Last night the Clarkstown Planning Board gave final approval to the Schimpf Farm 55+ housing development, voting 4-2. We appreciate those board members who voted against the project and for the lone board member in particular who voted no on this project from day one.
We are disappointed that the developer was not open to the concerns of the community in regard to the height and density of this project and the damaging effects this project will have on the surrounding neighborhood. We are also disappointed that the Planning Board and the Architectural Review Board did not work harder to get the developer to scale back the design so that it would blend better with the suburban single family homes that surround it.
When questioned why more wasn’t done, we were constantly met with the response “it's being built to code”. If that is the case, then as a community we need to make it our mission to get the codes changed so that we can protect our neighborhoods from other projects like Schimpf Farm. We can’t continue to allow high-density, over-scaled projects to be developed in single family areas. Our roads and infrastructure in these areas cannot support this.
Attention is also not being paid to the number of such projects as a whole in our community. The land use board decisions are being made in a bubble, thus allowing a multitude of high-density projects to be developed, in some cases, along a single stretch of road, such as West Clarkstown Road.
The Town will soon be adopting it’s new Comprehensive Plan. CUPON Clarkstown is committed to making sure that with this updated plan, code changes are made to ensure better protections for single family neighborhoods.
We hope that you will join us in our efforts to protect our community, particularly our single-family zones, from over-development and preserve the suburban and remaining semi-rural character of our town.
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CUPON Clarkstown of Bardonia, Congers, New City, Valley Cottage, and West Nyack
P.O. Box 52 Nanuet, New York 10954
cuponclarkstown@gmail.com
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