Saratoga Springs sees Transect-based zoning as a tool for close-in areas

Saratoga Springs, an Upstate New York city best known for spas and horse racing, may become one of the first municipalities in the Northeast to apply Andres Duany’s Transect concept to its zoning. The 26,000-population city about 30 miles north of Albany could decide this winter on whether to introduce Transect-based zoning in seven “special development areas.” Though Saratoga Springs occasionally makes missteps, as readers of Saratogian James Howard Kunstler know, the community has exercised more foresight than the vast majority of small Northeastern cities. In the early 1970s, half the retail space on Broadway — a grandly proportioned thoroughfare with Victorian buildings up to seven stories high — stood vacant after an outlying shopping mall opened. But in the years since, new retailers have come to the downtown, elaborate structures like the piazza-adorned Adelphi Hotel from 1877 have been put back in service, and urbanistically appropriate new buildings have risen from parking lots and other underused sites. Now the 28-square-mile municipality is looking at applying Transect-based zoning to seven areas where ordinary zoning rules had been suspended. One of those areas is the downtown, which boasts a strong commercial area lining six-tenths of a mile of Broadway. The others, says Planning Director Geoff Bornemann, are areas near downtown where commercial development or redevelopment is anticipated in the next several years. Using the Transect was suggested by planning consultant Joel Russell, who has teamed up with the landscape architecture and planning firm Environmental Design & Research (EDR) for work in Saratoga Springs. (Russell and EDR previously collaborated on a zoning code revision —which may be adopted this spring — for implementing Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.’s Transect-based plan for a 600-acre brownfield site in Syracuse.) “Downtown would be a T-6 area,” also known as “urban core,” says Michael Welti, chairman of the Saratoga Springs Zoning Ordinance Review Committee. “All the others would fall in T-5 (general urban) or T-4 (urban neighborhood),” says Welti, a planner with Saratoga Associates. “T-4 is very similar to many of our urban neighborhoods in the city,” he points out. “It shouldn’t be that difficult for people here to understand.” The proposed regulations closely govern how buildings meet the street and where parking is to be placed (mostly behind buildings or in public lots). They encourage alleys, and they establish minimum and maximum building heights, among other things. “In many ways, we’re codifying what we’re already seeing,” Welti says. In the past several years, developers such as the locally based Pfeil & Company have constructed a number of pedestrian-oriented infill developments in downtown Saratoga Springs, sometimes with retail at street level and offices above. Usually, the new buildings are faced in brick, and borrow styling from buildings of a century or so ago, though generally they look lighter and less robust than the old Victorians. The most ambitious mixed-use development on Broadway is the Congress Park Centre, a combination of retail, offices, and housing up to five stories high that’s gradually being constructed where a prosaic shopping center — dominated by an asphalt parking lot — used to stand. The property is owned by New York City-based Brause Realty. At the New York Planning Federation’s annual conference last fall in Saratoga Springs, C. Michael Ingersoll of the LA Group, a Saratoga Springs landscape architecture and engineering firm, said his firm has championed the 400,000-square-foot Congress Park Centre despite economic downturns, “somewhat absentee landlords,” and physical difficulties such as sloping land with rock just six feet beneath the surface. The project solidifies the south end of the downtown, where the walkable business district abruptly gives way to automobile-oriented development. The first section of Congress Park has brought in national retailers such as The Gap, making up for what local officials say had been a paucity of clothing stores downtown. To encourage dense development, the city has taken actions such as eliminating the requirement that downtown building owners supply on-site parking. The city provides free two-hour parking on the streets, operates free parking lots behind Broadway, and is thinking of creating additional parking, probably through assessments on downtown property owners or tenants. At the interchange of Interstate 87 and Route 50, Pfeil & Company is planning a new urban development called Excelsior Park, which is to have 335,000 square feet of offices, manufacturing, institutional, service, and retail uses along with up to 230 housing units occupying about half of a 54-acre tract. More than 26 acres will remain green space. “Their vision is very ambitious,” says Welti, noting that Excelsior Park “is going to create quite a range of housing that’s definitely needed — and services for the residents.” Unlike the neighboring town of Wilton, which has big-box retail near the Interstate, Saratoga Springs rejected a Home Depot and welcomed mixed-use development instead. “This will create quite an impression,” Welti says. “You’ll see a very high-quality urban environment when you arrive from the north.” Russell says the Transect seems to be a palatable concept in the special development areas, which are partly built up and which are Saratoga Springs’ areas most in need of strong, form-based planning. If the concept works well there, it may later be extended to the rest of the city. After a January 21 public hearing, the City Council will decide whether to adopt the new system.