Saratoga Springs, New York

Saratoga Springs, New York, used its new Transect-based zoning to get a developer to devise a more urban, pedestrian-oriented character for a hotel, retail, office, and residential complex that will be built on Marion Avenue northeast of downtown. The Marion Group of Syracuse is planning 80 hotel rooms, 77 condominium units, a restaurant and banquet facility, 9,200 square feet of retail, and 5,200 square feet of offices in an area the city recently designated as T-5 (“urban center”). City Planning Director Geoff Bornemann says Transect-based zoning required the developer to bring more restaurant, retail, and residential buildings up to the street, add more building entrances facing the street, increase the quantity of on-street parking, and place a two-story retail/office building in front of a parking garage. Not far from the Marion Avenue development, Pfeil & Company expects to break ground in early September on a mixed-use new urban project called Excelsior Park, situated near an Interstate 87 interchange.