Saratoga Springs UDO hearing draws crowd, continues Oct. 20

Residents lined the hallway at City Hall on Tuesday, Oct. 6, for the first public hearing on Mayor John Safford’s proposed changes to the city’s Unified Development Ordinance, and the hearing will stay open at the council’s next meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 20, The Daily Gazette reported. The proposal, Local Law No. 6 of 2026, would take away the Design Review Board’s power to veto demolitions in the city’s architectural review district and add a way to appeal the board’s decisions.

The Unified Development Ordinance, or UDO, is the nearly 300-page rule book for zoning and land use in Saratoga Springs, and it sets the powers of the Planning Board, the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Design Review Board, according to the Gazette and WAMC. Changes to it matter to homeowners, landlords and businesses deciding whether they can tear down a building, add on or swap out old windows.

Two districts, two sets of rules

The fight is mostly about the architectural review district, which is different from the historic district. The historic district covers the city’s central streets and has the strictest preservation rules. The architectural district covers a larger area, including the gateway roads into the city, such as Van Dam Street, Washington Street, Union Avenue, South Broadway, Route 9, Route 50 and Excelsior Avenue, and its standards are somewhat looser, the Gazette reported in April. About half of the homes in the city are in one district or the other, according to the Gazette.

What the changes would do

Based on the Gazette’s and WAMC’s reporting on the draft, the proposal would change four main things.

• The Design Review Board would no longer decide whether a building in the architectural district is significant enough to raise the bar for demolition, and the board could not veto a demolition there.
• For a building the board considers important, the board could ask the City Council to make it a local landmark or create a new district to protect it.
• Decisions by the Design Review Board could be appealed to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Right now there is no appeal.
• The draft the Gazette described in April also gave owners in the architectural district more freedom to replace windows, siding and roofing with modern materials and cut the board’s say over building height there. The mayor’s office has kept pushing for more flexible material choices.

The mayor’s case

Safford has argued for months that the board has applied historic district standards to properties in the architectural district that should not be held to them. “People do not want to get on the wrong side of the Design Review Board,” he said in April, when the council voted 4-1 to start the process, according to the Gazette.

He has made two other arguments. The first is cost: materials that meet the board’s requirements are often more expensive, and he says that hurts younger families trying to buy and fix up houses. The second is legal. The city has faced several Article 78 lawsuits challenging the board’s decisions, and an appeal process would head those off, Safford said. Deputy Mayor Lisa Shields said the proposal “finds a balance of public benefit and property rights,” the Gazette reported.

The Stewart’s dispute in the background

A long fight over a convenience store hangs over the debate. Stewart’s Shops spent more than two years trying to demolish a building on property the company owns in the architectural district so the company could build a larger store on South Broadway, according to the Gazette. The Design Review Board voted down the demolition, the company filed an Article 78 petition, and the city lost the case. Safford said that loss showed the review process was not working. Under his changes, the board could not have vetoed that demolition.

At the Oct. 6 hearing, resident Robin Baxter pointed to the role of Chuck Marshall, a former commissioner of public works who is now Stewart’s director of real estate, and said it appeared Marshall had given the mayor’s office, on the company’s behalf, a wish list of relaxations to the rules, the Gazette reported. The Gazette’s account did not include a response from Stewart’s.

Who objects, and why

Many of the speakers at the hearing opposed the changes, and the Saratoga Springs Preservation Foundation has been the loudest organized critic. Executive director Samantha Bosshart told WAMC in August that case law allows a review board to rule on demolitions and that the ordinance has worked for decades. She agreed the council should designate landmarks and districts, but said that should not happen in reaction to a demolition application, and she pointed to the state historic preservation office’s recommendation of a citywide building survey. Former foundation president Michele Funiciello told the council in August that changes like these belong in the comprehensive plan, the Gazette reported.

Jeffrey Gritsavage, a planner who served five years on the Design Review Board and reviewed more than 1,000 applications, said the plan would politicize preservation. Board members are appointed for their credentials and tend to serve longer terms than elected council members, he said. The Gazette noted that under the proposal, if the council does not act on a property, demolition would be allowed by default.

How we got here

The proposal has moved in stages this year, according to the Gazette and WAMC.

• On Tuesday, April 21, the City Council voted 4-1 to start the process of changing the UDO.
• On Tuesday, Aug. 18, Preservation Foundation leaders spoke against the draft, and the council voted to apply for a Certified Local Government grant to update the city’s historic survey.
• By late August, the draft had moved from largely stripping the board’s power to adding an appeal process for its findings of historic significance, WAMC reported.
• On Tuesday, Oct. 6, the council held the first public hearing, and the hearing stays open on Oct. 20.

What happens next

Safford said after the hearing that the city would take a hard look at the demolition concerns and was considering dropping the items that worried people most to reach a compromise, the Gazette reported. The council could revise the draft before it votes.

Anyone who wants to speak can do so when the hearing resumes at the Oct. 20 council meeting at City Hall, 474 Broadway. For a look at how the Design Review Board handles projects now, see our Sept. 25 story on its review of apartments at 17 West Avenue and a Federal Street hotel.

Our read: for owners on the gateway roads, this is less about style rules than about what can be torn down and who gets the final word. The Oct. 20 session is the last scheduled chance to weigh in before the council decides how much of the draft to keep.

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