Design Review Board: Prime Station Lane mixed-use plan’s mass and height draw concerns; advisory opinion tabled

Design professionals for Prime Companies presented a site plan for a mixed-use project along Route 29 (also called Washington) that would include a hotel and roughly 400 dwelling units. The project was before the Design Review Board on Sept. 24 at the Planning Board’s request for an advisory opinion on mass, height and scale.

Presenters James Easton (civil engineer, EP Land Services) and Svetlana Steef (Mackenzie Architects) described a layout consisting of two H-shaped, four-story multifamily buildings with internal courtyards, an L-shaped hotel at the corner, and townhouse-style row housing; the design team said they were aiming to meet the UDO’s frontage build-out requirement (70% along specified frontages) while responding to wetlands and a significant grade change between Route 29 and the site.

Board members expressed concern that the two large multifamily buildings read as overly massive: one board member called the structures “almost imposing” and said the development effectively reads five stories due to roof form, even though the project complies with the UDO’s 50-foot module and other dimensional rules. Members requested additional visual simulations showing the hotel and multifamily buildings as seen from Route 29/Washington at two key vantage points (the street entrance and the top of the adjacent hill) and asked for elevations and perspective views to better assess perceived height and context. Several board members noted that the project’s topography — the site is lower than Route 29 by about 7–12 feet in key locations and up to about 15 feet at other sections — affects visual perception and will mitigate some apparent height from the highway.

Why it matters: The project would introduce substantial new housing and a hotel adjacent to existing development (Entrada). The board’s comments focused on whether the buildings’ massing and materials would be contextually appropriate in scale and materiality for the area and whether the hotel elevation — the most visible element from Route 29 — needed to be shown before the board could render an informed opinion.

Outcome: The board and applicant agreed to postpone the DRB’s advisory opinion. The applicant said he would meet with staff and return with revised materials including the hotel elevation and perspective views; the board signaled that with those materials it could provide more definitive feedback at a future meeting.

Details from the presentation: The team said meeting the UDO’s 70% build-out requirement along certain frontages was complicated by wetlands and slope; they proposed banked frontage build-out where site constraints permit and noted planning-board and zoning-variance steps remain for those portions. The proposed multifamily buildings were described as four stories with roof articulation (varying roof lines, projected volumes) and material palettes intended to reference Saratoga Springs’ historic architecture (stone base/veneer, board-and-batten or engineered siding, light-grey shingles). The hotel was a 4-story placeholder in the presentation; no final hotel elevations were provided at the session.