128 West Falls Street Construction Update, 12/2018

6 01 2019

This post was supposed to go up a week ago, but was delayed by a bout with the flu. Sometimes, things get delayed and health concerns have to take precedence. 128 West Falls Street is an example of that.

128 West Falls Street is a single-family rental home situated on a mostly empty 0.375 acre urban lot on the northwest side of Fall Creek. The property was bought by Heritage Park Townhomes back in December 2012. Heritage Park, recently rebranded Perfect Heritage, is the umbrella organization for a few different businesses run by local builder Ron Ronsvalle and his family. Those include Perfect Painters (home painting), Heritage Builders (home construction), Heritage Park Rentals, and a few years back, there was even an auto repair business.

On the development side, Heritage Builders has built or renovated a number of small-scale residential and commercial projects around the greater Ithaca area, tapping into a variety of markets. These include student rentals on South Hill, apartments and commercial retail/office space in Lansing, some smaller multi-family infill in the city of Ithaca, and some for-sale housing on South Hill. There isn’t really a pattern, it’s more or less what’s available at the time they’re looking to take on something new.

In March 2014, plans were first announced for infill apartments at 128 West Falls Street, consisting of three new buildings with six rental units. The design of these was rather awkward and somewhat larger than the typical 1.5-2.5 story homes that comprise nearby blocks, so there was a fair amount of pushback from neighbors. This was problematic because the Board of Zoning Appeals was required to sign off on setback and parking variances needed for the project to move forward; the property is being subdivided into three parcels, one for the existing single-family home, one for the to-be-built duplex (later a single-family home) to the east, and the third for the two duplexes on the west end of the parcel. The existing home will have no on-site parking within its (middle) lot, instead sharing with the west lot.

The project team met with neighbors, heard their concerns, and reworked the design – it was a bit smaller, with five units in two two-family homes and and one single-family home, and the designs, created by architect/engineer Lawrence John Fabbroni of Fabbroni Associates, showed a more traditional aesthetic when the revised site plan review was submitted in October 2014. At the time, the planning board hailed it as a successful example of working with the community to create a mutually acceptable outcome. The plans were approved by the planning board in February 2015.

However, the project didn’t move forward, and after two years, the approvals expired. Not long after the project was approved, Ronsvalle was badly injured in an accident, and the injuries left him paralyzed and unable to use his limbs; he is reliant on assistance and voice commands. As the letter from Fabbroni stated, “certain life events prevented the owner from resuming full business activities until a support system was running smoothly.” For a while, it had looked like the project was unlikely to ever happen. However, the request for re-approval was submitted in June 2018, and with no changes, the project generated little discussion and was re-approved the following month. The revised SPR states $665,000 in hard costs with a construction period in two phases from August 2018 to August 2020.

The project includes seven off-street parking spaces, one driveway, sidewalks/walkways, stormwater facilities and landscaping (new trees, pavers, raised plant beds). The three units facing West Falls Street are designed to resemble typical older homes in the neighborhood. Building 1 is a single-family building with three bedrooms, finished in LP Smartside wood lap siding colored Sherwin-Williams Aurora Brown on the lower floors, LP Smartside wood shake siding on the gable level and colored S-W Roycroft Brass, and trim panels in S-W Roycroft Vellum. Building 2 is two units with three bedrooms each; the massing of Building 2 is broken down into two distinct halves, connected only through the foundation and a ground level breezeway. The west unit will have a bay window and a full gable roof with dormers, while the east unit has a partially-hipped roof, creating visual interest between the two otherwise mirrored units. LP Smartside wood lap siding in S-W Renwick Olive will be used on the lower levels of each., LP SmartSide smooth wood panels with batten trim will be used on the west unit’s gable level, while the dormers on the east unit will use lap siding, both colored in S-W Roycroft Bronze-Green. The trim panels will once again be S-W Roycroft Vellum. For the record, all of these colors are from Sherwin-Williams’ “Heritage Palette” historic color series; and historic East Aurora, New York is home to the Roycroft Campus.

The building tucked back from West Falls Street, Building 3, is a more contemporary design hosting two two-bedroom units. The lower levels use LP engineered wood siding in S-W Rockwood Blue-Green, and on the gable level, smooth wood panels in S-W Downing Stone. As with the other two, the wood trim panels are painted S-W Roycroft Vellum. Altogether, there’s a total of five new units and thirteen new bedrooms in the project. The project is designed such that the whole four-building, six-unit assemblage can be converted into condominium housing at a later date, if Heritage Park chooses to do so.

The photos below suggest a quicker timeframe for construction than suggested in the 2018 Site Plan Review – framing is substantially underway for all structures, with the first two floors framed out for Buildings 1 and 2, and above-ground framing just getting underway for Building 3. The concrete foundations are complete. A good estimate would be an August 2019 completion for all five units, or in other words, they decided to merge the two phases back into one. The designs don’t totally match the drawings. The elevations don’t show windows in the basement level concrete, and some of the other window patterns don’t totally align either.