Complications to Varna rezoning before Town Board vote

Two weeks after a multi-sided public hearing on the rezoning of Varna, and a little more than a week before the Town Board’s vote on the issue, the rezoning and development of the hamlet of Varna has been a central subject of debate this summer among town of Dryden officials as well as residents.

“The main issue is the density,” said Town of Dryden Planning Director Ray Burger. “It’s whether we want to make a radical shift.”

The amendment allows for an increase in allowable density that is three times the recommended level of the Varna Plan but nonetheless places a lower cap on the potential population increase that the current zoning laws, Skaley said. But in a July 26 letter to Burger, Tompkins County Commissioner of Planning and Sustainability Katherine Borgella asked that the town maintain the 2015 zoning laws.

In letters to Borgella, both Town Board member Jim Skaley and Planning Board member David Weinstein strongly disagreed with Borgella’s request.

The Town Board will vote on proposed reductions in allowable density during their Aug. 20 business meeting.

The Varna Plan is a 77-page document, finalized in 2012, which lays out wide-ranging details on the future development of the hamlet. According to the text of the plan, “The purpose of the Varna Community Development Plan is to serve as a guide for future development, provide opportunity for new uses and improve the overall quality of life while protecting the character of the hamlet.”

The plan includes density guidelines, historical notes on the hamlet, analysis of the character of different regions of Varna and explanation on the reasons for development.

According to the Varna Plan, the hamlet previously contained industry and various features of a well-developed community: restaurants, a hotel, a grocery store and a post office. But since the suspension of the railroad through the Varna in the 1950, the town has experienced little development and lost many of its vital amenities.

The Varna Plan was brought into existence with the extensive participation of Dryden residents and local businesses. The input included a “charette exercise” in which residents and local business owners contributed specific ideas regarding the best path forward in developing the hamlet, according to Skaley.

A group of volunteer residents created the Varna Advisory Committee, which met monthly to help facilitate and direct the planning efforts.

“The Varna plan itself has not changed,” Skaley said. “But the adoption of the 2015 zoning has intentionally or not undermined the goals and objectives of the plan as envisioned by the community.”

The official document of the Varna Plan has remained in its original state since its completion in 2012. But new zoning laws in 2015 that the town instated in 2015 allowed for significantly higher density development than the Varna Plan recommended.

“The problem has been that the zoning put in place soon after the plan was formulated was ill-conceived and has proven to make it impossible to accomplish the plan,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein was closely involved in the original drafting of the Varna Plan. Weinstein said that zoning allows for a 700% increase, instead of the 50% increase in bedrooms in the hamlet established as the goal in the Varna Plan.

“The planner we had at the time simply considered density more important than everything else,” said Simon St. Laurent, vice chair of the Varna Community Center and alternate on the Dryden Planning Board. “That seemed to go with what county planning has been arguing since 2010 or so.”

St. Laurent added that from some developers, there was intense opposition to any restrictions on property.

“It was the no restrictive zoning movement, as if infringing on property rights was ‘taking,’” St. Laurent said.

Weinstein said the proposals that developers have sent to the town of Dryden all have the maximum allowable density from the 2015 zoning laws.

“The current zoning is, by New York state law, required to be compatible with the Varna Plan, but it unfortunately ignores the plan and is in conflict with that plan,” Weinstein said.

Residents and town officials pushed back against the 2015 zoning laws, Skaley said. The opposition was, in particular, motivated by the 36-unit apartment complex at 902 Dryden Rd., in an area that was zoned as part of the Traditional Zone, an area described in the Varna Plan as characterized by older structures built between colonial times and the 1940s, which maintain “human scale dimensions.”

The 2015 zoning lacks “appropriate definitions” for townhouses and apartments, Skaley said. For that reason, developers could build 10 living units per acre, while single family homes in Varna were limited to four units per acre. Trinitas and Maifly, two of the developers with proposals to build in the hamlet, are exploiting this oversight in the zoning law, Skaley said.

The amendment would rewrite the zoning laws to allow for eight units per acre, the midpoint of the county’s range of allowable densities, according to Weinstein.

Weinstein said that the two extant proposed developments — from Maifly and Trinitas — were “grandfathered in” by the Town Board.

“This was an unfortunate decision in my view because if these two proposals are accepted, the growth in Varna will blow well past the goal of the Varna Plan and make it virtually impossible to accomplish that plan,” Weinstein said.

The Maifly project is expected to be approved under the current zoning by the planning board, pending objection, but the Trinitas application has been uncompleted for the last two years, Skaley said, adding that he is unsure if they have intentions to complete it.

In the July Town Board business meeting, arguments for higher density appealed, in part, to ensuring a diverse and inclusive living community in the hamlet. Zoning laws have often been used to exclude certain groups — often people of color — from a certain area, and the intersection of zoning laws and inclusivity has received widespread recognition in the recent months of discussions and protests about systemic racism in the United States.

When asked about these arguments, Burger said he’d prefer to keep the conversation on a national level.