Town of Clarence Planning Board·September 16, 2026
A 102-name petition · Four lots behind four lots · A coffee stand clears the board · Four roll calls, all 7–0
The Planning Board held the clock Wednesday night so a full room could finish signing in, then gave most of an hour to 9740 Lapp Road, LLC — a plan to put four five-acre lots on a private drive behind four new frontage lots on a country road in the Agricultural Rural Residential zone. Seven residents spoke, every one of them against; a petition signed by 102 Lapp Road residents was entered into the file; and the board then voted 7–0 to do the only thing available to it at this stage, which is to accept the environmental assessment form, seek lead agency status and open a coordinated review. Nothing was approved. “What we're voting on tonight is coordinated review,” Chairman Robert Sackett told the room, twice, in slightly different words. The night's finished business came second: 7 Brew won concept plan approval for a drive-thru coffee stand at 4301 Transit Road in Transitown Plaza on 19 conditions, 7–0, and a second 7–0 recommendation that the Town Board grant it the special exception use permit the drive-through needs — three months after this same board denied the same plan to send it to the Zoning Board of Appeals. The board also approved the minutes of its own July 1 meeting, the one the town never livestreamed, with one member abstaining because he had not been there. Absent from the docket entirely: LENCO Supplies' development plan, the last approval standing between a 43,000-square-foot store and a building permit.
The meeting did not begin on time, and the chairman explained why before he explained anything else: “we're holding the clock so that we finish the sign-in process.” It makes a more complete record, Sackett said, and “we kind of also guarantee ourselves community involvement in the decision-making process, which contrary to popular belief, we really want.” Three minutes into the recording, the room was still signing in.[1]
What they had come for was Item 1. Director of Community Development Jonathan Bleuer[*] laid it out: a vacant parcel of more than 50 acres on the north side of Lapp Road, east of Goodrich Road, previously approved in 2022 for three frontage lots. The new request is conceptual review of a four-lot open development area — four lots of five acres or more, strung along a single private driveway running back from Lapp — plus four sub-five-acre frontage lots on the road itself, two already under construction, and a lot-line adjustment transferring the back land to 9780 Lapp Road. The Town Board referred it here in August. Eight lots in all, on a road whose residents had brought a petition.[1][2]
Tom Reynolds[*], a professional engineer with Nussbaumer & Clarke[*] appearing for the LLC and for Kevin Gallagher[*], added almost nothing to that — the wetlands were delineated and verified by the Army Corps, and drainage will be contained on site and sent into them. Board member Keith Lukowski[*], who had the floor, had one question: what is the back lot for? Open space, recreational, came the answer. Pressed on what recreational meant, the owner was plain about it: “Just basically enjoying the outdoors. We hunt there, I take the grandkids in the back, and to keep some green space for the town.” A member walked him through the 30-foot strip on the east side — a buffer, crossed entirely by wetland, not a driveway and not legally drivable. You're going to walk through it, the member said. Correct.[1]
Then the applicant stepped aside and seven people took the microphone, one after another, for three minutes each, timed by Deputy Town Attorney David Donohue[*]. Not one spoke in favor.
The complaints sorted into four piles, and the board worked them one at a time. Traffic and speed: Reynolds[*] said Erie County's highway department will review the connections. Septic: designed and approved through the Erie County Department of Health; public water already runs down Lapp. Electricity: discussions with the power company “have not happened yet.” Flooding: nothing built in mapped floodplain, runoff detained on site and directed into the wetland rather than to the road or the neighbors.[1]
Two of the answers did not come from the applicant at all. Asked whether approving this would set a precedent, Bleuer[*] declined the premise — “every project is both unique and must be reviewed in a unique way” — and then made the more interesting point: Clarence's open development law has been on the books since 2005, and the town's subdivision rules are among the more restrictive his office has found, with a five-acre minimum lot size that makes the math unattractive. “That's probably why you don't see as many of these in town.” And Donohue[*] stepped in to remove an entire category of grievance from the board's jurisdiction: “the town doesn't own or regulate or maintain Lapp Road.” It is a county road. Speed, width and condition belong to Erie County. The town will pass the complaints along through the coordinated review — which is the one thing the evening actually produced.[1]
Lukowski[*] moved it: accept the Part 1 Environmental Assessment Form, seek lead agency status, commence a coordinated review among involved and interested agencies. Before the roll, Bleuer[*] read the written record into the minutes — a letter from two residents, comments from Michael Marini[*] at 10185 Lapp Road, and the petition, “indicated that it was signed by 102 residences,” submitted by someone the staff could not identify. Seven ayes. Sackett's closing line to a room that had come to stop a subdivision: “We'll be back in 30 days or more.”[1]
Anyone who watched seven neighbors object and then watched seven members vote aye could be forgiven for thinking the subdivision was approved Wednesday. It was not. Nothing was approved, and nothing was denied.
The motion did three procedural things under the State Environmental Quality Review Act — SEQR, which the recording renders throughout as “seeker.” It accepted the applicant's Part 1 Environmental Assessment Form, the applicant's own description of the project and its likely effects. It asked that this board be named lead agency, because exactly one agency has to own an environmental review. And it opened a coordinated review, which notifies every other agency with a stake — the county highway department, the county health department, the sewer district, the power company — and gives them a window, a minimum of 30 days, to write back.
Only after that does this board make a SEQR finding: either a negative declaration (no significant environmental impact, review over) or a demand for a full environmental impact statement. Concept plan approval comes after that. Development plan approval after that.
The residents' comments are not decoration in this process. The chairman said so directly: the board sends the project out “along with your comments that are on the record.”
Wednesday's three-minute turns at the microphone were public participation, not a public hearing, and the difference matters for anyone planning what to do next.
A referral is what happened here: the Town Board sent the file down to the Planning Board in August for review. No hearing is noticed for a referral, and none was. The Planning Board takes comment at its regular meetings as a matter of its own practice — the chairman's protocol speech spells out the rules, three minutes, address the board and not the applicant, no clapping.
A public hearing is a different animal: advertised in advance for a date and time, held by the board that grants the specific permit. The 7 Brew drive-through got its Planning Board recommendation Wednesday; its actual hearing will be at the Town Board, on a noticed date.
For Lapp Road the practical advice came from the chair, repeatedly, and it was not a brush-off: write a letter. Three minutes ends; the project file does not, and everything in it travels to the reviewing agencies.
Ordinary lots front on a public road. An open development area is the town's mechanism for lots that do not — parcels reached by a private driveway running back from the road, with no public street built and none for the town to plow or maintain.
Clarence has allowed them since 2005, under rules staff described as restrictive: each open development area lot must be at least five acres. The applicant added a second limit from the code — no more than four lots may use a shared drive, which is why the four homes planned along the Lapp Road frontage will have their own driveways onto Lapp rather than joining the private one.
That is also the honest answer to the resident who asked whether this sets a precedent for every deep lot on the road: the five-acre floor is what keeps the pattern rare, because few frontage lots are that big.
Most of the room left at the break. What they missed was the only completed approval of the night, and a fair demonstration of what this board does when it is not being asked to start something.
7 Brew wants a drive-thru coffee stand on an out-parcel at 4301 Transit Road, in Transitown Plaza, in the Major Arterial zone. Bleuer[*] recited the route it took to get back here: the Town Board referred it in June; in July this board denied the concept plan so the applicant could petition the Zoning Board of Appeals; the ZBA issued variances for the reduced building size, the front-yard setbacks and the reduced distance from the drive-through window to the right-of-way.[3] Since then the applicant has widened the green space along the right-of-way, changed the building lighting from blue to white, and replaced the structure's upper railing with an architectural wall.[1]
Jennifer Crack[*], for the developer, put a number on the concession that mattered most to the board: green space on the out-parcel is now “26, almost 27 percent,” which she said is well above code, with a landscaping plan built to show that they “don't just want a couple shrubs and bushes.” A member told her to expect the Landscape Committee to take a serious interest, this being a prominent stretch of Transit Road.[1]
Then came the queue. Gregory Todaro[*] had the floor and asked the blunt version twice, because the first attempt did not reach the microphone: “What guarantees that the queue will never extend onto Transit Road?” The answer was partly design — the site holds standard traffic, with overflow into the out-lot parking by agreement — partly staffing, with order-takers outside watching the line build, and partly a prediction: “as more 7 Brews open, the demand becomes less in the area,” the rep said, describing seven or eight more locations planned in the next six to eight months. The board did not take that on faith. It asked for the traffic control plan as a letter of commitment to the planning office — a written narrative, above and beyond the diagram, spelling out who does what and when, including the unanticipated spike nobody schedules.[1]
The only member of the public who spoke all night on Item 2 was a neighbor with a specific worry. Jen Whitmarsh[*], owner of Snappy Dry Cleaning[*] in the same plaza, was “not looking to stop progress by any means” but wanted to know which parking spaces the landlord had promised, because some are already spoken for. She then supplied the night's most quoted description of the plaza as it stands: “it's already a shat show. I don't swear, so it's a shat show.” No stop signs, she said, no nothing, except thick lines here and there. Two board members later used her phrase back at the applicant.[1]
The applicant's answer was that the spaces under discussion are the ones set back from the other storefronts, that nothing in front of an existing tenant is on the table, and that the landlord will not commit spaces he has already committed. Sackett pushed one step further and asked, twice, for something that is not a condition of anything: that 7 Brew simply tell its neighbor how the negotiation comes out. “We always ask neighbors to be collaborative.” The rep would have to go back to the franchisee and the landlord.[1]
Todaro[*] then read 19 conditions into the record — the same count that rode on LENCO's concept approval in July and on AJ's Tree Service before that, the house template — and two of them answer the evening directly. Condition 12: review of the traffic management plan before development plan approval, and “no vehicles shall be allowed to queue onto Transit Road.” Condition 11: an exterior sound plan, with no speaker permitted to push sound past the ambient level at the property line — a real constraint on a business whose order-taking is done outdoors. The chairman ran his standard colloquy: did you hear all 19, did you understand all 19, do you agree to all 19. Yes, yes, yes. Approved 7–0, then recommended for its drive-through permit 7–0.[1]
This is the second time in four months that a Clarence project has been denied by this board in order to advance it, and the pattern is worth naming because the word “denied” in a set of minutes means the opposite of what a reader assumes.
When a plan cannot comply with the zoning as written, the Planning Board cannot simply wave it through — but it also cannot send it to the Zoning Board of Appeals while the application is still live in front of it. Denying the concept plan is the procedural door. The applicant walks through it to the ZBA, gets the variances or does not, and comes back.
LENCO Supplies went that route in May and needed a use variance — permission for a kind of use the zone forbids outright. 7 Brew went in July and needed area variances — dimensional relief on building size, front setback and the drive-through window's distance to the right-of-way. Different variance, same door.
So a resident reading the July 1 minutes would find a denial, and the September 16 minutes an approval, for one continuous application that was never rejected on its merits.
Wednesday's two 7 Brew votes look alike and are not.
The concept plan approval is this board's own decision, final on its end. It settles what goes where in principle — the footprint, the circulation, the green space — and hangs 19 conditions on everything still unresolved.
The special exception use permit for the drive-through is not this board's to give. The Planning Board is only a recommending body on it; the Town Board grants or refuses it, after a noticed public hearing of its own. Wednesday's 7–0 is advice, delivered with the weight of a unanimous board behind it.
And one more step remains that is this board's, and is the one that matters for a shovel: development plan approval — the engineered version, where the grading, the lighting photometrics, the sound plan and that promised traffic letter are actually reviewed. Nothing gets built before it issues. The chairman said so on the way out: engineering and development plan next, and the letter should be part of it.
One exchange is worth keeping for later. A member pressed on the roads around the out-parcel — the unmarked drive to the south, the entrances the plaza shares — and asked whether 7 Brew would improve any of it, or whether the owner would. “It's not part of our project,” the rep said, offering to raise it with the property owner. The member did not pretend he could compel it, and said so: “I guess I can't force you to do it, but I think you should consider it.” It is the clearest statement of this board's actual reach all night — nineteen conditions inside the property line, and a request outside it.[1]
A two-item agenda leaves a lot of open files, and four of them belong to this board.
LENCO Supplies did not appear. The retail building of roughly 43,000 square feet proposed at 7631 Transit Road, at the Wolcott Road corner, has now cleared every gate but one: a SEQR negative declaration and a deny-to-advance from this board on May 20, a use variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals on June 9, concept plan approval with 19 conditions on July 1, and a special exception use permit granted 5–0 by the Town Board on September 9 after three residents spoke in favor and none against. The one remaining approval — development plan approval — is this board's, and it was not on Wednesday's agenda and was not mentioned. At the Town Board hearing the applicant's team said it was working with the Engineering Department; that work is not public until it produces an agenda item.[2]
STEM Automotive did not appear either. The building expansion at 10575 Main Street — an existing repair shop operating on a temporary conditional permit in the Hollow Traditional Neighborhood District — was referred to this board on August 26, the same day as the Lapp Road subdivision. Lapp Road made this agenda; STEM Automotive did not, and no date was given for it.[2]
The two Mattina Development plazas are where they should be. Both James Ryan Parkway projects entered coordinated review on August 19; the 30-day agency window the chairman described that night as “hurry up and wait” had not closed by Wednesday. Their absence from this agenda is the process working, not a file going quiet.[2]
Local Hollow Brewing remains unaccounted for. The outside-dining permit modification at 10737 Main Street — listed on the August 19 Town Board work session, absent August 26, absent September 9 — is a Town Board permit matter and would not be expected on a Planning Board agenda. It is noted here only because it has now gone a full month with no public record of any kind, and nothing Wednesday changed that.[2]
Two announcements from the September 9 Town Board meeting also failed to surface. Councilman Paul Shear[*] said that day that the town “currently ha[s] an opening on the Planning Board for another member” and is taking applications, and that the Town Board and Planning Board would meet jointly on Wednesday, September 30, in the evening, on the new code. Neither was mentioned Wednesday night. All seven of the board's sitting members — Lukowski[*], Tytka[*], Geasling[*], Todaro[*], Salvati, Bigler and Sackett — answered every roll call, as they did on July 15; the board that sat Wednesday was not short a chair. A joint session on a zoning rewrite, two weeks out, drew no reference from the body that would have to apply it.[1][2]
Five recorded roll calls plus adjournment. All seven members answered the opening roll and every subsequent one, on calls read by Senior Clerk Typist Amy Major: Chairman Robert Sackett, Vice-Chair Richard Bigler, 2nd Vice-Chair Wendy Salvati, and members Jason Geasling[*], Daniel Tytka[*], Keith Lukowski[*] and Gregory Todaro[*]. One abstention, no recusals, no dissent.
Moved and seconded from the floor immediately after the roll call; the chairman put it on the question and took a roll call. Seven members responded affirmatively.
Bleuer[*] caught the omission before introducing the first project — the July 1 minutes were also outstanding. Moved, seconded, roll call. Daniel Tytka[*] abstained, stating the reason on the record: “I was not present.” The other six voted aye.
These are the minutes of the July 1 meeting whose livestream never came up, and which this publication could therefore cover only from the posted agenda. They are the official record of, among other things, the 7 Brew concept plan denial that sent the applicant to the Zoning Board of Appeals — an outcome first confirmed on the record Wednesday.
Moved by Lukowski[*], seconded, pursuant to Article 8 of the Environmental Conservation Law: accept the Part 1 Environmental Assessment Form as submitted, seek lead agency status, and commence a coordinated review among involved and interested agencies on the proposed 9740 Lapp Road, LLC project at 9740 Lapp Road in the Agricultural Rural Residential zone. The unlisted action involves construction of four single-family open development area residential lots.
On the question, Bleuer[*] entered the written record: a letter from two residents; comments from Michael Marini[*] of 10185 Lapp Road; and a petition “indicated that it was signed by 102 residences,” submitted by a party staff could not identify. All are in the project file and were shared with the full board and the applicant.
This starts environmental review and approves nothing. Still ahead: a minimum of 30 days for involved and interested agencies to comment, a SEQR determination, concept plan review, and development plan review. Seven residents spoke, all opposed; none spoke in favor.
Moved by Todaro[*], seconded, approving the 7 Brew concept plan at 4301 Transit Road per the submitted plan by Carmina Wood Morris Design[*] dated June 23, 2026 with a final revision date of September 2, 2026, and the conceptual architectural drawings by Adam Crerar[*] dated July 7, 2026 and received in the planning office August 25, 2026, subject to 19 conditions: town engineer grading standards; fire code standards; development plan review including technical review by the town engineering department; building and engineering approval before any site-work permit; Erie County Division of Sewerage Management review for the sanitary connection; a site curbing plan submitted with landscaping and development plan review; Landscape Committee approval of the final landscape plan before development plan approval, including plantings, street trees, fencing and dumpster enclosure, with a maintenance plan keeping landscaping and fencing in perpetuity and replaced in kind; exterior mechanicals identified, detailed and screened on future submittals; a dumpster enclosure kept closed with garbage service in conformance with town code and no debris outside; review of the photometric lighting plan before development plan approval, dark-sky compliant, shielded from adjoining properties, nothing unshielded or above the roof line, no non-white colors, off within one hour of business hours except depicted security lighting; review of an exterior sound plan, with no exterior speaker emitting sound above the ambient level off the property; review of the traffic management plan before development plan approval, with no vehicles allowed to queue onto Transit Road; final building elevations with labeled materials and colors, of industry-standard quality; buildings and site maintained as approved in perpetuity; paved areas striped and maintained, no parking outside designated areas; no outside storage or display other than licensed vehicles without pre-approval; any additional business operation or operator subject to town review; permanent signage to the sign review committee and temporary signage to the office of planning and zoning; and open space and other applicable fees.
The applicant confirmed on the record that it heard, understood and agreed to all 19. On the question the board recorded that the proposal had previously been deemed a Type II action by the town, requiring no further review or action under SEQR, and that the Zoning Board of Appeals had granted area variances for dimensional relief. The condition read contained a numbering stumble — “number five” was said twice before correcting to six — and condition 9 was read as “garbage service shall not occur in conformance with town code” and corrected on the question to “shall occur.”
Moved by Todaro[*], seconded, recommending that the Town Board approve a special exception use permit for the 7 Brew project at 4301 Transit Road containing a drive-through facility. The Planning Board is the recommending body only; the permit issues from the Town Board, after its own noticed public hearing.
The chairman's send-off: engineering and development plan review next, and the promised letter of commitment on traffic flow should be part of that development plan submission.
With no other business, the chairman took a motion to adjourn. “So moved. Okay, we're adjourned.” No second and no vote of any kind is audible on the recording; it is recorded here as carried without a tally rather than as a unanimous vote.
This brief is built from the livestream of the 7:00 p.m. public meeting and the Town's official agenda for September 16, 2026. The Planning Board's 6:30 p.m. work session — which the agenda says covers State Environmental Quality Review Act items and a review of the agenda and miscellaneous items — is not broadcast, and nothing from it is reflected here except where it surfaced in the public meeting. Where this brief describes the Town Board's referrals, the LENCO permit, the Planning Board vacancy and the September 30 joint meeting, that material comes from the separately captured Town Board meetings of August 19, August 26 and September 9 and their agendas, cited below.
The agenda governs proper nouns and it settled three. The applicant is 9740 Lapp Road, LLC; the coffee project is 7 Brew, rendered variously on the recording as “Seven Brew,” “Sevenbrew” and, inside the second motion, “Southern Brew”; and the plaza is Transitown Plaza, which the audio gives as “Transtown” and “Transit Town.” The agenda describes Item 1 as a four-lot Open Development Area subdivision and does not mention the lot-line adjustment with 9780 Lapp Road; that came from staff on the record, and the eight-lot total in this brief is the four open development area lots plus the four frontage lots described by staff and the applicant. The September 9 Town Board brief described the same file as 57 acres and eight lots; staff on Wednesday called the parcel “over 50 acres.” Both figures are in the record and neither was reconciled in the room.
Street names were validated against the Town's official street index. The road at the center of the meeting is Lapp Road throughout; the validator flagged the transcript's “LAP Road” as ambiguous between Lapp Road and Elma Road and the agenda resolved it. Heise Road is rendered “Heisey Road” twice in resident testimony and is corrected here. One address, David Clark's[*], is given on the recording as “9881 Left Road” — a phrase the extractor never surfaced, caught on a manual read, and corrected to 9881 Lapp Road from context. Two flags were not acted on: the validator's suggestion to read “Erie County Road” as “Erie County Highway” is a false positive (the chairman was listing agencies — “be it Erie County Sewer, be it Erie County Road”), and a resident's reference to flooding on what transcribes as “Irish road” matches nothing on the town's index; it is left unresolved and unnamed here rather than forced onto a similar Clarence street. Out-of-town references — Wilson, Amherst, Buffalo, Nashville — were left alone, as was the hamlet name Clarence Center.
One date does not work. Staff recited the 7 Brew history as a June referral, a July denial, and then variances issued by the Zoning Board of Appeals “in January” — which cannot follow a July denial. The month is treated here as a transcription error and is deliberately omitted rather than guessed at; the substance of the ZBA action (relief on building size, front-yard setback and drive-through window distance, characterized on the question as area variances for dimensional standards) is reported as stated. The Clarence ZBA is not live-streamed and its minutes run two to three months behind, so the date will be confirmable only when those minutes post.
One name in the written record is not reliable. Reading the file into the minutes, staff cited a letter from “Jean and Charlene” with a surname the recording gives as “Lukowski” — which is also a board member's name and the word the transcription engine hears most often at this board's roll call. The resident who spoke at the microphone was Charlene Brogowsky[*] of 9785 Lapp Road. The letter is reported here without the surname rather than corrected or repeated.
Names carrying [*] were corrected against the Town's verified Planning Board roster and the agenda, or are heard only in audio and remain unverified. Every board surname needed work: the recording gives “Lakowski” for Lukowski, “Taika” for Tytka, “Giesling” for Geasling, and “Tadaro,” “Ricciadaro,” “Mr. Jaro” and “Mr. Jadaro” for Todaro; the chairman's own name is called “Robert Second” in one roll. Director of Community Development Jonathan Bleuer appears as “Mr. Bloor,” “Mr. Bluer” and “Mr. Blur”; Deputy Town Attorney David Donohue as “Mr. Donahue”; the councilman who led the Pledge is Paul Shear (“Councilman Scheer”); the clerk the chairman calls “Annie” is Senior Clerk Typist Amy Major; and SEQR is rendered “seeker” throughout. Applicants, engineers, architects, design representatives and residents appear only in audio — agendas list entities, not people — so all of those names remain unverified pending official minutes: Tom Reynolds and Nussbaumer & Clarke, Kevin Gallagher, Charlene Brogowsky, Frank Carpenter, Tim Heller, Thomas Dunning (who spelled his own surname for the record), David Clark, Holly Kojumko, the speaker who gave only the first name “Connie,” Michael Marini, Jennifer Crack, Anthony Pandolfi, Adam Crerar, Jen Whitmarsh and Snappy Dry Cleaning. Two of those deserve a sharper caution. The firm the 7 Brew developer's representative named is not in the agenda and is rendered on the recording as “Oil Development Group,” which matches no firm this publication can verify; it is omitted rather than guessed. And the architect credited in the motion as “Adam Crerar” carries a specific risk — this pipeline has previously caught the same engine rendering the surname Kreher as “Crerar.” A third member of the 7 Brew team is referred to twice as “John”; no introduction for him is captured and he is not named here.
Two roll-call artifacts, stated rather than smoothed. In the July 15 minutes vote, Lukowski's[*] response transcribes as “Here” rather than “Aye” — the clerk had just read the identical name list for attendance, and he is called and votes in all four other roll calls. And the adjournment carries no second and no audible vote; it is recorded above as carried without a tally rather than presented as unanimous.