PB Minutes 3-27-07

Minutes

Work Session of the Planning Board

Village/Town of Mount Kisco

Tuesday March 27, 2007

Meeting called to order at 7:00 pm, Tuesday March 27, 2007, at the Municipal Building Mount Kisco, New York.

Members Present: Chairman Joseph Cosentino

Stanley Bernstein

Ralph Vigliotti

Doug Hertz

Joseph Morreale

Members Absent: Vice Chairman Anthony Sturniolo

Sol Gibbons

Staff Present: Nanette Bourne

Whitney Singleton

Anthony Oliveri

Chairman Cosentino: The first thing on our agenda is Mr. Bernstein, the minutes.

Stanley Bernstein: I move that we accept the minutes of January 23, 2007.

Doug Hertz: Mr. Chairman, I don't think we have a quorum of members here.

Chairman Cosentino: We don't.

Stanley Bernstein: No, that's true.

Chairman Cosentino: Next thing on our agenda is a special discussion of Northern Westchester Hospital, 400 Main Street.

SPECIAL DISCUSSION

Northern Westchester Hospital

400 Main Street

Present: John Partenza, Northern Westchester Hospital

Joel Seligman, Northern Westchester Hospital

Donald Clinton, Cooper Robertson

Patrick Hewes, Zaccardi & Schiff

Steven Barshov; Sive, Paget & Riesel

Anthony Monteleone; Monteleone & Monteleone

Chairman Cosentino: Please come up and identify yourselves for the record, and again, Mr. Mayor, if you'd like to come up here. As most of us know the Northern Westchester Hospital is going to expand. They have entered into their master plan, which is completed. We haven't seen them for awhile. They did come before us, voiced their opinions of what they want to do, how they want to do it and when they want to do it. I think the first phase they want to enter in is the new Emergency Room, which is well needed; we all know that. The Hospital is well needed, we all know that, and we want to help wherever we can. I had this meeting put together because I think the Village Fathers need to know where you're going with it and give us our blessings how far to go. So, Mr. Mayor, that is the reason why the Village is invited to this meeting, so you can give us guidance on where to go with this. Right now I am going to introduce Nannette. Of course, you all know Nannette, she will bring us to where we are right now, and we can take it from there.

Nanette Bourne: In November 2004, Northern Westchester submitted a draft facilities master plan. At the time the Village Board requested that Village staff meet and work with the hospital to come up with not only a plan but the implementation for doing that plan with the Village. As a result, there was an application made on behalf of the applicant, on behalf of Northern Westchester to create a site specific plan for the Northern Westchester Hospital that had the zoning the accompanied the full development. The aspects of the plan were discussed and presented to the Village Board and to the Planning Board, and a petition was submitted to the Village Board for the zoning changes. SEQRA was commenced. It was determined that the Planning Board would be Lead Agency. The Planning Board conducted a Scoping Session. A Scoping Outline was drafted and adopted. The applicant was then sent on their way to go and prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. That was two years ago, and the applicant has checked in periodically letting us know that they are still active, but they have not been before any boards, and they have not been active as far as I know with staff in moving this plan forward. In January of this year, they let us know that the Preliminary Draft Environmental Impact Statement had been completed and was ready to be presented to the Village, and specifically to the Planning Board as Lead Agency. Staff discussed with the applicant that dropping this on everybody after a couple of years was not in anybody's best interest, because our memories are short. It would be in everyone's best interest if they would come before the Planning Board, and in this case the Village Board, that could attend the meeting and brief us on what they've been doing over the last couple of years, give us an overview of what the master plan consists of, what the zoning consists of, the objectives of the plan; and bring us back up to where we were a couple of years ago, so that the Environmental Impact Statement that they deliver to you could then be read and digested by the Planning Board as Lead Agency. Because there are some time frames and some clocks that are inherent in the SEQRA law, we requested and the applicant had agreed, to suspend those clocks to give the Planning Board time to catch up. It was determined that they would come to tonight's meeting, give this overview, and at your next meeting in April, they would officially and ceremoniously give you the Draft Environmental Impact Statement; and then you can begin your review. It was anticipated that there would be a 30-45 day review period. Staff would review it, you would review it, and we would come together with comments on completeness. So it's an opportunity to re-familiarize yourself with what they were proposing and where they're going, ask questions so you can then begin the review of the preliminary EIS. And keep in mind that the EIS that they have provided to you is for the Lead Agency to determine whether or not it meets the intent of the scope that was provided to them. Its not a document that should be provided to the public, it's not to be reviewed and distributed, but it's to be kept to a limited grouping of people so that you can determine that the facts are right, that the methodology is correct, that all of the elements that you need to take a hard look to prepare this document so that the public can be informed and provide you as lead agency input know that what they're looking at is correct information. So, that's where we are and they've come here tonight to brief us.

Chairman Cosentino: During the two years, John was kind enough, I spoke to John, they said they're working on it. It wasn't a dead issue, it was just that they needed time to do what they had to do, and I appreciate that, John, for you taking the time in doing that. Why don't we hear from this side now, and you could take over. I know there were three phases. Just tell us where you want to go right now.

Nanette Bourne: Excuse me, can everyone hear, or should I turn off the air conditioner and open the door?

Chairman Cosentino: I think the Village Board has in the budget new air conditioners. Is that true Mayor?

Mayor: Split units are in the mail. I actually spotted two in the library. I was a day late and a dollar short, somebody took them out before I got them.

Chairman Cosentino: That's not like you.

Joel Seligman: Let me just start by thanking you for this opportunity. We've been very busy the last two years. This has been a very active process. You asked us very important serious questions, and that's what we're going to talk about tonight. They required appropriate diligence and study, and I think that's what we've done. I wanted to let you know that the security and well-being of this hospital as you know is intimately tied to the security and well being of our community. Hospitals in general are either moving forward or moving backwards. Hospitals around this region; those that are moving forward are not standing still, they are becoming out of date, they are losing physicians and nurses that they need, and in many cases, they are actually disappearing. So, there is a real urgency and threat to keeping this hospital very modern and state of the art. That's been our goal from the beginning. The hospital, moving forward means recruiting and retaining the best specialists. It's as simple as that. This community is loaded with primary care physicians, internists, pediatricians, ob-gyn physicians, more than enough high quality; those doctors don't have much to do with the Hospital. They don't work in the Hospital; they work in their practice setting. The physicians that the Hospital depends on are specialists. They are the physicians that need to be at a hospital doing surgery, procedures, interventions, and sub-specialty consultations. That's what we depend on to be an excellent hospital, and they depend on us, and in the long run if you look at the quality and security of a hospital, it's going to be totally related to the ability to recruit and retain top specialists. That's very central to our whole strategy. To do that we need to be a modern facility; we need to have the latest technology, top notch staff, adequate facilities. We have in the last six years without changing the foot print of our facility, done a great deal to modernize and to attract people to our campus. A new intensive care unit you're familiar with, the new cancer center, two brand new operating rooms that are state of the art; we've done a lot to modernize the facility and attract the right kind of physicians. But there's a limit to what we can do in that foot print. We've taken that as far as we can at this point. We've been able to attract a good number of specialists along the way, so this strategy is working. You also know that we have to replace the emergency department. You started with that comment earlier.

Chairman Cosentino: Overdue.

Joel Seligman: It is wildly out of date and inadequate woefully, would be a better word for it. Everyone knows that; the State Department of Health has approved our plan for a brand new emergency department, the donor community has funded our plan for an emergency department and we are anxious to get going on that. As you also know, that whole plan depends on our master plan. So the Emergency Department doesn't and cannot exist as a separate plan. It's been designed and predicated on a master facility plan. It provides a lot of support that it needs and the connectivity and we'll talk about that at some point. So, as anxious as we all are to get an Emergency Department done, none of us would want to go spend the public's money on a facility that isn't integrally supported by and tied into a plan that talks about this campus over the next ten, fifteen, twenty years. And that's what the master plan calls for. So we're here tonight to start the next step in the process. I think it's been a very collaborative relationship over the last four years; this is a very complicated thing, so we understand the need to do it right. We fully expect to finish the process the way we began it; working together, being responsive to each other's needs and knowing that we are all trying to do what's best for the community. The hospital doesn't believe that we've overstated the health care needs of this community at all. We think our plans are actually quite modest, to use the term expansion. We'll talk about this more, but there's not a lot of program growth anticipated on this campus; what we want is a campus that really supports the level of activity that we have today, and modest growth. That's really what we're planning for. So I don't think we've overstated this, we think we have a plan that simply, seriously, honestly will address the healthcare needs of this community for the next ten to twenty years, and we look forward to completing it with you. And with no more ado, I'll hand it over to Steve.

Steven Barshov: My name is Steven Barshov, counsel. I am just here tonight to try to give you an overview of where we are and what we've been doing over the last two years. Don Clinton from Cooper Robertson will give a more detailed presentation about the substance. First I just want to echo in two sentences what Nannette said; we see the process exactly as she has outlined. As a matter of fact, covering the first seven paragraphs of what I was going to cover verbatim, so we're all on the same page with that process. The last two years the hospital has been going through an exhaustive, I would have to say repetitive process of looking at its needs, looking at the future, examining it's facilities, and trying to come up with the most cogent, well-thought through master plan in response to the request that has come from both the Village Board and the Planning Board that a more integrated comprehensive vision be presented rather than a piecemeal approach, where individual applications come forward. That's not an easy process. I've spoken with John Partenza and others; it's to some extent a moving target. The healthcare field itself changes during this process, and it's important that you recognize that the hospital didn't just go away these last two years; they were studying the work of the last two years. We did meet on occasion particularly to talk about the Emergency Room which was a very important meeting. The basic plan elements include not only expansion and upgrade of the Emergency Department, but also the hospital has endeavored whenever possible to provide out-patient support in facilities located outside Mount Kisco. Now, that's important for you to realize because often in the past the question is, and it's going to come up in the future, we all know how much traffic is going to be generated, what are the impacts of on-traffic from whatever proposals the Hospital may make, what the hospital has been doing that is not reflected in this application because it's happening elsewhere, is the construction and the implementation of new facilities and programs in other communities where it minimized the amount of trips that are necessary to and from the hospital. As Joel mentioned, the importance of developing facilities to attract sub and super-sub specialists is of key importance. Providing space for surgeons and specialists to see their patients on site also minimizes trips to and from the Hospital, that is in essence if you will, one stop shopping. You come in and you take as many activities undertaken as possible without multiple trips to and from the campus. As Donald will describe, the program also has included a better circulation pattern internal to the hospital's campus, and the entire program is a two-phase program that would have the Emergency Department medical office facilities, north garage and associated site improvements in Phase One, and the remainder of the program in Phase Two. I want to focus on one of the key aspects of the scope at this point, because Don is going to give you a better idea of what the zoning changes are that are proposed and what the facility plans, and I'm going to cut to the chase if you will, which is to talk a bit about what we call Alternative Three. As some of you may recall, there was in the Scope a request that was made that we try to eliminate the north parking garage and if not, be able to eliminate it, at least reduce it in size. And that undertook quite a bit of effort and focus on our design team's part. They looked at it in a whole variety of ways and they investigated the subsurface soil characteristics. There's a lot of bedrock under there; what the cost would be for constructing a parking facility below ground and so forth. What was done was, a close look was taken at the amount of medical office space that was required, and in this alternative, a third less is proposed than what was originally proposed. And in addition, there was an analysis of the parking that would be required and a smaller number of parking spaces were found to be required in the north garage. That partly takes advantage of the shared parking that is allowed under your zoning law, and that' we'll get into in terms of the technical aspects of it, during the review of the preliminary draft of the Environmental Impact Statement; we'll make sure our methodology is proper, we've calculated property and so forth. Unfortunately, the net result of that was not a north garage of lower height. And, I don't want this to come to you as a surprise. I don't want you to go through the document thinking that this is what we created and then have a false “aha” and say that we were trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. While we were able to reduce the number of spaces in the north garage, the problem is that constructing those spaces below grade is exceedingly expensive. When the technical work was done on the cost of constructing those spaces they are actually prohibitively expensive. So while the north garage has shrunk in size, it has not shrunk in height. It is just not as far below ground and that's primarily because of the cost associated with this. The other factor to be aware of, as we look very carefully in association with this, is the visuals along that portion of the campus as well as the area surrounding it. And what you'll see when you look through the draft Environmental Impact Statement is that we don't believe that the garage is going to present a problem visually. Obviously you will make the determination about that. We looked at it very closely and very carefully and don't believe that it is going to be something that will create a problem. Obviously that is something that needs to be discussed and dialogued. But we have tried every which way we can to try to minimize or eliminate that north garage; it is just not possible. Because of the fact that that garage is linked to the medical office space, and that medical office space needs to be where it is, that garage cannot simply be eliminated and the south garage constructed in its place. All of these things we'll discuss with you in greater detail. I just wanted to give you that heads up not so that you don't see that after the fact or think we weren't being very up front with you. The only other thing that I'd like to mention to you before I turn it over to Mr. Clinton is that tonight is not a night for detailed discussion about the preliminary draft Environmental Impact Statement. There is going to be ample opportunity for all of that to occur. Tonight is a night to just give you the high points.

Chairman Cosentino: Just want to air it all out.

Steven Barshov: Yes. I just want to give you the high points of what the major items are that you are going to see. One of the key things that I think you will realize from this is that we have attempted wherever possible to pare back and get this down to what are really the bare bones in terms of what the hospital needs to do. I think Joel has characterized this perfectly by saying this is a modest growth plan; this is not some wild expansion. In that regard Don can describe in greater detail how these pieces fit together. Thank you very much.

Chairman Cosentino: My fellow board members; we are not going to add anything into this. We want to hear from them, and we'll have another day and time.

Ralph Vigliotti: I have some comments. At some point tonight I want to make my comments known early on in the process. I know we are here to listen to you, but at the same point I don't want to lead you down some path.

Chairman Cosentino: What we want to do tonight is, what we are here to do and which I explained to them we want to do, your comments, I don't know how long it is or what they are, but it can be another meeting if need to. This was meant for the Village Fathers to join us in a meeting so they know what's going on and where to go and where to stop. Our job is going to be to say, do we want this, do we not want this, and then you're going to have your turn to say yes or no.

Ralph Vigliotti: Well, I still would like to make some comments at the end either way, and I'll wait until you're done with your presentation, however.

Donald Clinton: There are in this volume; particularly this first volume a whole series of exhibits, and I wanted to take a handful of them just to show you as sort of responding to some of the steps in the process that we talked about. This is what we call the Master Plan; this is the proposed project in the EIS. There has been reference to an alternative. Alternative Three in particular is one that we've done as a fair amount of due diligence on, but the foundation of EIS and in some ways the most, the detailed analysis is done on this project, it is somewhat bigger than Alternative Three, so in that respect you could say we were looking at a bigger case. The reductions in floor area that we talked about in Alternative Three are subsequent to the analysis that was done for this. In the proposed project, there are, and many of you will remember this, two primary phases. The first phase involves creation of the new Emergency Department, creation of a road connecting the north and the south part of the campus along the back, and a creation of a medical office building and an associated garage which is partly below and partly above grade, and some small additions to the hospital; main sort of bulk part of the hospital. Elimination of parking on the front of the campus at the time the garage was created. The second phase is the creation of a garage in the south end of the campus, and at that point some expansion and in-patient facilities and some additional diagnostic and treatment space is primarily on the back of the campus. This project was the basis of our trying to write zoning that would set as Nannette referred to as the technique that we tried to do, because the normal zoning tools in the Village are a map like this and text, we felt that the kind of mapping that was covered in a sort of conventional zoning map was not sufficiently detailed to regulate that master plan; to achieve that master plan. So this is the zoning that is there today. First of all there were some changes to the zoning map lines that we proposed. There is a large commercial area in the bottom of the campus where the corner is, there is as you know shops along the front in the master plan you probably saw that this small office building that is at the south end of the campus is eliminated in favor of initially the first phase surface lot that happens when the Emergency Department is first built and then later a south face garage. There is also the H zone, which includes this residential building on Boltis and Moore.

Chairman Cosentino: Just let me stop you right there. That is where the Village will have to re-zone part of that, Mr. Mayor; that portion of the building right there.

Donald Clinton: This is the simple map that's proposed in its place. This is the application essentially before you. What it does is it takes that H district where that residential building is, and changes it to an H R District. The language of the text that has been drafted to go with this essentially limits this to residential use. At some point in the future were that six story building torn down it could only be replaced with three story buildings similar in scale to what's on Boltis, so it's a way of managing this Boltis frontage for the future. The commercial is limited in the south end just to the commercial; the little shops that are on Main Street at that end and then to make this big H district a more managed and controlled district, we then created what Nannette referred to as Special Zoning Hospital Area Development Plan is the term used, and what it does essentially is it limits the foot print of buildings to a much tighter area. It mandates the places where you can have driveways. It limits places where you can have structured parking, and it limits heights. If you recall, the existing zoning that's kind of on the books has a 14 story limit. This goes in and essentially only allows the existing seven story tower to remain, and everything else is limited to essentially 45 feet. So there is a kind of lid, if you will, on the campus. This zoning action and the text that accompanies it are the basis for essentially the environmental review that's been carried out. And, the thing that has been discussed at some length when we came before you to review the plan that was the base, the proposed project that became the basis of the EIS in doing the scope for the EIS we needed to identify a series of alternatives. You asked that we look very closely at the north garage, the office building and its relationship. As Steven said, we did that at some level of detail. The determination that we couldn't eliminate parking at the north end goes kind of part and parcel with the hospitals plan overall, which is the emergency department is planned for the south end of the campus and it's associated land use requirements don't allow us to put a medical office building there. The medical office building fits at the north end. It's set back from Main Street and set back from Moore Avenue. Therefore, the need to create parking at the north end was important in the plan to make that component of the plan work. So, what we tried, and we did a number of options, and they are in the document. We looked at ways of pushing the parking underground. We looked at a couple of different models, and what you can see here, this is a section blown up a little in the plan. But what you can see, these are all of the floor levels. So what you see is that in this scheme, all of the parking is what is essentially from the first floor down. And we didn't have parking coming up above grade, but we went deeper into the rock here. We also did another variation on this, where we tried to combine some surface parking, and here you can see here's some surface parking around the edge.

Ralph Vigliotti: Can you bring that up closer?

Donald Clinton: Yes. You can see surface parking here around the edge, and then going down below including going underneath the medical office building.

Ralph Vigliotti: Can you keep that here? If you're making a presentation I'd like to see it. Is this is largest board that you have to present to us this evening? These are tiny.

Donald Clinton: I didn't realize there would be members of the Village Board in the audience.

Ralph Vigliotti: No, it's just for us. I know I have some visual problems, but this is tiny.

Donald Clinton: Let me just go back. Here's the garage.

Ralph Vigliotti: I don't know if they could see it down at that end.

Chairman Cosentino: We can see it.

Donald Clinton: You can see here the levels of the garage that we talked about.

Ralph Vigliotti: How many levels are there, because you haven't talked about that yet.

Donald Clinton: Well, I'll talk about that. This is the first floor and this is going below grade. First, one two three below grade; one two and a half above grade. We looked at options where we went below grade one two three four below grade, and none above grade and then we looked at an option where we extended underneath the building further and went below grade. These were smaller garages. These were about 440 spaces, and so we did these tests. As I said, we had them priced. The developer that the hospital is in discussion with about doing the medical office building and who would build the garage on the hospital's behalf priced them. The cost for below grade spaces was somewhere in the order of forty four thousand dollars a space; for above grade spaces it was about sixteen and a half thousand. So it's some two and a half to three times as much to build below ground. On that basis the hospital said we simply can't fund that in our planning and our financial planning as an institution, and they asked us to look more closely at what we could do without such a lot of below grade construction. So we developed this option, Alternative Three. This is one in which there is a lot of description in the EIS. Before we did this, and one of the reasons why it's been a couple of years - eighteen months since we last talked to you is that we went back to the hospital and said if we're going to really hone in on this, because we're getting to what we think is an alternative that will be the subject of a lot of discussion. It will be the focus of going forward, let's do the due diligence. In the time since we initially began talking to the board in 2002, the sense was that the hospital that the amount of parking on the campus had already increased, that the conditions had changed, so there was a real desire on the part of the Hospital to do a re-assessment of what was happening on the campus. So, they had our traffic planners go and do new counts, figure out where people, who was coming, where they were going, what their destination in the hospital was, how many were out patients and how many were in patients, faculty, staff. That whole assessment was redone for Alternative Three. We discovered, not surprisingly, that there was more parking on the campus today then there was in 2002. And we factored that into the calculations here. It's partly because of that and because the hospital did detailed assessment of the economics of the medical office building that they made the decision to go from a 75,000 square feet medical office building campus to 50,000. That's a significant change in parking need and in traffic, ultimately. And, we also looked closely as Steven said at something that the zoning law asks you to do, which is if you have multiple uses, different uses on a campus, and they have different peaking periods over the course of the day to calculate what is needed in terms of the worst case peak parking. When the most uses all overlap. So we did that and we were able to by various means find a way because we made program reductions and we looked at these peaking to make some reductions in the amount of parking. And we were able, therefore, to eliminate a level from this garage and two levels from the garage at the south end. This is in the Phase Two garage, and you can't really see it in the sections. They are in the plans of course, but in the sections you can.

Doug Hertz: So this is not the primary plan? This is Alternative Three that you're discussing.

Donald Clinton: It is, and the reason I'm spending some time on it is that it is because of the time that's passed and the response to the issues raised by the board, we think it is a direction that we all will want to spend some time on with you. There is a significant refinement of our analysis of the existing conditions, the hospital also did close assessment of their program needs; not a significant change in the total floor area, but a change in the uses of those; a re-assignment of floor area. So, it isn't the proposed project. You're quite right. The proposed project is a bigger project. The analysis in the EIS looks at the impact of that bigger project. We are proposing a project which is somewhat smaller; it's therefore encompassed within the analysis that we've done, but we also think it's something that is closer to our intention at this point.

Joel Seligman: It's also very common, as I'm sure you know, for an Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate alternatives to a project that might produce fewer or less significant environmental impacts. And it's also common that for - sometimes that, too becomes the project, so it's very much was on the applicant's mind that we've been gone for awhile, we didn't want to go back and redo a whole scoping process and so forth, and renew what we were proposing in Alternative Three was a subset of what was proposed in the basic project. So the project analyses, if you will, a worst case scenario with Alternative Three has reductions that will enable it to be a better case scenario. It would be something that eventually would be approved; it would be fully analyzed in the EIS which is really what's important.

Doug Hertz: I guess my question which goes to this, and I don't mean to stop your presentation, is the last time you were before us there was a long discussion as to how big the medical office building had to be to be economically viable where the break-evens were. So, I guess what I'm hearing, and stop me if I'm wrong, is that Alternative Three is a smaller office building than was proposed back then, but it still needs a new analysis, it still is financial viable in this smaller size?

Donald Clinton: The office building is not smaller; the amount of medical offices on the campus is reduced. There are offices in the existing building and in the office building. There is 25,000 square feet less in total, and all this is to come out of medical offices. You're going with the question does that make business sense for the hospital, and the work that was done over the course of the last summer, principally, leading into the fall was to actually look very closely on the Hospital part, their program needs and to try and match that need that Joel Seligman talked about; about specialists to the operating room capacity of the Hospital, that programmatic balance was re-done. So it is, I think, genuinely a more refined analysis, and has not inconsiderable reduction in impact, we think, in terms of the traffic and parking needs and addresses some of the issues that we were asked to look at when we paraded this alternative; certainly on our minds to do that.

Doug Hertz: When I was screening through this, I noticed what was pointed out before; here we get a smaller number of parking spots, but it looks to the world like the same thing.

Donald Clinton: This is the section that I'll draw your attention to. This is the reduced garage and in fact what you see is that the level that was here is gone. But it's a below grade level, and it's a direct result of the analysis that we did with the developer that essentially, the financial balance of trying to fund this parking garage as part of the development of the hospital, there is a component of the garage that is serving the medical office building, not all of it, it is a mixed use garage. It serves a range of uses. And that developer wants it here and is prepared to build it, and is prepared to commit to costs to the Hospital to do it, but it doesn't make sense for them to build at a cost that they can't fund.

Ralph Vigliotti: So, if I just redefine what you're saying here. What I'm seeing is one level below ground, preferred option, correct me if I'm wrong, and the remainder levels would be above ground. Is that correct?

Donald Clinton: No, there is still a level and a half below ground. If you can actually see, there is a dotted line here that represents the rock line. What we're essentially doing is digging down till we hit rock, putting a level and a half below grade, and then another two and a half levels above grade. So it's essentially still trying to get it underground but just not as much as we had hoped.

Ralph Vigliotti: Now, when you say two and a half levels, you say two full levels, the half level is the roof of the garage?

Donald Clinton: What we tried to do to minimize - in order to minimize the visual impact on Moore is that we pushed - cut - notched the garage back on the upper floor, so the upper floor is a shorter floor. And that goes the whole length; you could see it here on the plan. This is just a shallower course.

Chairman Cosentino: It's very difficult to visualize what's there.

Ralph Vigliotti: How many spaces in this new preferred option?

Donald Clinton: This is 552 spaces. We also show in the alternative, and you will see the discussion about the use of valet operations again as a way of maximizing the spaces that we do have. The Hospital is currently running a valet operation, and they think they will continue to do it. Certainly in the first phase because we're building this garage in the north end because that is where the most intense demand for parking will be. We are serving that out-patient population with some -

Ralph Vigliotti: How many ground spaces are there now in the entire L-shaped north lot?

Donald Clinton: There are 770 spaces on the campus today, and most of them are on the north end. I think there are about 60 in the south end. I can get you the precise numbers if you want to hold me to the numbers. The total existing spaces including the valet - there are 713 spaces, 82 valet spaces, 795 spaces in our new count that we did that is used in Alternative Three.

Ralph Vigliotti: How many spaces will you lose with the proposed office building and the parking garage?

Donald Clinton: We haven't calculated that. The underlying logic of the master plan as a whole, as you know, if you look at the campus today it's basically either all surface parking or all building. In order for the hospital to have any chance to be able to build new facilities, really the only option was to do structured parking. What we've done with the structured parking is try, not only to obviously create foot print ability for buildings but also to create landscape. So, today the parking runs right up to Main Street, we have mandated in that Hospital Area Development Plan fairly significant landscape setbacks along Main Street and on the side streets as well where they don't exist. We've used the garages to do two things. To allow the hospital to grow, and also to make what we think in a friendlier campus environment.

Ralph Vigliotti: I'm going to have to disagree with a friendlier environment with the garage. Just for the record I think you need to take a real close look at this urban canyon that you will be putting in place on Moore and Main Street. It's an urban canyon. We have to decide as a Village whether or not this proposed or preferred plan is going to be an urban canyon. The best way to get a visual on that is to take the existing apartment building and literally draw that rubber band all the way forward, and then take that rubber band and pull it to the side, and that's what you're going to see there. The question I have is, do you really need the parking lot to support the new office building, or do you need it to support the entire campus? You need to convince us of that logic.

Donald Clinton: I understand that.

Ralph Vigliotti: It might be a little early to convince us of that logic because you've changed things a lot. And I'm going to just underscore that again. You think it's visually appealing with the parking garage and a thirty foot set back off of Main Street. I don't know if the Village Board or the Village at large or this Planning Board looks at this urban canyon that will end up being developed in that corner, is something that is in the best interest of the entire Village, as opposed to servicing that medical building up on the corner. It's all about servicing that medical building when you net out the spaces and everything else.

Donald Clinton: It isn't in the sense that the medical office building is not the only user of that garage. It's serving the parking needs of the north end of the campus that is currently served by service parking where the medical office building will sit, and where the driveways that serve the medical office building will sit. It's not the only user of the north garage. The canyon determination - the EIS looks at the visual impact quite closely, you will have to make that determination. I would just point out to the Board that there is no tall building on the other side of the street of the garage; where the tall office building on the corner is, the five story office building in the corner of Main and Moore on the north side of the street, that's where we pushed the medical office building farther south; it's the thing that's across the street in order to try and avoid that sort of cross the street condition.

Ralph Vigliotti: The human eye and the camera eye will say different things about how it's going to look.

Donald Clinton: In the EIS we've done some simulations of that and look forward to your review of the impacts. We believe that we've mitigated those visual impacts that you would expect. The building is not as tall as the buildings around it. The garage is a lower building than the building across the street.

Ralph Vigliotti: What is the proposed height?

Donald Clinton: The setback section that's along Moore is 35 feet, and then it becomes 45, which is lower than the height of the building on the corner.

Ralph Vigliotti: You can't correct mistakes were made four years ago.

Donald Clinton: No, and I think we're aware of that so the sighting of the garage away from that, pulled back from that, is part of that.

Ralph Vigliotti: It will still appear to be four and a half stories high. At a distance you may not even see the tier. When you're up close you'll see the tier, which has a visual benefit. But at a distance, the eye will not see the tier, the eye will see four and half stories; 45 feet or four and a half stories, is what the eye will see.

Joel Seligman: Mr. Viglotti, I know that you'll have an opportunity as the public will to review all of the contents of the EIS, and there are simulations in there, there are photographs in there, and you will determine whether or not there are adequate photographs, whether they'll need to be additional photographs, whether there are additional simulations that are required and so forth, and all of that is certainly something that is going to be discussed. All we're trying to convey today is; one, we were aware of the issue, two, we tried to eliminate the garage; we couldn't. We tried to reduce it in height. We had limits to doing that, we used setbacks and other techniques to minimize to the maximum extent that we could in the design process, the creation of what you referred to as a canyon. I guess everyone will have their own personal definition of how deep or tall structures have to be before they are canyon like. I respect yours, and we'll see whether it will balance.

Ralph Vigliotti: In White Plains or New York City this wouldn't even been considered a foothill. Here in Mount Kisco it may appear to be a canyon.

Donald Clinton: We're hoping not to do garages like in White Plains.

Ralph Vigliotti: What is the actual length; because you've come before us with an early proposal, now a new preferred three; what is the new length of the garage? Has that changed or is that the same?

Donald Clinton: Same length.

Ralph Vigliotti: Which is?

Donald Clinton: Don't have the precise dimensions; it is about 200 feet long. It's about a block long.

Ralph Vigliotti: Two thirds of a football field; easier to visualize.

Donald Clinton: 200 feet isn't two thirds of 1,000 yards.

Ralph Vigliotti: A football field is 100 yards, 300 feet. It's two thirds of a football field. A football field goal to goal is 100 yards. Anyway, go ahead.

Donald Clinton: That was really all I wanted to present. I really wanted to just highlight for you the kind of key pieces of application and the DEIS. If there are other questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

Chairman Cosentino: Is there anybody else from the hospital that wants to present anything before us tonight? My fellow Planning Board members have some questions and maybe staff and we'll take a few minutes.

Doug Hertz: Based on the last presentation, can you capsulate some of the other changes in what we're seeing here versus the last presentation? For instance, there was a lot of discussion of a circulation road around the rear; setbacks, how that was going to be screened from the residences behind.

Donald Clinton: One of the things that was raised by the Planning Board in discussions in the Master Plan Project was the way that we were managing the road at the back. This is the configuration that is in the EIS in the proposed project where we ran this driveway right through; sort of right behind the garages of the buildings on Boltis. There was a concern that there might be visually a problem on Boltis. We looked pretty closely at the grating there. If you've been on the back part of the campus you know that there is a depressed loading area. What we did here was we brought the roadway down to the loading area and then back up from it, so we were able to keep it farther onto the campus and also submerged. So there is a kind of natural outcrop here with a rock face where this road goes down. We are also able to keep more of the existing trees as a result of that, and I think it's a superior solution. We also eliminated some building foot print on the front. We had an area here that we've turned back into landscaping.

Doug Hertz: And this is Alternative Three; this is not prior.

Donald Clinton: Yes. There are the two side by side, take a look here. Can you make out the difference?

Doug Hertz: Yes. What I'm beginning to hear is that Alternative Three is the moderated or the mitigated -

Donald Clinton: It responded to a number of things. We were, unfortunately not able to do something that we recognize is a primary aspect of this application, which is that we're building garages for the first time in Mount Kisco. We were unable to do something that we would like to have been able to do, which is to make the garages underground, go someplace else. But we did other things, where we were certainly able to build it into the site plan; so we have done that.

Doug Hertz: Can you capsulate any other changes in Alternative Three that came about through this process that we should know?

Donald Clinton: Reduction in program, reduction in amount of parking. Reduction in traffic that results from that parking; obviously, from the cars that will be on the campus.

Doug Hertz: Based on lower office space.

Donald Clinton: Based on lower programs; smaller programs actually. Some of those are not physical impacts but they certainly impact in terms of environmental analysis.

Chairman Cosentino: Are you done, Doug?

Doug Hertz: Yes, I think so.

Chairman Cosentino: Anybody else? Ralph?

Joseph Morreale: I do. I have a few things. First of all we appreciate the fact that you've done all this work and come back to us. I must admit when I looked at Alternative Three, I was one, perplexed that the EIS really wasn't talking about Alternative Three, and I sort of had to go back and re-think what that would mean if you did that, because you're going to have to do that, otherwise we're looking at the wrong analysis. But the other think that struck me too is that it's not that much of a change. I calculated 99 parking spaces, but then you started talking about well, maybe we would expand a little bit more in some other parts of the campus. You talked about reducing beds and increasing ambulatory care. So there seems to be some kind of trade off going on, going from Two to Three.

Donald Clinton: As I said earlier, there is a reduction in total floor area of 25,000 square feet between the proposed project and that is entirely accountable for by reduction in medical offices. There are other program changes; the Ambulatory Care, In-patient balance has changed, and that came about really as a result of this last six months of the hospital looking again, --------Ginsberg, their programming consultant looking again very closely at their space utilization today, where it changed since we did the initial analysis, where it was going to be, what the impact of the Emergency Department is.

Joseph Morreale: But my point - I think it would be real important to spell out, so we can see the comparison, is you better eek it out of things, looking at different pieces.

Donald Clinton: I understand. It's a lot of numbers.

Joseph Morreale: It's not just a lot of numbers, all of a sudden there is an Alternative Three that is and isn't in the analysis. It's hard to know; so you have to make that clear. Let me tick off some points. I don't want to take that much time now. A number of things struck me. There is the whole traffic issue which we are going to have to have a long talk about. It seems to me for the size and impact you're going to have the traffic analysis doesn't seem to be that much, and I can't quite reconcile those two. The building on the campus, that is the construction, is going to require space for vehicles to be stored who are doing the construction. I sometimes wondered if you were going to run out of space for those vehicles as you started doing Phase One and then moving into Phase Two. I didn't quite know where you are going to put all these vehicles. So that concerns me. It's a seven or eight year construction project, if I have the numbers right. You talked about 2013.

Donald Clinton: That's the end of the phase, technically. It has separate projects. The Emergency Department will be its own construction project; in fact, as two projects the first phase is to build the bigger parking lot, take down the little office building and build a parking lot. After that's done, then to build the new building for the Emergency Department, so even that phase, which is just part of phase one in our EIS has two sub-phases; the construction phase; your absolutely right. Trying to maintain the ability of the campus to operate, to park is something that we have been doing a lot of work with the hospital on in detail. The EIS looks at the big benchmarks; what we call Phase One and what we call the full project are the two big benchmarks that are fully analyzed, but there are incremental steps along the way that have to be done from a construction point of view that is not imbedded in the EIS analysis. Because it's not an impact change, it's just a construction phasing problem.

Joseph Morreale: But the impact phase is noise and congestion.

Donald Clinton: That is analyzed.

Joseph Morreale: Just as an analyst, I always look for and I don't recall if you did this, so if I missed it, tell me. Lots of times when you analyze a facility and the needs of a community and all this, you compare it to communities of similar size. You asked yourself the question; are we building enough here to meet sufficiently the medical needs of this community vis a vis another community of comparable size. I don't remember seeing that, unless I missed it. Because otherwise when you say that this project will meet the needs of Mount Kisco and the region for twenty years or so, I don't know what to base that on, except your judgment, which I do respect. But I don't see anything to look at. Am I right or wrong?

Steven Barshov: I think you`re right. There is not a detailed medical analysis in the Environmental Impact Statement that would compare for example this hospital to similar communities elsewhere, either Westchester or in the surrounding region. It's not normally a detailed analysis that would be included in an EIS. This is really primarily to address the potential environmental impacts of what is proposed. So that's the main reason why, but I don't think there is any reason why the Hospital cannot provide information to you to give you an understanding of how it has reached this process of coming to the conclusion that its program is what it should be. That whole future of the hospital, which I think is probably a subject that in summary could be conveyed to you relatively sincerely.

Joseph Morreale: I for one would want to see that, just as a strategic planner. That's what you look at. We have to know if this is going to work for the community in the long run.

Joel Seligman: And I think it's not necessarily judgment for the Planning Board to debate whether the hospital is doing the right plan, but certainly to understand the thinking of the hospital, understand how it's moving forward. Obviously this was a serious process that the Hospital undertook, and we can give you an idea as to what those elements are. I've alluded to some of them tonight in terms of saying one of the key pieces was get as many of the out-patient facilities that were served in other communities out into those communities. So, we can certainly give you some insight as to what the Hospital was doing on a strategic planning level to get this project to a place where it's really what the Hospital needs to do on this campus and Joel also eluded to some of those key things. Keeping those sub-specialists, serving them, that's the future for the hospital, and providing its competitive base is really wedded in its ability to utilize its facilities to attract those high quality specialists.

Donald Clinton: I also was saying, and I'm sure John and Joel can address this; hospitals are very heavily regulated businesses. They must certify the need for facilities in a community in order to be able to build interventional spaces like operating rooms and so on. You can't build them if you can demonstrate that they're needed. The process that the Hospital has to go through from a State Regulatory point of view is so extensive. That analysis is surely there to be provided.

Joel Seligman: In 2002 this whole process began as an extension of our strategic plan. We developed something at a time for a vision of 2007; we looked at program needs, community demographics, changing rolls of hospitals we benchmarked, clinical practice, medical technology, physician and medical staff composition. In the last 18 months this has been the main effort of our board to re-think our strategic plan, to make changes where it's necessary. We've done a lot of that, it's all documented and it will be a pleasure to provide you with whatever you need to understand that planning. But I just want to assure you that there is a lot of strategic planning underlying what you're concerned about.

Joseph Morreale: Fine. Thank you. Now, let me show you in my head what that link is. If you're coming in and asking us for this big expansion and all this construction on this site, it would help me to understand why. That's the link I see. Whether you say it should be in the EIS or not is not important to me. It's a question of how do I look at this whole massive project? And it is sufficient, is it what's needed, etc? The last thing I'm going to raise is have you built in to your thinking the changing demographics of this community? We've been sitting here putting forth a lot of senior citizens communities, and I'm just wondering how that changes the medical care demand. You don't have to answer that now, but that's another think that's going through my head. Because you're reducing beds and you're ----------.

Chairman Cosentino: I brought that up during our meeting with them. It was a good question and they were going to get back to us. I brought that up.

Joseph Morreale: Fine. Okay. Thanks.

Ralph Vigliotti: I just have one more. Our earlier conversations we talked about parking under the proposed office building up on Main and Moore. Have you done any further investigation on that?

Donald Clinton: Yes. In the studies that I showed you we did look into parking out of the office building.

Ralph Vigliotti: Can you share some of those thoughts with us this evening?

Donald Clinton: They were in the drawings that I showed you. One of the alternatives, actually both of those alternatives went below grade. We extended the parking underneath the office building with the rationale that you can imagine that you are already building a foundation and you can do it. If anything it tends to increase the cost of the parking spaces, because you have a less efficient garage, even an underground garage because you have the cores and structure of the building above coming down. The fundamental impediment for our attempt to push this garage underground and the design effort we did was a fundamental. You most mechanically ventilate below ground garages. You must deal with the excavation, rock excavation, and structural consequences of being underground, and it just increases the cost of building parking facilities beyond the level that a non-profit institution like the hospital could support.

Ralph Vigliotti: We have several office buildings in Radio Circle, which has partially below grade parking. They've worked the grading out to accommodate a one level below grade parking, and even with all the structures holding the building in place, they have netted out quite a number of spaces. My question for you is how many spaces could you net if you put even one level of parking under the office building, which could in turn perhaps trim away that half of a parking structure, one half of the - you are talking two and a half above surface - on Moore. Perhaps that can trim away that half.

Donald Clinton: Actually, I'd just like to share with you this mount closely. This is the foot print of the office building. If you go down one level, we have a basement of the office building and we have parking adjacent to that basement. There is a level here - that's the foot print of the office building. This is the size of the garage. The half level that you're talking about up here is approximately twice the size of the office building itself. So on the merits I would say we couldn't achieve that. Could we extend parking under here? Yes, but that is underground parking. It's a bigger quantity, and what we are trying to do here is come up with a balance in terms of below grade and above grade. The way it ultimately ends out is average cost per space. We are at a number where the ratio of below grade and above grade - we obviously are pushing it into the ground and paying that mechanical premium but it's for a limited proportion of the garage.

Chairman Cosentino: Anybody else have anything? It's a process. It's just started. It's a long process. This board, with the Village Board needs to make a determination of where we want to go, and this is what we'll be talking about. In the meanwhile, I want to thank the Mayor and Trustee Grunthal (sp??) l for coming and listening to this. I guess your job is going to be same as ours, and give us some guidance on this. It's one of the biggest complexes in the Village of Mount Kisco right now, and we really do need guidance on this. We're going to have to live with it when its done.

Mr. Mayor: Joe, just some thoughts. Since this process began, in my other life I have an occasion to visit Greenwich Hospital, along with Northern Westchester Hospital, Soundshore, Jacobi; the hospitals that exist in White Plains, and I almost feel compelled sitting up here to argue for the applicant. But Joe, what you were talking about - every time I'm at one of these facilities I try and understand the dynamics of that particular facility. In certain places you find that it's helter-skelter, other areas it was, I don't care about parking, like the visitors and some of the out-patients fend for themselves. I'm very impressed with the Greenwich operation. It's for me, and in my role in society it's a little difficult to get to off of 95 or even off of the Hutch, but it's there. I'm very much concerned obviously with the traffic, and as Ralph sited, the visual impact, and I'm also concerned, which was touched on a little bit of a residential integrity of the existing neighborhoods. Joel and I had a conversation about shuttle buses, possibly discharging parking off-site, what I always thought about when you have a valuable piece of property you discharge parking up to your intermediate level employees, you inconvenience them the most because the high-priced guys don't want to get wet, they don't want to walk. These are things, if the parking becomes an issue that is something that we would have to explore. In talking about reducing the number of spaces, off site parking - is that projected at all? I know you were talking about valet to mitigate some of the shortfall.

Donald Clinton: We have a small amount even in our calculations now; the church parking is still included in our assumption.

Mr. Mayor: And I'm sure you know the site across the street is going to be vacant, unfortunately in the next month or so, and I think Joe made a valid point on the construction parking. I sited some examples in other parts of the country. Construction workers do not want to walk. They want to have their vehicles in close proximity. That is going to be a major issue, because it's the way the industry is, it's not b