Apr. 13—Plans for a new waste transfer facility on 56th Street in LaSalle aren’t sitting well with some neighboring business owners.
Members of the city’s planning board last month agreed to approve a site plan for the project, which is being developed by Youngstown businessman John Battaglia, who operates existing waste transfer facilities in Buffalo, Rochester, Tonawanda and Lockport.
The facility, to be located at 540 56th St., is being billed by the developer as a new option for residents and businesses looking to dispose of debris and recycling materials. The project, which would include the construction of a new 16,000-square-foot building where municipal solid waste, construction materials and debris would be received and transferred, represents an investment of between $3 million and $4 million, according to Battaglia.
Bob Vitagliano, owner of Fred’s Collision, an automobile and repair shop located at 530 56th St., near the proposed site of the new waste facility, said he’s concerned the “mess” that will be created by such an operation will “destroy his business.”
Jim Zakia, owner of Zakia’s Automotive located at 572 56th St., next door to Vitagliano’s business, expressed similar concerns.
“You are going to have all these 18-wheelers coming in here,” Zakia said. “It’s going to be a cluster. It’s going to be a mess.”
While the chairman of the city’s planning board said ample notification of the project was provided to area business owners in advance of the board’s public hearing on the project, both Vitagliano and Zakia said they weren’t aware of it until after they saw the story about the site plan approval in the newspaper.
“Obviously, there’s going to be no opposition because the people on the board and the people making these decisions don’t own these businesses,” Vitagliano said.
“They should have notified everybody on the street,” Zakia said.
“I would have went to that hearing,” he added. “I didn’t know nothing about it.”
Planning Board Chairman Tony Palmer said area businesses were notified in advance of the March meeting, adding that he specifically “requested the radius for property owner notifications (for the public hearing) be extended from 500 to 700 feet ” of adjoining properties. Palmer said he felt a large number of nearby residential properties were beyond the 500-foot cut-off for direct notification.
He also said that the notices of the public hearing were published in advance in the Gazette.
The site plan proposal was on the Planning Board agenda on four separate occasions. It was written about in the Gazette three times, the last time being the approval.
“We do public hearings and nobody shows up. I don’t know what to tell you,” Palmer said.
“The project meets the requirements for the (zoned) use of that land,” he added.
Battaglia and his partner in the project, Mike Halliday, addressed members of the planning board during a meeting on March 14, indicating they have a lot of experience with the type of work they want to do at the 56th Street site and that the facility would be a benefit, not a detriment, to the surrounding area.
They told planning board members the facility would feature a canopied staging area for trucks to bring the waste in and out of the facility, with Battaglia adding that “everything would be done inside the building.”
“We would screen all materials coming into the facility to make sure they are appropriate (for handling),” he said.
The project is expected to result in the creation of eight full-time employees, with an average of 15 trucks on the side. Battaglia said the canopied staging areas would help control potential dust and that it would be a “very basic” and “very clean” operation.
The developers also indicated that noise and traffic studies showed the facility would result in “insignificant” increases in traffic and noise levels that were “substantially below” city ordinances.
“Everything transported in will be transported out by the end of every day,” Battaglia assured the Planning Board.
The waste facility is not quite a done deal.
The developers told planning board members they are in the process of obtaining permits that are needed from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation before construction of the facility can move forward.
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