Zena Development - Developer’s Public Comments to the Woodstock ZBA Sept. 26, 2024
By Evan Kleinberg, Zena Development
I want to first thank you all on the ZBA board for being here, I have immense respect for the work that you do. I understand this is volunteer work and it is not easy, I appreciate the time you are devoting to your community.
I also want to say that I have a genuine and deep respect for the work of WLC. As we see often and as we saw last month, they are an extremely passionate group of people that I believe to have a genuine and sincere concern for what happens on this land and how it may impact the surrounding land. I want to say outright that our defense of this very technical, legal determination from the building inspector and our belief in our right to seek approvals based on this determination does not reflect our views on the work of the conservancy or their value to this community.
I’m also very passionate about what I do, building market rate homes where I know that they are needed. I live in Saugerties with my wife and daughter, I plan to be here long term and raise my family here. I want to use my skillset to make a positive impact in the community that I live in. I genuinely and passionately believe that the development of market rate homes does not have to live in conflict with environmental conservation, preservation, and protecting our natural surrounding habitat – If done consciously and correctly. It’s 2024, there’s very advanced construction tech and building tech that we can take advantage of that lowers environmental impact, reduces waste, reduces materials and truck deliveries. We’re looking at modular and prefabrication technologies, net zero energy is an option for us. These are all resources and tools that we’re exploring and considering as we plan our project on this land.
Over the course of our ownership of this land, we’ve sat several times with WLC, with Andy Mossey, Kevin Smith – both gentlemen that I respect and have enjoyed my discussions with. I don’t actually think we’re all that dissimilar, aside from maybe a few core beliefs. And in our discussions , we’ve said openly that we’re not asking you to take our word that we’ll do this consciously. Sit at the table with us, challenge us, push us to develop something that might one day achieve the WLC seal of approval. We offered to replace our consultants with those that the conservancy has worked with or that have seen do responsible development in the area. What an opportunity we had, with over 600 acres of land, thinking we could design something, conservancy and developer hand in hand, that manages to make a dent in our housing shortage while also checking the boxes of concern
for one of the most stringent conservancy groups in this country. Perhaps that was naïve of me in the end, but it's an offer that we made and a conversation that did happen.
Late last year, in that same discussion, we went as far as to offer to put 400 acres of this land into conservation, via a trust or some other vehicle. I’ll say that again – we own 624 acres of land across 7 parcels, we offered to put over 400 acres into perpetual conservation. In exchange, we asked that they work with us on the remaining 200+ acres and not actively fight to shut us down. Sit with us, challenge us, hold us accountable – we’re not asking for you to wave our flag in the town square, but let the review process with the town run its course. don’t appeal, don’t force unnecessary delays, don’t fight us. Work with us.
Their response at the time was unfortunately that they would never do something like that with us. And I understand that their mandate is not necessarily to work with developers on low-impact sustainable market rate SFH master plans, they seemingly have a strict mandate to do the opposite and oppose development at all costs. But I do feel it is important to mention here that we attempted to avoid *this*. And they closed the door on us, and here we are a year later, forced to redesign a project that we’re passionate about and doing it without any constructive input from the WLC. I will openly and on the record today say that our offer still stands. We will commit to conserving a significant portion of the land we own, perpetually, if the WLC ceases their campaign against us and instead allows the review process to run its course, without obstruction. This is a real offer and I challenge my fellow community members to come to the table and take us up on it. Until and unless that happens, we will continue with the project as we’ve proposed it, and have no plans to develop beyond what’s included in our submission today.
It brought me no joy to be in that room last month listening to members of our community so passionately reject the idea of our project and to also so grossly misunderstand what we stand for and what our project is trying to achieve.
On that topic of what our project stands for and our goals, I do think it’s worth mentioning that anyone in this room that is claiming to know with 100% certainty that this is a luxury home development is either not being truthful or has been misinformed. We are applying for a low density subdivision and have made no decisions on what type of home will be built on the land. I think we can stand up a 2 bed / 1 bath starter home for a very affordable price point. And if it’s helpful, I’m happy to offer some round numbers to help everyone to understand: we bought this land for 11k per acre, each lot is roughly 3 acres, that’s 33k. Double that, plus a bit more, for our infrastructure costs and all the soft engineering and legal costs going into getting approvals and defending the legality of our project. Call that $75k, and now add 10-15% for our investors because we certainly did not buy this land with
our own money, we don’t have it. That puts you around $85,000. That means, theoretically, we can sell a 3 acre lot for under $90k. And that person, or family, can then build whatever structure they want – that is meaningful and impactful for a working family in our community and I will stand by that. I think it’s worth mentioning that the more legal costs we need to spend on defending what we believe to be an as-of-right project will continue to drive up our costs that we’ll need to recover in this project.
It was mentioned last month that we need affordable housing, not market rate housing. I do agree that we absolutely need affordable housing, the last project built was RUPCO and it was over 10 years ago, and that took them 6-8 years to get approved. It is also well researched and well studied that adding market rate homes to an area that is under-supplied is proven to reduce pressure on home pricing. That is not a controversial statement, it is proven to be true.
The plan you have before you, and that we have submitted, was designed based on the determination that we received from the Woodstock building inspector. There may indeed be concerns about certain aspects of that plan – we are EAGER to present this plan to the planning boards of both Woodstock and Ulster and work collaboratively to ensure this is a code compliant project and aligned with the wider community’s initiatives. Right now, neither planning board will review our submission because this appeal is effectively blocking the review process, as the WLC intended it to do. I humbly urge that following tonight’s meeting, we close the public hearing so that a decision can be made and the review process may continue and so that we can work to actually accommodate and answer many of the concerns that folks here and elsewhere have. Let’s please focus on the narrow issue at hand – the technical and legal components of this appeal and why we believe the legal argument of the WLC’s lawyers to be baseless and that this appeal needs to be dismissed. I will pass the baton now to our attorney Mr. Alec Gladd who will speak to these technical legal points, and thank you very much for your time.