Amherst Planning Board·September 24, 2026
The Planning Board kept the hearing open on Young Development's[*] 270-unit apartment plan for 2190 Wehrle Drive[*] after three Bellingham Drive neighbors asked who guarantees their water pressure; a decision is expected in October. It approved the North Amherst Fire Company's truck-storage building, writing the cream-and-green colors in as an eighth condition. Also: two site-plan extensions, one condition change, every announced tally 5–0.
The biggest project on the docket was the one the board did not vote on. Young Development[*] came back to the Planning Board with the site plan for 270 apartments on roughly 25 acres at 2190 Wehrle Drive[*] — a parcel this board recommended rezoning from Office Building (OB) to MFR-5 at a special meeting on January 29, and which the Town Board has since rezoned.[2] Joe Young[*], presenting for the developer, called the current drawing “rendition number probably 10” of the plan. The previous approval on the land was for four office buildings totaling 284,000 square feet; the first version of this one was 360 units in two-, three- and four-story buildings. What is left is 270 units, every building two stories, every unit with an attached garage and its own front door.[2]
The particulars: 758 parking spaces, 324 of them in garages; a community center at the front with fitness rooms, pickleball courts and dog parks; a 74-foot-wide central green corridor “like a spine” running the length of the site; a second vehicle connection to Limestone Drive at the rear, where an easement problem has, Young said, “been addressed”; a sidewalk link to Garfield; and more than 700 new trees on ground that is, he conceded, “pretty sparse” right now. The project would go up in two phases — 150 units and all the amenities on about 17 acres first, then 120 more — and the developer intends to enroll it in the IDA's workforce-housing program. Setback variances are still to come from the Zoning Board.[2]
On the environmental side, Young ran the record: negative declarations already issued on October 27, 2025 and March 9, 2026 during the rezoning; a no-impact letter from the State Historic Preservation Office; no state or federal wetlands on the site; a downstream sewer-capacity report from Carmina Wood Design showing adequate wet-weather capacity, with a payment into the Town's inflow-and-infiltration sewer fund that “will be hundreds of thousands of dollars”; and an updated traffic study still being finished. Another full submission, he said, is due “early next week probably at the latest.” The ask for the night was modest: leave the hearing open, take comments, come back in October for a decision.[2]
No board member had a question. Three neighbors did — and all three asked essentially the same one.
Ms. Sahena[*] had a grievance beyond the pipes: she had written to the Town Board in July 2025 and heard nothing until she “nudged,” then to this board in January and March, and heard nothing at all. Chairman Michael J. Chmiel[*] told her that anything sent to the planning office “gets parsed out to all of us individually” and that members do not, as a rule, correspond privately with anyone on a pending matter. “I've seen your materials,” he said. She took it as good news, with a caveat: “I don't know that people are reading through it.”[3]
The engineer's answer came from Carmina Wood Design's Doug — his surname does not survive the recording[*] — and it was the answer of someone who has been asked before. The firm has run the analysis with the Erie County Water Authority and is still “working on” open items with the Town's engineering department, but “as far as we're concerned there will be no impact to the water pressure or flows.” Chmiel pushed for something a layperson could use: the neighbors “already have pressure issues as it is,” so how does adding a couple hundred units change nothing? The explanation was the loop: the connection at Wehrle is part of a large looped system fed from Main Street and through the neighborhoods, so a peak draw of 43.5 gallons a minute can come from either direction rather than a single dead-end main. “It's not in a closed box,” he said.[3] The second speaker's rejoinder was the one that will follow this project to October: “At some point it's gonna run out.”
He also caught something in the August revisions. The east edge of the site — the side facing Bellingham — had always been a ditch and a brush line the neighbors wanted kept as an instant screen rather than waiting “five or ten years” for plantings to grow; the new sheets, he said, appeared to show a berm and a stormwater basin there instead. The engineer's answer was that the pond had always been drawn there and is simply “more well defined” now, that the existing vegetation stays, and that the developer's landscape architect and the Town's have agreed to add plantings at construction if the screen needs it.[3] On lighting: sharp-cutoff fixtures and a photometric plan showing zero foot-candles at the property line.[3]
The motion was to hold the hearing open and bring the matter back in October “for both the SEQR hearing and for the site plan.” Seconded by Carrie Kahn, it carried 5–0.[4] Nothing about this project has been approved or denied by this board. Everything has been deferred by a month.
Under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), a board must find whether an action may cause a significant adverse environmental impact before approving it. A negative declaration is the finding that it will not.
This site has already had two, both during the rezoning — a Town Board action. Tonight's request was for the Planning Board to issue its own on the site plan, a different action by a different body. The developer's argument is that none of the impacts identified in the earlier reviews have changed; the neighbors' argument is that water supply was never adequately studied in the first place. The board postponed deciding either question.
Not the Town. Amherst's water is supplied by the Erie County Water Authority, an independent public-benefit corporation; the Town's engineering department reviews a developer's hydraulic analysis but does not own the mains or set the pressure. That is why the second speaker's question — when the pressure finally drops, does the Town fix it or is it “an Erie County Water Authority problem?” — went unanswered on the record. Nobody in the room was in a position to answer it.
The North Amherst Fire Company has been trying to build a fire-truck storage building for about five years, and Thursday it got the two approvals standing between it and state funding. Chris Hogan[*] of the construction manager — a firm the tape renders as “our PO kill Building Company,” almost certainly R.P. Oak Hill Building Company[*] — presented with Joel Smith[*], the company's past president and head of its building committee. The building is a pre-engineered metal structure, 60 feet in one dimension (the other is lost on the tape), on the company's existing site at Tonawanda Creek Road and Campbell Boulevard, across from working farms. “We started with a pole barn,” Hogan said. “It's a rural fire hall.”[5]
The site is in a floodplain, and that shaped most of the questions. One board member — who noted he also sits on the Town's Design Advisory Board — asked where the floor drains go. Answer: to an oil-water separator that is pumped out like a septic tank, because the Erie County Health Department would not allow floor drains into the septic system; the Town's plumbing office has signed off.[5] The floor is set two feet above the 100-year flood elevation, which turned out to put it above the 500-year line and roughly ten feet above Tonawanda Creek. The lower wall is poured concrete for flood protection, with masonry to be applied on the front; there are four doors on the side elevations plus a ramped rear door that is, deliberately, not flood-protected — it is how you get out if the water comes.[5] Minor variances for curbing and landscaping have already come from the Zoning Board; the site plan covers grading, drainage, septic, a detention basin and landscaping that also cleans up leftovers from the company's expansion 20 years ago.[5]
Then the color. Hogan said white panels with a green roof. Smith corrected him: cream, not white, chosen to sit with the red brick and dark-green trim of the existing hall, which has stood “50, 60 years” — “I have to apologize, I said white.” The roof is “like an olive green” from the manufacturer's chart, or as Kahn pressed and got confirmed, “a forest green.” The rendering on screen, everyone agreed, did not reproduce any of it faithfully.[5] Nobody from the public spoke; the chair closed the hearing.
That exchange produced the evening's only new condition. When the votes came, a member asked that the colors be pinned to what the board had just been shown, “and if there are any departures then they'll come back for approval.” The room then spent a minute on what “substantially” means and who decides — “somebody has to make the call” — before drafting it live on the screen. Chmiel read the result into the record as condition eight: that the colors of the building be substantially consistent with the colors shown on the renderings presented at the Planning Board meeting on September 24, 2026; the Planning Director shall make any determination regarding that consistency. The other seven conditions were already in the materials and were not read.[6] The negative declaration passed 5–0; the site plan, moved by Kahn and seconded by Mike Hogan, carried with all eight conditions.[6]
A fire company is a private not-for-profit that contracts with the Town, not a Town department — so it goes through the same land-use review as anyone else building in Amherst. And state grant programs typically will not release money until the project has cleared its local approvals and SEQR is complete. That is the “next hurdle” Hogan[*] described: no site-plan approval, no negative declaration, no funding application. Thursday cleared both.
The three remaining items were housekeeping without hearings, but one of them briefly tangled the board in its own paperwork. The owner of 5226 Main Street asked for a two-year extension of a site-plan approval first granted in February 2024, and staff attached one modified condition: that the petitioner satisfactorily address the New York State Department of Transportation's comments in an email dated August 27, 2026, and obtain any required NYSDOT permits for work in the Main Street right-of-way.[6] Jonathan O'Rourke moved approval with that condition. Then someone asked what had become of the original conditions — there had been ten or eleven — and whether “approve with this condition” meant the old ones were gone. They were not; the new language is a modification of condition 11, and the others stand unchanged. “Why don't we make that clear then,” Chmiel said, and the motion was restated: approve the extension with the original conditions and the modified number 11. O'Rourke moved it again, Harbinder Singh Gill seconded, 5–0.[6]
A second two-year extension, at an address the chair read as “3945 Wrench Road”[*] — the Town has no street by that name; North French Road is the likely match, and the agenda will settle it — carried no conditions at all and passed on a motion by Mike Hogan and a second by Kahn, 5–0.[6] The final item, at an address heard as “4250 Dive Road”[*] — likewise not an Amherst street as transcribed — was a modification of condition four of an earlier approval, displayed on screen and not read aloud. No one had a question. Gill moved, Kahn seconded, 5–0.[6]
A Planning Board approval is not permanent. Under Amherst's zoning code an approved site plan must be acted on within a set period or it lapses, and the applicant must return — either for an extension, as two did Thursday, or to start over. The extension is the board's chance to update conditions to current agency comments (hence the fresh NYSDOT language on Main Street) without reopening the whole review. A modification of a single condition, like the last item, works the same way: the approval stands; one line of it changes.
Eight roll-call votes plus one hearing closed by the chair; every announced tally 5–0. Five of the seven-member board sat: Chairman Michael J. Chmiel[*] and members Mike Hogan, Carrie Kahn, Jonathan O'Rourke and Harbinder Singh Gill, each addressed by first name from the chair (“Mike,” “Carrie,” “John,” “Harb”). BrittanyLee Penberthy and Joseph P. Raffaele, Jr. are not heard on the tape. No recusals were announced and no member abstained. Movers are named where the audio makes them out; several motions were made without the chair repeating the name.
Taken up after the chair's standing statement on the board's authority and speaker time limits. Moved by O'Rourke, seconded by Kahn; carried on roll call.
Motion to keep the hearing open and bring the 270-unit, two-phase multifamily site plan back in October “for both the SEQR hearing and for the site plan,” at the petitioner's own request — a further full submission and an updated traffic study are pending. Three members of the public spoke, all from Bellingham Drive, principally on water pressure. Mover not captured; seconded by Kahn; carried on roll call. The chair specified the adjournment applies “to both SEQR and the site plan.” No determination of any kind was made.
No member of the public asked to speak. The chair closed the hearing by declaration; no vote was taken on the closure.
Negative declaration on the pre-engineered truck-storage building at the company's Tonawanda Creek Road / Campbell Boulevard site. The chair first asked whether the board wanted to take up the color question under SEQR or under the site plan; it went to the site plan. Mover not captured; seconded by Gill; carried on roll call, five ayes audible.
Approval of the site plan subject to eight conditions displayed on screen. Seven were in the pre-meeting materials and were not read aloud. Condition 8 was drafted on the floor after the color discussion and read into the record by the chair: that the colors of the building be substantially consistent with the colors shown on the renderings presented at the Planning Board meeting on September 24, 2026; the Planning Director shall make any determination regarding that consistency. Moved by Kahn, seconded by Mike Hogan. Four ayes are audible on the roll call before a roughly 40-second gap in the recording swallows the remainder and the chair's tally; no dissent is heard. Final Planning Board action, not a recommendation.
Extension of the February 2024 approval. Condition 11 modified to read that the petitioner satisfactorily address the comments of the New York State DOT in its email dated August 27, 2026, to the satisfaction of that agency, and obtain any required NYSDOT permits for work within the Main Street right-of-way. The first motion (O'Rourke) was restated after a member asked whether the original conditions survived; the chair confirmed they do. Second motion by O'Rourke, seconded by Gill; carried on roll call. Petitioner not named on tape.
Two-year extension with no conditions attached. Moved by Mike Hogan, seconded by Kahn; carried on roll call. The street name as transcribed does not exist in the Town of Amherst street index; North French Road is the nearest candidate. Not corrected here — the agenda, when posted, governs. Petitioner not named on tape.
Modification of condition four, as displayed on screen and not read into the record; its text is not recoverable from the audio. No questions or discussion. Moved by Gill, seconded by Kahn; carried on roll call. The street name as transcribed does not exist in the Town index and no single candidate is close enough to suggest. Petitioner not named on tape.
Moved by Kahn, seconded by O'Rourke; carried on roll call. The board's regular cadence is the third Thursday, which would put the October meeting — and the Wehrle Drive decision — on October 15; the Town had not posted a date at publication.
Read this first: there is no agenda behind this brief. As of September 28 the Town had not posted the September 24 Planning Board agenda packet or minutes on its IQM2 portal — unlike every previous Amherst brief on this page, there was no print document to check applicant names, file numbers, zoning districts or addresses against. Everything here comes from the audio alone. Docket numbering follows the chair's reading of the agenda on tape (two public hearings, then “three items under unfinished business”). This brief will be reconciled against the agenda when the Town posts it, and any corrected proper noun will be recorded here.
Capture. The meeting was captured live from the Town's YouTube stream by the feed-driven Amherst pipeline and transcribed locally with the faster-whisper “medium” model: 47.0 minutes, 575 segments, language confidence p=1.00. Two stretches of the recording are effectively silent — about 30 seconds during the water-pressure exchange (~18:20–18:50) and about 45 seconds after the fire-hall site-plan roll call (~41:35–42:25), where the chair was heard beginning to state the board's reasoning. The second gap is why the tally on that vote is reported as “four ayes audible” rather than 5–0.
Street validation. The transcript was checked against the Town's street inventory: six references, three exact (Bellingham Drive, Campbell Boulevard, Main Street). Applied: “Office Caesar Boulevard” → off Caesar Boulevard (a speaker describing a 70-house development nearby). Applied on editorial judgment and flagged: the site the audio renders as “2190 Worley Avenue/Drive” and “Whirly” is written here as 2190 Wehrle Drive[*]. The tool called this ambiguous between Olney Drive and Wehrle Drive; every other street the speakers placed the site against — Bellingham Drive, Limestone Drive, Garfield, the Main-Transit fire hall — sits at the Wehrle/Transit end of town, and the OB-to-MFR-5 rezoning history matches a Wehrle Drive office parcel. The Town's agenda will confirm or correct it. Flagged, not corrected: “3945 Wrench Road” (no such street; North French Road is the closest candidate) and “4250 Dive Road” (no such street; no candidate close enough to suggest). Both are printed as heard, in quotation marks.
Roll call. Five members sat. The chair is not named on the tape and is identified as Michael J. Chmiel[*] from the verified roster, which lists him as the board's only chair. The four others are identified from the chair's first-name references on motions and seconds — “Mike” (Hogan), “Carrie” (Kahn), “John” (O'Rourke) and “Harb” (Gill), the last two rendered by the transcriber as “heart” and “harb.” Worth noting for the record: the August 20 brief left open whether the fourth seated member that night was O'Rourke or Kahn. On this tape both are present and distinguishable — “John moves, Carrie seconds” on the minutes — which does not resolve August but does confirm the transcriber's habit of dropping Kahn's name from roll calls. The seven-member roster was verified 2026-06-17 against the Town's official Planning Board page.
Names heard only in audio — all unverified, all marked [*]. With no agenda, no applicant entity is confirmed. Young Development, Joe Young and Tom Lewis are as heard. Carmina Wood Design is unflagged because it appears by name in the Town's August 20 packet; its engineer “Doug” is described by first name and role only because the transcriber's rendering of his surname (“phase”) is not credible. “Dean Gowin at Wendell” is written as Wendel, the regional engineering firm, with the individual's name withheld. The traffic consultant heard as “Pesaro Associates” and “the Sarah” is left as heard. The SHPO reviewer heard as Nancy Herter is not printed in the body. Chris Hogan, Joel Smith and the construction manager R.P. Oak Hill Building Company (audio: “our PO kill”) are as heard or inferred; the firm-name inference is this desk's, not the transcript's. Public speaker Anne Sahena is spelled two ways on the tape (Sahena/Sahina); the third speaker gave only “Tom” and the same 281 Bellingham Drive address as Ms. Sahena, which may be a shared household or a mishearing. The planning-office staffer thanked as “Amy” is not further identified. Planning Director is used by title; the August 20 packet names Daniel C. Howard. The chair's standing description of the board (“final decision-making authority on site plans and subdivisions”; recommendations only on rezonings) is quoted from the tape.
Continuity. None of the six items from August 20 returned. The 160-townhome Muir Woods site plan at 770 John James Audubon Parkway, adjourned then “until the Town Board's done” with its findings statement, was not on this docket and was not mentioned. Address cross-reference: 2190 Wehrle Drive, the North Amherst fire hall and 5226 Main Street were checked against this publication's database of emergency-dispatch traffic recorded since May 2026; none returned an incident history relevant to the matters heard, so none is reported. [*] marks a proper noun that no official document confirms, or one corrected from a likely transcription error; verify against the Town Clerk's record before quoting in any formal communication.