Would tap into city water and schools

By Jeff Simms

The Fishkill Planning Board has begun studying potential environmental impacts of a proposal to build 463 apartments and 24,000 square feet of retail space along Route 9D that would draw its water from Beacon and send students to the city’s schools.

If approved, the 57-acre project, called the Rolling Hills at Fishkill, would be more than four times the size, with nearly twice as many apartments, as Edgewater, the largest residential development ever approved in Beacon.

The project has been in the works for years, with officials submitting plans for the 30-building proposal last fall.

The development would be built on two parcels (one with frontage on 9D) that lie just north of Hudson View Park, an apartment complex, and the Mount Gulian Historic Site. The larger of the two parcels is zoned for residential building while the 9D land is in the town’s Planned Business zoning district.

Project officials have asked the Fishkill Town Board to rezone the second parcel for multi-family construction so they can build “a walkable community with open space and neighborhood-scale retail/commercial space,” Matt Acocella, an attorney for the development, said at the Sept. 12 Fishkill Planning Board meeting.

The project would include 68 affordable-housing units and the developer would likely be required by the state to install a traffic-calming device — possibly a traffic circle — on Route 9D. Fifty-five percent of the land would remain open space.

“The Town Board thought [the proposal] was innovative,” and passed it to the Planning Board for a recommendation on the rezoning request, Town Supervisor Bob LaColla said this week.

Rolling Hills at Fishkill would be built on this parcel along Route 9D. (Photo by J. Simms)

In August, the Planning Board issued a positive “determination of significance,” which indicated that the project could have an adverse impact on the surrounding environment. As a result, additional studies on water, wildlife, transportation and other elements are required and, depending on their outcome, project officials could scale the proposal back or, if the rezoning is approved, continue through the Planning Board’s review process.

All that could take a year or longer, but if the project is eventually approved its impacts would reverberate into Beacon.

The Rolling Hills parcels are in the Rombout Water District, which buys up to 500,000 gallons of water per day from Beacon. (Beacon has a separate agreement to buy up to 1.2 million gallons of water per day from the Village of Fishkill.) The district, which serves about 2,000 residents, uses only about half that amount, Beacon City Administrator Anthony Ruggiero said.

But with the Beacon City Council adopting a six-month building moratorium three weeks ago — its second in two years — because of water issues, the proposal can’t be taken lightly, he said. More than any other impacts, “our main focus is going to be the water,” Ruggiero said.

Elementary school children from the development would be zoned for South Avenue school, said Beacon Superintendent Matt Landahl.

Enrollment in the district fell between 50 and 125 students in each of the last four years before increasing by 30 students for 2018-2019. But if the Rolling Hills project comes to fruition, Landahl said the district might have to re-draw its school boundaries.

The Fishkill Planning Board held a public hearing on the project on Sept. 12. Beacon resident Theresa Kraft, one of dozens of speakers, argued that school enrollment figures may be misleading. “Every new development in Beacon is quoting the same 66 empty seats” that enrollment decreased by in 2014, she said, “but the actual tally [of new students] could be tenfold.”

The Beacon district submitted a letter to the Fishkill Planning Board as well, asking it to include students placed out of district, private school and home-schooled students in its calculations because of the effect each of those groups has on costs such as transportation, tuition and educational materials.

The letter also asked the board, when conducting its studies, to account for students expected to come from more than a half-dozen recently approved developments in Beacon and Fishkill.

Behind The Story

Type: News

News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.

Simms has covered Beacon for The Current since 2015. He studied journalism at Appalachian State University and has reported for newspapers in North Carolina and Maryland. Location: Beacon. Languages: English. Area of expertise: Beacon politics

7 replies on “Huge Fishkill Development Looms Over Beacon”

  1. ROLLING HILLS is a Looming Disaster

    Due to the proliferation of overdevelopment in Southern Dutchess especially in the Town of Fishkill it is imperative that the Town of Fishkill Planning Board follow the process they set in motion with its vote of a positive declaration for the proposed Site Plan and Rezoning slated for the Rolling Hills parcel. Stop this extensive over build-out plans and stop moving forward with the vagueness of the Scoping process. This project was issued a Positive Declaration pursuant to the State Environmental Quality Review Act SEQRA) that means the Rolling Hills development as planned will have a negative impact on the environment. Large swatches of undeveloped green spaces in the Town of Fishkill have been earmarked for new homes for people who may never exist, it’s a trend fuelled by the drive to double the number based on national statistics that may not come to fruition.

    As currently designed Rolling Hills proposes to disturb over 45 acre of undisturbed land over a four year build-out with multiple years of blasting. The daily disruption this will generate on the surrounding neighbors and the Hudson Valley residents at large who travel that corridor daily with experience a detrimental impact on their quality of life. Including my own. The Town should not rush and compromise the integrity of the found environment. These acreages will be ploughed up to build more than 784 bedrooms in 463 apartments and again were listening to a developers team quoting an extreme low number head count for school aged children in their calculations. Currently every new development project in the Beacon School District is quoting the same 66 empty chairs. If one is to put together a collective tally it would be ten fold. In reality once habitable the actual numbers could be staggering and will impact the City of Beacon School District significantly. You’d be foolish to believe that people don’t have babies and that today’s families don’t own multiple cars.

    The goal should not be to “get cookie cutter projects built” but to have a quality of life green environment and transportation system throughout this municipality that will make the existing residents, area employees, and visitors experiences stronger. This ability to “stop the clock” may in turn provide an ability to negotiate a practical solution. Allowing a high density overbuild with a 62% unit increase is frightening and does not set a good example of your position on issuing a POS dec.

    I urge the Town of Fishkill to NOT APPROVE a rezone for this project.

    Theresa Kraft – Beacon
    Public Hearing Comment
    TOF PB Meeting 9-12-19

  2. The impact this will have on ruining the environment and the implementation that it will have on the Beacon schools is tremendous. Such complexes and potential future buildings that impact Beacon is turning a quaint and friendly city into a New York City type of congested and unsafe environment. Our seniors will be grievously effected and become unable to stay in their homes.

  3. We are doing all of this building. Why can’t we just get a halfway decent grocery store instead of all these apartments?

  4. Packing them in. The Newburgh-Beacon bridge traffic will be even worse. When is enough enough? [via Facebook]

  5. What road upgrades are coming? What can go wrong with even more traffic at the Interstate 84 and Route 9D interchange, which needs a massive overhaul? [via Facebook]

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