by Alex Brooks
On Monday, October 6, the Hoosick Zoning Board met to consider two proposed projects, and approved them both.
The first to present was Duane Greenawalt, the owner of Hathaway’s Drive-in movie theatre, who is seeking permission to erect a second screen so that he can show two movies simultaneously.
[private]He said film companies require him to show a movie for two weeks, but there are new movies coming out every week in the summer when his business is active. He said the number of patrons coming to the drive-in is decreasing and he believes adding another screen is the best way to get more people to come to the movies there. He said with an outdoor movie theatre in this climate, he has to make all his money for the year in five months, and only at night. Because of the limited times when he can show movies, he has to use that time intensively. He said installing another screen and buying another projector so that he can show two movies at once will cost about $100,000, but he said, “Without it, I don’t think I can survive.”
The new screen will be the same size as the existing one – 35 feet tall and 70 feet wide. The bottom of the screen sits 20 feet off the ground, so the total height is 55 feet. His plan is to put the new screen on the opposite side of the property from the existing one and to put the new projector in the same projection room as the existing one, facing the opposite direction.
The existing screen is on the west side of the property, and the new screen would be on the east side. There are neighbors’ houses rather close to the east side of the property, and the neighbors were present at the hearing. They expressed concerns about the new screen lowering the value of their properties and shade from the new screen harming their gardens or making solar energy installations not feasible. Greenawalt had proposed originally to put the new screen twenty feet in from the fence line but, in response to the concerns of his neighbors, offered to put it another twenty feet further in from the fence line, a total of forty feet back from the fence. He said the screen can’t be moved any further in than that.
Rick Tinkham, who lives across the street from the Drive-in, has no major objections to the new screen but asked Greenawalt about improvements to the fence and the marquee to make the facility look nicer from the outside. Greenawalt said he is working on making improvements, but he has to do it one thing at a time because of financial constraints. He said he renovated the bathrooms this year. He said he plans to work on the fences this fall and, in general, hopes to make many repairs and improvements over the years. The Zoning Board approved the second screen with the provision that it be installed 40 feet in from the fence line. Greenawalt now must go to the Hoosick Planning Board for site plan review.
Solar Array For HFCS
The next project to be described was a large solar array proposed to be installed on the Wysocki Farm to generate electricity for the Hoosick Falls Central School. The engineer for the project, Aaron Frank, presented the project, with a map of the Wysocki farm showing where the solar array would be installed. The array will take up about 9 acres of the 234 acre farm, about 4% of the parcel, and it will generate 1.05 megawatts of electricity. It was sized to generate 100% of the electricity the school uses in a year. The array will be about 290 feet from Route 22, and the panels will be mounted about 9 feet off the ground. The plans mentioned some trees to be planted to shield them from the view of motorists on Route 22, but the Zoning Board did not require those trees as a condition of approval.
Frank said there is an existing farm road that leads to the spot where the array will be installed so no new roads need to be created. There will be no change in the topography of the land, and no trees or vegetation need to be removed.
The solar array will be connected to the grid. It has no direct electrical connection to the school. The connection is through a contract in which the school agrees to purchase the electricity generated by the array. There are three parties involved in the project – the Wysockis, who will host the array on their land, Enlighten Power Solutions, who will install and maintain the array, and the School District, which will buy the power through a “Power Purchase Agreement.”
Hoosick Falls Central School currently spends about $180,000 annually on electricity, and through this project they expect to save a significant part of that. But the exact amount of the savings is not known yet, as many of the details are still being worked out.
No one present expressed any opposition to the project, and the Zoning Board approved it. It now must go before the Planning Board for site plan review.[/private]