Pleasantville To Hold Hearing On Development Moratorium

PLEASANTVILLE, NY — The Pleasantville Board of Trustees has proposed a moratorium on development in the village and set a hearing date of Jan. 23.

Many village residents are concerned about the visibly changing nature of what was for decades a low-key community with a downtown where children could walk, a few restaurants, a few shops and two regional draws: the farmers market and the Jacob Burns Film Center.

Big projects — the massive building on Memorial Plaza; the condo developments on Depew Street and Washington Avenue; and the mixed-use building near the firehouse — have changed the look and feel of the village just in the past couple of years. Plus there is a mixed-use proposal for the century-old bank building and parking lot on Bedford Road and there are 20 acres up for sale on Campus Drive.

The village has grown: to 7,513 people in 2020 from 7,019 in 2010, according to the U.S. Census. It is a wealthy community: the median income is $159,755 and the homeownership rate is 84 percent, according to DataUSA.

Many residents who watched the recent building boom —only slightly mitigated by the COVID pandemic —have complained that the character of the village is irrevocably changing in ways they do not like, The Examiner reported.

In response, the trustees are considering a moratorium on any building or renovation over 4,000 sq. ft. in the downtown business district.

On December 12, 2022, the Board of Trustees introduced a proposed local law to enact a temporary moratorium on new land use applications for site plan approval, special use permit approval, subdivision approval, variance relief, and building permits pertaining to properties located in the Central Business A-1 District, including in the Central Business A-1 Subarea.
The purpose of the moratorium is to preserve the status quo while the Board of Trustees assesses whether zoning code amendments are necessary to ensure the scope of development permitted is appropriate and can be supported by the Village’s infrastructure. The Planning Commission and Zoning Board of Appeals may process applications while the moratorium is in effect, but such review is at the applicant’s sole risk that the moratorium may result in changes to the regulations applicable to the application. The moratorium precludes any SEQRA determinations or final decisions from being issued for the application. There are certain types of applications that are exempt from the moratorium and there is an opportunity for a property owner to seek a hardship exemption from the Board of Trustees. To read the proposed local law and summary memorandum, please click here.

It would just last until the spring, because their plan is to make it retroactive to a public forum they held in the Pleasantville High School auditorium in November, The Examiner reported.

Meanwhile, the trustees decided to pay their planning consultant $30,000 for an analysis of vacant or "underused" or "underdeveloped" property in the central business district and possible future residential development, how it compares with the development potential of the zoning regulations pre-2017, and "what zoning mitigation measures are needed to address the community’s concerns about impacts to public safety, infrastructure, and traffic."

The analysis will be done whether the moratorium is enacted.

In the village's latest newsletter, there's a Q&A with village Building Inspector Robert Hughes about the zoning and development process.