Credit: Daisy Sindelar
The Pine Plains Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) has voted to approve a request by the Stewart’s convenience store chain to pursue the construction of an expanded facility that will accommodate large trucks and offer other amenities but which contravenes local zoning laws intended to preserve the town’s rural character.
The 4-to-1 vote, which came at the end of an occasionally testy April 24 Town Hall session attended by more than 30 members of the public, clears the way for Stewart’s to present a blueprint to the town Planning Board for its new proposed layout.
The Stewart’s plan involves a new, larger store with a contemporary pitched-roof design, expanded food offerings and an improved cold-storage facility. The new proposal also envisions an expanded blacktop lot for better vehicle maneuver and an enhanced gas-pump island that for the first time will offer standard-flow diesel fuel.
Rich Jewett, who has managed Stewart’s Pine Plains branch for five years, says diesel fuel was the number-one request he routinely heard from customers. “I get three to four calls a day asking for diesel,” Jewett said. “The only way to get it was to make these changes.”
Electric charging stations will not be installed at the island, he added.
The April 24 vote concludes more than four months of negotiations between Stewart’s and the ZBA over whether the popular facility – which was constructed along South Main Street in 1992, 17 years before Pine Plains adopted zoning laws – could reverse its current layout, moving its gas pumps to the back and its storefront closer to the road.
Such a switch would be in keeping with Pine Plains zoning laws, which stipulate that businesses should be set back no more than 25 feet from the start of their property lines. The guideline is meant to promote walkability, encourage slower traffic speeds and help preserve the town’s small-town ambiance.
According to New York state Greenway guides, which provide grant and planning support to member communities including Pine Plains, convenience stores with gas stations should situate the store up front and the parking, pumps and fuel-island canopies “in a secondary position toward the rear.”
Instead, the ZBA exception will permit Stewart’s to keep its fuel island in the front of the business and to set the new shop even further back from its current location, which is more than 160 feet from the roadside property line.
Marcus Andrews, project manager for Stewart’s, which is based in Saratoga Springs, New York, initially presented several options for redesigning the Pine Plains store plot, including proposals that moved the shop closer to the road in accordance with zoning laws.
But such a shift, Andrews said, could disrupt gas supplies for up to three months. The approved variance, which allows the fuel island to remain at the front of the complex, should mean a halt in gas supplies for just one month, Andrews said.
With Stewart’s serving as the only fuel station in Pine Plains, the length of the shutoff has practical consequences for local drivers, who would need to travel eight to 10 miles to nearby pumps in Millerton, Milan and Stanfordville. Jewett also expressed concern that the convenience store would see a proportionate drop in customers while the gas pumps are closed.
Courtesy of Stewart’s Shops
While Stewart’s does not release the revenue of individual stores, Pine Plains ranks in the upper 20% of income-earners among the company’s 357 shops across New York and Vermont, said Erica Komoroske, the company’s director of public affairs.
Stewart’s, which employs 15 people in Pine Plains, is also one of the region’s larger charitable donors, contributing $9 million annually to Dutchess County schools and nonprofit organizations. At the ZBA meeting on April 24, numerous residents spoke in emotional terms about Stewart’s support for the community.
Mike Cooper, the Pine Plains recreational director, noted during the public comment portion of the meeting that Stewart’s makes regular donations to the concession stands at the ball fields near Sissing Lake. “We should do anything we can to support Stewart’s, the way they support us,” he said.
Other residents put it more directly. “Making Stewart’s work around the town [rules] is pointless, because it’s the town that should work around Stewart’s,” said 19-year-old Ryan Brandt. “Stewart’s is the only thing the town has going for it.”
Scott Chase, the chairman of the ZBA and the lone voice of dissent in the Stewart’s discussion, said the plan would result in a “car-dominated suburban appearance” that would violate the public’s wish – memorialized in the town’s 2019 update of its Comprehensive Plan – for a “strong, attractive pedestrian-oriented hamlet center.”
Dutchess County officials had also denied the Stewart’s request, saying the plan was not in keeping with the area’s “compact and walkable character.”
Chase, a former town supervisor and Planning Board chair with more than 30 years’ experience as a professional planner, also expressed concern that granting an exception to Stewart’s could set a precedent and encourage other retail-chain businesses, like Dollar General, to set up shops in Pine Plains with similarly large parking lots and storefronts set back from the road.
Chase’s remarks met with occasional protests and sighs of frustration from both public attendees as well as his ZBA colleagues. In the end, board members Marie Stewart, Michael O’Neil, Amanda Zick and Christopher Wyant – who was appointed as an alternate on the ZBA less than a week earlier – voted to approve the variance.
Board member Carl Baden, who provides paid landscaping services to Stewart’s, recused himself. The last-minute addition of Wyant – the husband of Amanda Wyant, the secretary to the town supervisor – allowed the ZBA the majority-plus-one vote needed to override the county-level rejection.
Stewart’s must now seek additional health and transportation permits and file a site plan and special permit application with the Planning Board. The board is scheduled to review the plans on May 10.
If the plans and permits are approved, work on the Stewart’s lot may begin in late summer, with the new facilities unveiled in early fall, Andrews said. A temporary closure of the convenience store during the construction is “not planned,” he added.