Town of Niagara supervisor looking into housing options for new residents

By Timothy Chipp

In a move eerily perfect for the season, a long-tabled Town of Niagara-based housing development proposal is being brought back from the grave this month.

Supervisor Sylvia Virtuoso confirmed in a late agenda item to the October work session agenda Wednesday that Bri Estates, a roughly 115-lot housing development project off Colonial Drive, is again gaining traction after more than two years of redesign.

“We are in desperate need of housing here,” Virtuoso told the town’s board Wednesday. “We have a lot of people who want to move into town, and I don’t think there’s even five houses for sale right now. So, having 115 new houses would be a good thing.”

No representative for Bri Estates attended the meeting to comment on an update of the project.

After its proposal, Bri Estates’ plan for the development was given a positive declaration in a State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) and forced back to engineering by the former Town Board, of which Virtuoso was not a part.

Among the issues causing the design’s positive declaration the last time before the Town Board were water mitigation and wetlands development, according to Building Inspector Charles Haseley.

Wetlands are different from floodplains, Haseley said. With floodplains, potential homeowners must carry flood insurance in order to qualify for a federally backed mortgage. This isn’t the case with wetlands development.

As the proposal returns to the board with any adjustments made, the new efforts will come with a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) that will address the initial impact issues and how they’re handled in the revised plans, Haseley said. It will be posted to the town’s website, www.townofniagara.com, for public review once finalized.

After that, the Town Board is expected to reaffirm its status as lead agency in the matter, which puts decision-making power in its hands again. The process, Virtuoso added, will likely pick up from that previous positive declaration and go from there.

No timetable for the new process was established Wednesday.

While housing stock is certainly an issue in the town, it’s only a microcosm of the national situation. According to real estate website Zillow.com, in June, the U.S. housing shortage grew from 4.5 million to 4.8 million from 2021 to 2022, the most recent data available.

Additionally, that same year, the number of U.S. families increased by 1.8 million, while the housing stock only grew by 1.4 million.

It results in a number of people unable to afford the cost of a mortgage and skyrocketing prices in general, as a limited product becomes a sought-after commodity.

So, Virtuoso said, she’s responsible to the town as a whole. And while there may be some negativity surrounding the proposal before it’s reviewed, she said she’s honor-bound to give the project a fair shot.

“As a leader … of the town as a whole, I am trying to do what’s best for everyone,” she said. “Denying (these) new homes isn’t what’s best for the town, just because one person doesn’t want lights shining on their house. That can be remedied. And we’re going to work with everyone to do the right thing.”

While the future of the development is up in the air, the same is not the case for the town’s proposed 2025 spending and revenue plans.

A public hearing is set to take place at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Town Hall, 7105 Lockport Road, to present the budget and tax levy proposals for the public to consider.

Following the public hearing, the Town Board is expected to decide on the budget proposal, which must be approved by November.

The board completed its review of Virtuoso’s roughly $11.4 million proposal and made only minor changes to the amount of legal fees the town plans to spend. Virtuoso cited projects like Bri Estates’ upcoming proposal as a reason for the increase.

The proposed budget comes with no townwide tax to support it, an increasing rarity in local government, especially in New York state. Only special district taxes will be collected, totaling slightly less than $3 million total.