Warwick planning board opens SEQR scoping for Blaine Town Square; residents press cemetery, traffic and water concerns

The Warwick Planning Board held a public SEQR scoping session on a proposed Blaine Town Square mixed‑use development, giving the public a first formal opportunity to shape the environmental review. The board and planner said the draft scope—available on the town website—will guide a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) the applicant must prepare, after which the board and involved agencies will review the results.

Planner Max Stock told the audience the board and applicant identified about a dozen potential impacts to study, including agricultural resources, wetlands and streams, the aquifer, traffic, community character and visual resources. "The scope is the table of contents," Max Stock said, describing the DEIS as the applicant’s study of items the board requires.

Kirk Rother, the project civil engineer, provided a high‑level project sketch and said the proposal covers roughly 38 acres at the Route 94 corridor and would contain nine buildings with a mix of retail, office, medical, one‑bedroom accessory apartments, recreation and a marginal access road to meet zoning requirements. "We have a lot of studies yet to be done," Rother said, listing traffic, stormwater, archaeological and cultural resource work, and visual simulations.

Multiple residents urged the board to expand the DEIS scope. David Jones said he believed the site includes not only the Blaine cemetery but also a First Nations burial area and asked that descendant communities (he named Lenape/Delaware groups) be contacted and cultural resources fully delineated. Alan Held, deputy town historian, cited Section 74 of the town code and said some of the conceptual buildings appear within the 100‑foot buffer the code requires around burial grounds. "The cemetery borders have changed in the last 120 years," Held said, urging archaeological delineation and early outreach.

Neighbors also pressed concerns about traffic and safety. Katie Larry, whose backyard borders the site, said residents already face long delays on Route 94 during peak tourism weekends and warned that added apartments, retail and visitors will increase response times for emergency vehicles. Several speakers asked the DEIS to address water use and aquifer impacts; one attendee cited an estimate of about 30,000 gallons per day tied to project water demands and asked who would be responsible if private wells were affected.

Local business owners and others asked that the DEIS market and fiscal analyses include e‑commerce and regional retail competition so projected retail demand is accurate. Other topics residents asked the board to study included night lighting, noise from athletic fields, and the long‑term effect on Warwick’s village downtown and rural character.

The board repeatedly emphasized that the materials before the public are conceptual: professionals for both the applicant and the town will review studies as they are submitted and the site plan and permit approvals will reflect those reviews. The board voted to close the public scoping session while keeping the written comment period open through June 15; vote tallies were not specified at the meeting.

What happens next: the applicant will prepare a draft EIS following the scope the board adopts and circulation will follow to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and other involved agencies; board members estimated review and completion of the DEIS could take several months once submitted. Written comments on the draft scope will be accepted through June 15 and become part of the administrative record.