MONROE − Carol Hawxhurst grew up on the street that bears her family’s name and she is still there today, living in the stone house her grandfather built in the 1950s.
But plans for a 491-home development threaten to disturb the semi-rural tranquility and have her thinking about moving for the first time. Cutting through the woods behind her home would be a new road leading to three apartment buildings and eight townhouse clusters, a set of 212 homes in all that would form one half of the proposed Rye Hill Preserve project.
Hawxhurst is now part of a group of residents who are challenging the proposal and the special zoning that town officials would have to grant for it to be built. There is widespread interest: Preserve Monroe, the group formed in July to oppose the project, has 785 members on its Facebook page and a couple hundred more who signed up for emailed updates on the town deliberations.
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The housing proposal stems from a 2017 federal lawsuit against the town by several developers who had bought 245 acres with pending housing plans off Rye Hill Road and Orange Turnpike. Town officials settled the case in 2019 by agreeing to create a zoning type that would permit more housing than normally allowed in certain areas if the homes are concentrated and leave much of the property untouched.
Following the terms of the resulting law, a business group that plans to buy the properties from the developers who sued Monroe has proposed to build homes on 91 acres and preserve 154 acres. The tradeoff, though, is that the housing would be 491 townhouses, apartments and condominiums, rather than the 147 single-family houses originally proposed for the same set of parcels.
Opponents question the merits of that trade and the sheer volume of housing, arguing it would add too much traffic and noise to the area and erode the quality of life for neighbors.
“The roads are not designed for this massive complex,” said Hawxhurst, whose property abuts a proposed entrance to the development off Orange Turnpike.
Town officials say they created the new “conservation cluster” zoning both to preserve land and foster affordable housing for seniors, emergency responders, millennials and others who can’t afford a single-family house on a one-acre or larger lot. Those groups have too few housing opportunities in the area, town Councilman Mike McGinn argued during an hour-long discussion with residents about the project at a board meeting last week.
“We didn’t want big McMansions,” McGinn said in explaining the rationale for the zoning. “We have those already. We wanted something for emergency responders to stay in town, something for seniors to stay in town.”
The Town Board hasn’t decided yet whether to approve the developer’s request for conservation cluster zoning. In August, the Planning Board issued a six-page letter that recommended approval but deemed the application incomplete, cited numerous deficiencies and suggested design changes to reduce the noise and visual impact on neighboring homes. The next step is for the developer − known as Sun Brook Partners − to revise its plans and supply the information it had omitted.
“I think there is room for improvement, whether it is lowering the number of units or relocating some of the units,” town Supervisor Tony Cardone said in an interview last week.
Looming in the background is the possibility of renewed litigation with the developers who paid $7.4 million in total for the combined properties in 2016 and have contracted to sell them to Sun Brook Partners, reportedly for $16 million. Their federal case had accused the town of discriminating against Hasidic families by adopting zoning changes that reduced the number of homes they could build on some parcels and prohibited the addition of accessory apartments.
The Rye Hill Preserve plans already have undergone several changes. Most notably, the developer scrapped two large apartment buildings with 300 total units that would have reached 53 feet high, exceeding the town’s 40-foot limit. Those big buildings − since replaced with smaller apartment houses and an array of condos − helped spur the initial outcry from residents in response to the proposal.
One of those original apartment structures was the size of a shopping mall and never should have been entertained by the town, said Maureen Richardson, a Monroe native who helped set up Preserve Monroe. She said the building downsizing was a relief but didn’t quell concerns about the project scope or doubts about its professed benefits for the town.
She noted, for example, that another developer has proposed 175 senior apartments not far from the Rye Hill Preserve site that would help satisfy that housing need in Monroe. And she questioned whether the project’s promised sports fields would materialize and if homes would truly be affordable if priced according to the area’s high median income of around $100,000.
“Much of what has been advertised for this project has turned out to be less than what was promised,” Richardson said.
She argued the project could be more palatable if the number of units was reduced and more property spared from development, preserving perhaps 85% of the land rather than the 65% required under the town law.
She also criticized the pace of the review, which has shuttled between two boards since February. Town law gave the Planning Board 60 days to make its recommendations and requires the Town Board to hold a public hearing within 60 days once the application is deemed complete. “It feels very rushed,” Richardson said.
McGinn said at last week’s meeting that the town will prepare a fact sheet about the project and hold public information sessions before voting. He argued the property was bound to be developed and that denser housing with preserved land was better than suburban sprawl.
“Someone’s going to build on it,” he said. “They’re going to build one of two ways.”
Chris McKenna covers government and politics for the Times Herald-Record and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@th-record.com.
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