Score one for perseverance. After five years of formal environmental review, the $14.1 million, 53-unit Woodstock Commons affordable housing project has cleared the environmental review process and can begin finalizing financing and seeking site plan approval.
RUPCO, the nonprofit Rural Ulster Preservation Co., was invited to Woodstock seven years ago by an affordable housing committee seeking a developer to help the town alleviate a shortage in housing that residents could afford.
After examining potential sites, RUPCO officials visited the current site, which had been highlighted by the affordable housing committee and also highlighted in the town”™s still unadopted Comprehensive Plan completed in 2002.
“From the first day we got there, we said this makes all the sense in the world,” said Kevin O”™Connor, executive director of RUPCO. He noted that the site was within walking distance of many hamlet amenities, and already has hookups for municipal water and sewage. “It”™s a place where the community has already made an investment, so we said let”™s leverage that investment.”
The complex will cluster the 52 units on seven acres of the 28-acre site. The buildings will be built to attain LEED certification for energy use, including using geothermal heating and cooling. LEED certification will also be sought for the grounds under a new  regimen introduced by the U.S. Green Building Council that organizes the certification.
Moreover, O”™Connor said, the complex will seek to provide housing both for starter families and senior citizens.
“This is unique in that is intergenerational,” said O”™Connor, clustering affordable senior and affordable family housing so that 20 units are set aside for people age 55 and older and 32 units designated as family units. A final unit is for a grounds supervisor to reside.
And within the mix, O”™Connor said, and again unique to Woodstock are a dozen units set aside for artists.
“We thought, geez, it”™s Woodstock, it”™s the colony of the arts and Woodstock was in danger of losing its artists,” O”™Connor said.
Housing prices have risen well beyond affordable in the town, he said, and that 53 percent of the property tax bills are mailed to addresses outside Woodstock, indicating it is becoming a second-home community.
There is no need for any municipality to guess how much affordable housing is needed since the tri-county housing study released last year by the planning departments of Ulster, Dutchess and Orange counties provided quantitative data for every municipality in the three counties.
In Woodstock by 2015, for example, there will be a shortage of some 235 rental units and so the study recommends 108 units be built by that year. The 53 units represented by Woodstock Commons is only a down payment of sorts on that need.
But O”™Connor is concerned the need might continue to go unmet in Woodstock and elsewhere due to the difficulty negotiating the SEQRA environmental review process. He said a for-profit company seeking to do the RUPCO 52 units in Woodstock would likely have folded their tent years ago, unable to pay for the time needed to muster passage of a relatively small and environmentally sensitive project.
