A 40-unit townhouse complex on Grand Island Boulevard received site plan approval from the Grand Island Town Board Monday.
The board voted 5-0 to approve the Hidden Meadow Trail Apartments, a complex of nine townhouse-style rental apartment buildings on eight acres located across from the KOA campground.
The town's Planning Board recommended approval and Conservation Advisory Board had no objection to the project, said Town Supervisor Nathan McMurray when the board took up the matter at its monthly meeting in Town Hall.
Matt Zarbo, a partner with Dave Mazur in the development, described the housing as townhouse-style, single-story structures, unlike the Heron Pointe apartment project, which is under construction by another developer. According to the minutes of the Planning Board meeting on Sept. 11, Hidden Meadow would have 40 units in the nine buildings.
Mazur has also developed two other Grand Island Boulevard rental properties: the Nottingham Apartments and the Oakwood Ridge Apartments, the latter now under construction.
"It's going to look like a residential street, like a cul de sac street," Zarbo said of the townhouse development. Discussion at the meeting likened the townhouses to those off Whitehaven Road near East River Road. The townhouses will consist of two- and three-bedroom apartments.
Though the development is moving forward, the state Department of Transportation is not allowing sidewalks. McMurray said the DOT is working on a comprehensive sidewalk plan.
After the board approved the site plan without objections, McMurray, a past critic of apartment complex developments said: "You can't have no development."
"But the kind of development you're doing," he said to Zarbo, "which is where people have interest in their property, where it's right on the boulevard, where it's not super-high density, where it's not parking lots everywhere, and it's by a local guy. ... Congratulations."
The next meeting of the Grand Island Town Board will be a joint meeting with the Grand Island Town Board at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 30, in Grand Island Town Hall, 2255 Baseline Road.
Send comments to the board at [email protected].