WATERTOWN, New York (WWNY) – Watertown’s city council tabled a resolution Monday night to continue moving forward with a proposed Stewart’s Shop after almost two hours of discussion.
The Stewart’s is planned for the corner of Flower Avenue East and Washington Street.
The store needs a zoning change because it would encompass four plots of land, and one of those is 108 Flower Avenue East, which needs to be zoned as “neighborhood business.”
Much of the discussion was centered around the SEQR environmental assessment, which deals with how the zone change could affect things like traffic, air quality, and the character of the neighborhood.
A majority of the council agreed that many of the factors would have a moderate to high impact. Council member Cliff Olney didn’t agree and representatives from Stewart’s Shops said they have done everything asked of them to show that it won’t have a negative impact.
“What I have seen is an intransigence in the few that have opposed no matter what size Stewart’s were to suggest they would build,” Olney said. “It wouldn’t be good enough, unfortunately, it wouldn’t be good enough, we don’t want to grow, not in my neighborhood.”
“One of the things, you know, again I say this and I try and do it the nicest, I’m-an-applicant-seeking-your-approval-type way,” said Chuck Marshall, Stewart’s real estate representative. “We provided a traffic study after the planning board requested, subsequent to that we amended the traffic study after we had a community forum.”
The next chance for the resolution to be brought back up would be at the next council meeting on April 18.
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