney John Kenny of Kenny Law, PLLC, architect Artiom of Balzer & Tuck, and engineering consultants — described a mixed‑use development that would include ground‑floor retail along South Broadway, a hotel set back 150 feet and four interior residential buildings. The developers seek a special use permit to allow about 15,000 square feet of ground‑floor residential spread across four rear buildings, a change they say reduces building footprint and preserves open space compared with an all‑retail ground floor.

Why it matters: the board framed the hearing around three pivotal issues it said must be resolved for the special use permit: site design (mass, scale and setbacks), the appropriate form and amount of commercial space along a high‑speed roadway, and transportation/connectivity — especially safety on Route 9. Several members said those questions bear on whether the project fits the city’s new Gateway Commercial Residential zoning and the comprehensive plan’s intent to balance development with a sensitive gateway to the adjacent state park.

Traffic, safety and DOT: traffic consultant Gordon Stansbury (GTS Consulting) summarized the team’s traffic impact assessment and said the study, prepared to DOT standards, found adequate gaps for turning movements, sight distances over 1,500 feet and existing signal operations at level‑of‑service C or better during peak hours. “We have adequate gaps in traffic to accommodate the turning movements,” Stansbury said, and he added the study found no significant accident history the state DOT would consider material.

Board members and independent reviewers pushed back on whether the historical crash record captures recent changes and the true safety risk of adding two new driveways on a five‑lane section of Route 9. “My number one concern with this project… has everything to do with safety,” said board member Bill McTighe, who urged the board and city to press for a speed‑limit change and lighting improvements. Staff reported DOT told planners the agency would consider lowering the posted speed only in conjunction with physical roadway changes — medians, narrowed travel lanes or other traffic‑calming measures — that would alter driver behavior.

Retail and site layout: multiple board members questioned whether the scheme the developers described constitutes the kind of clustered, campus‑style development the zone envisions or, instead, an intensive, street‑facing commercial frontage that pushes buildings too close to South Broadway. Some members urged moving the primary commercial building farther back, concentrating destination retail within the site, and preserving specimen trees and natural topography rather than 'carving' a large tabletop for development.

Wetlands and permitting: the applicant said the New York DEC issued a jurisdictional determination last summer that establishes the wetlands boundary and the current site plan avoids installations inside the 100‑foot buffer; as presented, the team argued they would not require a DEC permit for on‑site work. The applicant also said certain multiuse path extensions into the wetlands are infeasible without state permits and DOT/right‑of‑way approvals.

Board direction and next steps: rather than make a referral to the Design Review Board, the planning board compiled a list of follow‑up tasks for the applicant and the third‑party reviewers: refine the TIA and safety analysis (including recent months of counts and left‑turn gap details), break down local vacancy data by asset class to justify the commercial program, show alternative site layouts that respond to setback and massing concerns, and propose interim, implementable traffic/safety mitigations (lighting, striping, short medians or cuts in a median) the applicant could help fund.

The planning board also authorized staff to draft advocacy language for the mayor and council and to coordinate with legislators to press DOT for safety improvements on South Broadway. The public hearing remains open; the board will continue deliberations after it receives the requested supplemental analyses and revised site plans.