DANIEL BENNETT, AN EDITORIAL REGARDING LOT A AND RELATED ISSUES

Dear Mayor Pugh, Board of Trustees, Village Manager Healy, and others who may be concerned,

Please take this a public comment for the September 18th Hearing to consider the special permit application from WBP Development LLC for the construction of a multifamily development at 1 Croton Point Avenue.

Based on the information captioned on the top of Page 2 of the building specs available on the Village Website (https://play.champds.com/ATT/crotononhudsonny/2024-07/bde36ed8312372cb5418504b71e3dc9202584e09.pdf), the building has an average per floor area of around 18,000 square feet. As designed, it has a basement (marked as "Cellar"), 5 floors at/above grade, and what appears to be a half story or other area (marked as "BL1"). A community member spoke with a representative from WBP Development, who confirmed that the building is concrete block on the 1st floor, and wood frame on floors 2 through 5. From a fire standpoint, because it is wood frame, it would burn like typical residential construction, just on a larger scale. Now, whenever we encounter a structure fire, we have to calculate the required amount of water necessary to extinguish the fire. That calculation, called the fire flow formula, is floor area divided by 3, multiplied by the number of floors on fire. This gives the required gallons per minute of fire flow. Of course, since this is in the planning stages, we have to plan for the worst case scenario. So, worst case is that the building is fully involved in fire. In that situation, using the fire flow formula and the specified building floor area and number of floors, we would need to supply roughly 42,600 gallons per minute as a required fire flow. To give a visual perspective on exactly how much water we are talking about, that is approximately 1.5 average sized in-ground swimming pools' worth of water on a per-minute basis. I’m not even sure if New York City could adequately provide that without augmentation. I would pray that this building will be fully sprinklered, and perhaps even have a water tower or on-site fire pump (or maybe even all three), but even then, the water has to come from somewhere. The hydrant at the train station is at the end of the village’s main system, and unless something has changed in the last several years, it doesn’t provide great pressure or volume. So what are we being asked to do here? Lay in from the river? If this goes through as designed, then you guys are seriously playing with matches. The Planning Board suggested a significantly scaled back plan, with no more than 80 units. You should heed that suggestion. Better yet, you should scale this back even more and make the building look like the one at 379 South Riverside.