Not previously a catering hall
Paul Shultis Jr., the planning board’s former chairman who abstained from voting on the measure that’s drawn a lawsuit now, said that he tried to warn his fellow planners that he didn’t think the Woodstock Zoning Code would allow for them to waive a special use permit, or the public process entailed in such review.
“We cannot override the ZBA and I strongly believe that we were being influenced, as a board, in the decision we reached,” he added. “I’ve always felt that the zoning law says clearly that if there’s work that substantially changes the use of a structure, it needs such review. And there has to be a public hearing. That structure was an art gallery, a plumbing warehouse, and a contractor’s office. It was not previously a catering hall.”
Shultis also brought up the lack of any contract cementing the connection between the neighboring Woodstock Playhouse and Cucina, which was necessary to establish the restaurant’s nonconforming use approval in the first place, as well as the fact that all zoning must look, first and foremost, at the underlying zoning in all overlay districts, which in the Gateway is residential.
Shultis noted how town board member Bill McKenna, chair of the ZBA before Harris took the reins 14 years ago, shouldn’t have been allowed to speak on behalf of Cucina at a closed planning board meeting that was not a public hearing, while Schauffler and other members of the public could not.
Also speaking, and aiding the planning board in its reason, Shultis added, were McKenna’s fellow town board member Cathy Magarelli and her husband, the former school board member and county legislator Sam Magarelli.
“Bill kept saying that we were interpreting the zoning law wrong,” Shultis went on. “They kept reading sections of the law about work that didn’t change the exterior of a structure, and I kept pointing out that they weren’t reading the entirety of those sections, or the law.”
When reached for comment, McKenna said that — like Futerfas — he’d have to stay silent for now, given that there’s a lawsuit pending.
Because he recused himself from the vote, Shultis said, he has not been updated on any matters involving Cucina…and added that he was not originally copied on the lawsuit filed against the board.
He said the crux of the matter seems to be that the planning board accepted a 2005 site plan for the main restaurant structure at what is now Cucina as sufficient to replace a special use permit, and did not hold any public hearing on the case.
“What gets me is that Cy Adler came up to me two days before the resolution was passed and said he’d be open to put in some more parking for Cucina in back,” Shultis added. “Then, at the meeting where the resolution was first passed, (planning board chairman) Tom Unrath said something about them being on a deadline to pass this thing and when asked by Nancy Schauffler about his statement, answered that he was unsure how to answer such a question.”
Calls to Adler were not answered.
“None of this would have happened if people had just followed the law,” added Schauffler this past week. “I just wanted to see that there was a public hearing.”
“A public hearing would have taken one night,” added Shultis. “They basically had half of one. They should have just formalized it and not gone this direction.”
Correction
In our story two weeks ago on the filing of the Article 78 lawsuit against the planning board and the owners of the Cucina property, it was incorrectly stated that the suit said
“The Planning Board’s Determination, which granted permission for the Project with actual issuance of a Special Use Permit with conditions, was affected by an error of the law.”
It should have read ‘which granted permission for the Project without actual issuance of a Special Use Permit…’
