Planning Board OKs North Broadway condos, holds 269 Broadway

The Saratoga Springs Planning Board approved a four-unit condominium building at 624 North Broadway on Thursday, September 24, and sent two larger projects back to their applicants for more work. The six-story, 36-unit condominium proposed for 269 Broadway, across from Congress Park, drew the longest discussion of the night and no vote.

The meeting ran through three projects at very different stages, from a small infill building that is now cleared to build, to a sketch plan on South Broadway that the board said needs less asphalt, to a downtown high-rise that still has to answer questions about groundwater before its environmental review can start. The city posts a video of the full meeting, and the summary below draws on that recording and on the meeting write-up published by Saratoga Civic Pulse, a newsletter that summarizes city board meetings.

624 North Broadway: approved, with conditions

The one clean decision of the night went to a four-unit residential condominium building at 624 North Broadway, on the stretch of North Broadway north of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs. Each unit has an attached two-car garage, with the garages reached from Burke Alley behind the property rather than from North Broadway. The vote was 7-0.

The approval carries a list of conditions aimed at the streetscape and the alley. The developer must:

• Rebuild the sidewalk along the North Broadway frontage and add an ADA curb ramp.
• Install three Sternberg street lights, the city’s standard fixture, along the frontage.
• Keep trash inside the garages rather than in outdoor enclosures.
• Screen utility equipment so it is not visible from the street.
• Repair any damage to the Burke Alley frontage caused during construction.

Those are routine conditions for infill on North Broadway, where the city has spent years pushing new construction to match the sidewalk, lighting and setback pattern of the older houses. With site plan approval in hand, the project can move to building permits.

120 South Broadway: less pavement, safer layout

A mixed-use development proposed at 120 South Broadway is still at the sketch-plan stage, and the board made clear the layout is going to change before it comes back. The concept calls for two mixed-use buildings facing South Broadway with two multifamily residential buildings behind them, toward the rear of the property.

Board members spent less time on the buildings than on everything between them. The discussion focused on the amount of asphalt in the plan and on a central green space that is ringed by drive aisles, which several members said raises a child-safety problem for a residential project. The board asked the developer to look for ways to shrink the paved area, improve pedestrian routes and consider “landbanking” some of the parking, meaning reserving space for spaces that would only be built if they turn out to be needed. The applicant was told to work with city staff and the fire chief before returning with a revised plan.

The South Broadway corridor south of the Saratoga Spa State Park entrance has seen a run of large proposals in the past two years, and this one arrived at the Planning Board a night after the Design Review Board began weighing a 55-acre mixed-use plan along Route 9 and South Broadway. The two board summaries describe similar projects, mixed-use buildings along South Broadway with multifamily housing behind, but neither says they are the same application, so we are not treating them as one project until the city’s filings make that clear.

269 Broadway: the questions before SEQR

The proposed redevelopment of 269 Broadway is a six-story, 36-unit mixed-use condominium building in the Urban Center zone, on the block between Saratoga Central Catholic School and NBT Bank, across Broadway from Congress Park. Earlier city records identify the applicant as Prime Group Holdings, the Saratoga Springs-based self-storage company, which won approval for a different six-story building on the same lot in 2021 that was never built.

The Planning Board took no action on September 24. The discussion instead worked through a long list of open items:

• Building step-backs on the upper floors and how the mass reads from Broadway and from Hamilton Street.
• Stormwater management and the high groundwater under the site.
• Vehicle circulation and safety around a proposed motor court on Hamilton Street, including turning radiuses for delivery trucks and school buses.
• The civic-space requirement in the Urban Center zoning and how the plan meets it.
• Construction methods, including a zero-lot-line secant pile wall that residents said could affect neighboring foundations.

Public comment focused on construction impacts. Residents raised the groundwater level, a discrepancy in how much soil the applicant expects to remove from the site, school bus circulation on Hamilton Street and fire safety for electric vehicles in the underground garage. Before the project moves into formal review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, the board directed the applicant to provide updated turning radiuses, delivery logistics, a tree-protection plan, trash-generation calculations and a geotechnical summary.

What happens next

The three projects leave the meeting on three different tracks. Here is where each one stands.

1. 624 North Broadway has site plan approval and can proceed to permits once the conditions are met.
2. 120 South Broadway returns as a revised sketch plan after the developer meets with city staff and the fire chief. No date was set.
3. 269 Broadway returns with the technical submissions the board requested. Only after that does the board begin SEQR review, and public comment on groundwater, construction and garage safety stays on the record.

Our read: 269 Broadway is the one to watch. The 2021 approval on the same lot drew an 800-signature petition over its size, and the current version is running into the same neighborhood concerns plus a new set of engineering questions. A geotechnical summary that shows how the building handles high groundwater without damaging the school or the bank next door will decide how fast this one moves.

The Planning Board’s next regular meeting is scheduled for October, and the city posts agendas on its website the week before each meeting.

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