• WHEN: Wednesday January 26, 2022 @ 7PM
• WHERE: Town Hall at 237 Rt 59 and on zoom
• The Town website notice is here:
  http://www.ramapo.org/page/news-7/news/notice-of-public-hearing-on-comprehensive-plan-amendment-and-on-zoning-amendment—watchtower-audiovisual-production-center-688.html
• The proposed amendment to the comprehensive plan and the proposed local law for a new zoning district documents are listed at: www.ramapo.org/watchtower
• The DEIS and FEIS document relate to the project overall in its non final configuration and the Town has not yet issued findings.
• The FEIS includes a lot of comments from environmental groups, some of which ROSA coordinated comments with. ROSA’s comments focused on the comprehensive plan and zoning local law amendments.

Overview and History

The Town of Ramapo public hearing focuses on the comprehensive plan amendments and a local law needed to enable the Watchtower Audio/Visual campus project.

In 2004 the Comprehensive Plan included specific recommendations to change the R-80 zoning for the main site parcel to an RSH zone with specific restrictions to enable a subdivision designed for 55+ active seniors and retirees to have a housing destination within the Town of Ramapo. That project was known as the Lorterdan subdivision. The Town approved a rezoning of the land to allow 

The DEIS/FEIS done for the Lorterdan project recognized that there would be unavoidable environmental impacts but these were considered in the context of the benefit of housing diversity resulting in a subdivision plan that was limited to 292 units with a maximum of 2 bedrooms. The project was promoted as increasing housing diversity for seniors, increasing tax ratables while not impacting the school district. The current proposal cannot be built under the existing Comprehensive Plan with the stated conditions and the amendments proposed are to simply remove the prior references and to propose a new paragraph.

The Comprehensive Plan as currently written calls for a return to RR-80 zoning if that project is not built.  As per the Ramapo Use Table and Bulk Tables – see https://ecode360.com/11858832 the original RR-80 zoning Is subject to use group ‘e’ which restricts development coverage to 20%. When the Lorterdan project was approved the development coverage for the 292 individual lots was 55% but 146 acres of the property was not developed at all. The DEIS stated the maximum development coverage would be 25% but now the proposal is for up to 30%.

The chief environmental complaints were 

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For more history you can visit a prior posting on this topic here: https://rosa4rockland.org/northeast-2/

If you have specific questions Contact Us. 

We will post comments during our review process on this page.

Submit Your Comments and Questions to the Town 

You can submit comments to the supervisor – SpechtM@ramapo-ny.gov – or the Town Clerk – OsherovitzS@ramapo-ny.gov. 

ROSA 4 Rockland Statement

ROSA 4 Rockland volunteers, followers and supporters are not anti development,  we are pro-sustainability.  Universally residents from every part of the Town are concerned about development that does not follow established zoning patterns and substantial changes in zoning patterns without substantial planning studies. We are long overdue for comprehensive planning.

In November of 2018, Supervisor Specht stated the Towns intent to do a comprehensive plan update related to “Western Ramapo” starting in 2019; this has not happened. The Watchtower proposal was processed against Councilman Weissmandl’s request to discuss a general update to the Comprehensive Plan for the area.

While the amendments being proposed are specific to the Watchtower there is no reason area residents should not express concerns about development in the area and make requests on the record regarding this and future updates to the Comprehensive Plan. 

Additionally, while the new MU-3 zoning is being proposed specifically for and has only been analyzed in conjunction with this project, residents near large parcels of land in Ramapo should consider the law in general and consider whether such a law would be suitable for a parcel near them.

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