Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 836. It's FLX Morning Friday extravaganza and Friday mornings at 835 or 36. Mean Auburn City Clerk Chuck Mason. Good morning.
Chuck Mason: Hey, good morning Ted.
Paul Szmal: So the City Council had the hearing last night or actually they had the hearing the previous week had the discussion on applying for the restored New York grants for the property that includes the Hunter Diner on and you sent me some photos of the plan so remind us what's gonna happen with all that work for people who don't know the diner on sticks out over the water and the Owasco outlet the piers are deteriorating and something needed to be done.
Chuck Mason: Exactly and this project as you said Ted received a public hearing at last week's meeting and there was support as well as there were some concerns expressed by members of the public that spoke but last night it was up to the council to make a final decision on whether or not to support the grant application and the council unanimously with a 5-0 vote decided to support the submitting of the grant application to the state.
So what will happen is the project lead on this was Mr. Tony Dadabo and Tony is well known for the being the person that recently opened the Auburn Bagel Shop in downtown Auburn he's a lifetime career hospitality person so he knows the business and he's working with a group of investors that are interested in preserving the history and that very important piece of our downtown that's been there since the 1950s trying to protect and preserve not only the history but kind of the the charm you might say that if the diner sitting where it is over the Oasco River brings to our downtown area right in kind of that central downtown right across from Wegmans very visible corner and the main concern that the city of Auburn had when it took ownership of this diner due to tax foreclosure three years ago was the the deterioration of the pillars that hold the diner up.
Having the diner in the river brings increased scrutiny and increased expense over the long run with the inspection of the dams that we have upstreet the Mill Street Dam as well as the State Dam so there's an increased cost perspective on the city side for how it has to maintain those dams over time with a structure such as that sitting right in the river and then the public safety concern over the higher flows that we've had in more recent years with these high rain events that we experience now in this in the summer and fall season usually and the impact that that would have on the diner with public safety if the if the piers and stuff are not you know shored up for the long haul or even the determination was that the diner really should be removed from the river so the plan as presented by the project developer last night they showed how in fact they're going to basically remove most of the pillars out of the river flow area and replace a structure that would be built similar to a bridge from bank to bank on the river that the diner would in fact then sit on so it would like remove the majority of the pillars they are talking about keeping a pillar that is closer to the east side of the river bank but out of out of the main flow of the river but be able to suspend the diner on top of a bridge like structure and that's what those drawings that I was able to send to you Ted illustrate how they would do that or what their plan would be to do that.
So with that public safety concern being satisfied by the council for now there would still be a lot of scrutiny this would need Army Corps of Engineer approval state DEC approval you know we're at the kind of the very very beginning of of this process but they would be a willing partner and respect the processes that they would have to go through to get the approvals on this project over time so what happens now is today is the deadline for the grant application for the Restore New York program our city staff will get this application buttoned up today and sent into the state of New York and then we'll wait and see what the state of New York has to say we'll probably hear something by the spring or early summer on the results of this grant application and if it is successful then we've got a willing set of partners with being led by mr. Tony Dadabo that are willing to get to work on the preservation of this diner in the middle of downtown.
Paul Szmal: So would it eventually be moved to a new location no the diner you know what they would do is they would temporarily remove the diner right and restore the diner off-site and then they would bring the diner back to place it on this bridge like okay so that's where it would say it would stay yeah okay it'll stay at the site all right we'll look forward to a following the progress of this which being the state of New York might be yeah that was kind of a lengthy explanation but basically they there's a it's it's a legitimate concern and we've heard this on the public people are like well what has changed and what has changed is right now when you look under the diner it sits on about five different pillars that they stick out of the water and so what will happen is the majority of those pillars will be removed which kind of opens up the flow that'll and the flow would actually run under the diner and the diner would sit on a bridge like structure and be a lot better than having it have those peers cave in or something in the middle of the river.
So there was a holdup last week over the property sale at 197 State Street remind us what the holdup was and was it resolved yes mayor Genetino had met with some people who had some concerns on the proposal and he agreed with some of their concerns with some of the contract language so the mayor asked the city to go back to the developer on this project at 197 State Street and remove some of the language that was in the in the contract and the developer agreed to remove some of the language that was concerning to the mayor and kind of finalize some of the details on that project so that we could articulate to the public what would be happening and I just want to remind everybody now this last night received a five nothing vote from the council to sell the property however the council had already agreed to sell this property two years ago with another unanimous vote so the property had already been sold to the developer a couple of years ago but the the timeline that the city had set had come to the end so the developer basically came back to us with his updated plans and that required the council approving the land sale resolution once again to reset the timeline for them this is going to be a improvement to the property down on State Street where it's at however it is not going to be a rehabilitation of the building they are going to remove the building so they've worked with the Office of State Historic Preservation the building was unfortunately renovated many many years ago in a way that was not conducive to the historic preservation of the building and it's been determined that the best course of action moving forward would be for a demolition of this building and they're proposing to build a new building in its place.
Chuck Mason: So last night the mayor asking Jenny Haynes who's our current director of planning and economic development who will be becoming our city manager in the new year he asked that Jenny Haynes to give some updates on what the developer is proposing and he's proposing a building that would have 26 one-bedroom units which would set aside 12 units for supportive housing eight units for community health network and four units for housing visions connect program so this is housing proposed that is it is certainly not going to be a homeless shelter but it is going to be a housing project that works with people to get out of homelessness so this is very key to kind of the some of the issues that we've been facing in the Greater Auburn area with the homelessness issue it would help for us to provide housing to people that find themselves in homeless situations to get them to begin to transition out of the situation that they're in and it is you know it's a project that's not going to happen overnight we're talking about a conclusion in 2027 so probably three construction seasons out for once this project would be finalized in the doors would open there's a quite a bit of financing that the developer is going to need to put in a place but the council last night agreeing with the unanimous vote to move this project forward another big issue all over the finger like short-term rentals be they verbo or Airbnb it's having an impact on housing stock and so the state is working on some short-term rental law so the city's watching those and then it's also considering its own options in terms of how it wants to regulate the short-term rental.
So tell us about the Steven Selvix presentation last night to the council exactly and this is this is the big kind of the beginning of a lot of discussion that we're probably going to have over the next three to six months in front of the council Ted to kind of determine if there is some additional code language that we might need in our Auburn City Code we are waiting to see if the state is going to finalize some of the work that they've done I think one of the state laws is still waiting for the governor's signature she has until the end of this month December 31st I believe to sign that law if she's going to sign it into law or if she's going to veto it so more to come on what's coming out of the state of New York but Auburn is probably very similar to every other community especially in the Finger Lakes region we've really seen a a boon of these new Airbnb style properties being bought up and used specifically for things like VRBO and Airbnb but also people that are owner-occupied that might have an apartment on the side with their turning into Airbnbs and here in the city we estimate based on our research of the the websites that are available out there we estimate that there's anywhere from 60 to 80 of these Airbnb style dwellings that have popped up in the city over the last five to ten years and it's it's creating kind of an issue for our zoning board because people are coming for the permits and it's very challenging because we don't necessarily have language in our code that addresses these Airbnb style of we have language that addresses hotel bed-and-breakfasts hotels but not these Airbnb so there's a lot to think of how they impact our one residential areas especially and Steve Selvick who's kind of the expert on our city staff and handles all these planning and zoning matters that for the last several years as they come about presented to the council last night what is going to be kind of like the beginning of a discussion of what the council really needs to be thinking about and should we maybe develop a new process for how we would approve allowing for these short-term rentals to occur in areas of the city where they're not specifically zoned to be.
So a lot more to come on this there was a great discussion last night that the council had with the staff also members of our zoning board of appeals for the members of the zoning board were on hand the chair of the zoning board Susan Martini she's been on our zoning board for close to 30 years and she is was well prepared last night to provide some input that she had for the City Council so it was really a great discussion during a work session to get things started here on developing some some more tools for the city to better handle this situation as it continues to develop and Auburn's not alone you hear these short-term rental discussions being had not only at state level by but village by village city by city throughout the state of New York we're all kind of grappling with the same thing as these things have developed to become very popular in today's world yeah we've talked about it in the show yeah I live in a village of 600 people where there's a whole bunch of these units here so it's becoming an issue all over the Finger Lakes one last thing if you go to the website AuburnNY.gov the trash pickup schedule and recycling pickup is out for Christmas and New Year's that's right we're getting to the end of the year the last two weeks of the year will be the holiday weeks Christmas and New Year's Day fall smack dab in the middle of the week this year on a Wednesday so for the last two weeks of the year our Tuesday trash pickup people in the city of Auburn our Wednesday trash pickup people in the city of Auburn for those last two weeks the service will be one day early so we're trying to spread the word to those people if you're a Thursday or a Friday trash pickup person you will not be impacted there will be no refuse pickup obviously on the holidays themselves Christmas Day and New Year's Day but just trying to spread the word on that and our new January 1st streamlined refuse and recycling calendar will be in the mail and hopefully people will receive it before these holiday weeks but if not it'll contain this information in there if not we're really just trying to spread the word so thanks Ted for asking that of me because believe it or not the holidays are right around the corner so yeah AuburnNY.gov is the website that's got all that information if you didn't write it down fast enough Chuck I appreciate the update as always thanks for the good stuff.
Paul Szmal: Ted thank you have a great weekend everybody
