LANSING, N.Y. — After previous plans for a housing development on a property in the village of Lansing fell through, the site is now the target of renewed interest from a local businesswoman.
The wooded 24.5-acre property at 680 Warren Road, between Dart Drive and the Northwoods Apartments, has been for sale for years. Currently listed for $795,000, the property is zoned for medium-density residential housing, one of only a handful of undeveloped larger parcels where the village is inclined to allow denser housing.
Freeville businesswoman Ebru Arslan represented a new development team interested in building on the site at Tuesday’s Village of Lansing Planning Board meeting. While no formal plan was submitted, Arslan said the group is formulating a for-sale housing proposal and wanted to gauge the board’s reaction and gather more information during the initial stages.
Any housing plans would not be the first imagined for the property. Back in 2019, the Solar Home Factory of Geneva proposed a 43-unit for-sale housing development on the site. The residences, originally proposed as duplexes but later modified to detached homes, would have been net-zero energy, with energy-efficient features and all of their energy needs provided by solar panel systems.
But after some preliminary meetings, the plan fell by the wayside as the Solar Home Factory ran into severe financial difficulties. The closure of the business was so abrupt that a multifamily development in Geneva remained half-built until a different developer purchased the site and resumed work earlier this year.
Fast forward five years from the Solar Home Factory’s proposal to Tuesday, when Arslan, the board and village officials discussed the potential future of the site.
Village Code Officer Mike Scott said the site’s terrain, which has a “decent amount of wetlands” and includes a stream that runs north, has presented challenges to past development proposals, including Solar Home’s.
“Solar Home had a good layout, a good plan, and they kind of disappeared after that,” Scott said.
Arslan said she had gone through the previous meeting minutes that detailed Solar Home’s attempts to advance their proposal. She too acknowledged the difficulty the site can present.
“I’m interested in developing this land, but yes, it does come with its challenges,” said Arslan. “What I’m trying to understand is how much of this is buildable, how have the wetlands changed, the impacts of the stream, […] I want to understand what if anything has changed, and what is acceptable to you.”
Arslan clarified that any houses on the site will be for-sale as opposed to available for rent.
“The infrastructure would be installed in one shot, so that the disturbance to neighbors will be limited,” Arslan said. “The houses may be done in stages, in phases. We would like to get the big construction work done at once, and the interiors in stages.”
While an explicit number of housing units wasn’t discussed, Scott did note the Solar Home Factory proposal was an acceptable size. Scott said Cayuga Heights Superintendent of Public Works Brent Cross was apprehensive about the impact of a 150-200 unit project on the sewer system in the area, but was less concerned about something closer to 40-50 units.
Legal obstacles could stand in the proposal’s immediate path. There are legal covenants regarding attached versus detached homes that date back to the 1950s which must be reviewed, a process that could take up to a year. The heirs of the land’s then-owners, Baker Lumber, hold the rights to release the land from the covenant, even though Baker Lumber has changed ownership and does not exist in the same form it did when the agreement was made.
Arslan asked if the board would be interested in a plan that includes “townhouses, duplexes and triplexes.” She and her business partner expressed a preference for townhouse strings or similarly attached housing.
“It’s not our place to say what you can and can’t propose,” said Planning Board Chair Michael Baker. “What the previous developer proposed, the board was open to.”
Baker added that “We have single-family homes in the village, we have duplexes, we have townhomes.” He added that the board wouldn’t want single-family homes directly next to the mall, but that options are open otherwise.
“There isn’t anything that the Planning Board will just simply say ‘no’ to,” Baker said. “One, because I don’t think we legally can, and two, I don’t think this board really wants to do that given our need for housing.”
Arslan and her project team said they would look at the legal issues regarding the covenant, and contract out for surveying to determine what was buildable.
“Hopefully we can get a project that works for everybody,” Baker posited as the topic concluded.
The Village of Lansing Planning Board is known as one of the more stringent in the county, but Tuesday’s meeting was meant as a brainstorming session of sorts to understand board members’ initial reactions to the proposal. No votes were taken.
A formal plan is still uncertain, but board members signaled they would be ready to discuss when the development team returns to the village.
