Village of Williamsville Planning & Architectural Review Board·July 20, 2026
Two Main Street redevelopments · A facade fight · A historic creek wall · Three waivers
At a special July meeting the village did not have on its calendar, the Planning & Architectural Review Board gave the 5630 Main Street waterfront restaurant a split decision — approving its site plan 6-0 with three waivers, then tabling the building's architecture 6-0 after the exterior finish quietly changed from stucco to EIFS, a material village code bars on a one-story building. Members said they felt misled by the unmarked switch; the room briefly boiled over before a member asked everyone to “take a breath.” Earlier, the board approved the 5800 Main Street site-plan modification 7-0 with conditions, after the Zoning Board of Appeals granted that project seven variances. A recurring subplot — a failing historic stone wall along Ellicott Creek, its screening trees already cut — ended with the board and village attorney concluding the wall is a matter for the state DEC and the Army Corps, not the village. The one housekeeping item on the docket, a review of the board's own Rules of Procedure, was tabled to a future night. The next meeting is September 8.
The project the board tabled twice on June 1 came back on July 20, and left with exactly half of what it wanted. The 5630 Main Street restaurant redevelopment — a tight corner parcel where Main meets Mill Street, hard against Ellicott Creek behind Glen Park — won approval of its site plan, 6-0, but its architecture was tabled, 6-0, sending the design back for the second meeting running. The site-plan vote came with three granted waivers and a page of conditions; the architecture vote came with a warning that most of a chapter of the design code still has to be answered.
The engineer, Jason Burford[*] of Greenman-Pedersen Inc. (GPI), walked the board through revised drawings that had cleared the village's Environmental Advisory Council at a special session and swapped in native plant species. The site plan tightened up as the board worked it: the trash-tote enclosure will slide about four feet north so a “man door” can be cut beside it — a fix aimed at a chronic village gripe that staff prop the heavy main gates open rather than wrestle them — and the enclosure will be fully four-sided. The lot lands at five parking spaces, one accessible. Along the creek, where the board has worried for two meetings about napkins blowing into the water, the plan adds black vinyl-coated screening fabric on the existing state DOT rail behind the decorative fence and new plantings.
Then the mood changed. When the board turned to how the building will look, the applicant's architect presented an exterior finish of EIFS — a foam-backed synthetic stucco, sold here under the Dryvit brand. The problem: the village told the board in May the finish would be true stucco, not EIFS, and the code allows EIFS only as a decorative accent on upper stories — and this is a one-story building. “I feel like we were misled about what the proposal was for last month,” the chair said. The applicant answered that the stucco contractors it had lined up could no longer do the work, forcing the pivot, and that “no one was misled.” It offered a smooth Hardie board (fiber-cement) panel as a fallback.
The exchange sharpened — one member said the applicant “came with a chip on his shoulder,” another asked to “dial this down” and “take a breath” — before the board pulled back to the code. Members pressed a second point: with the screening trees gone, the building's blank west elevation now faces the creek and the Glen Park walkway in full view, and standard masonry block is barred on a primary facade. Unable to resolve the material or the wrap-around question in the room, the board tabled the architecture and told the applicant to come back having identified exactly which waivers it will seek.
Williamsville's board is a combined Planning & Architectural Review Board: in a single sitting it reviews a project's site plan (parking, drainage, refuse, landscaping, access) and, separately, its architecture (materials, facade, massing). The two get their own motions — which is how 5630 Main Street could be both approved and sent back on the same night. The site plan is settled; the applicant may proceed to engineer those site details. The building's exterior is not: it returns for another architectural review before anything gets built above the foundation.
A waiver is the board's own latitude to relax a specific site-plan standard when a constrained lot can't reasonably meet it — distinct from a variance, which only the Zoning Board of Appeals can grant. The three waivers here all traded required perimeter landscaping for grass, curbing, or asphalt along the property edges.
The evening's clean approval went to 5800 Main Street, a parking-lot reconstruction and site-plan modification the board passed 7-0 with conditions. The item arrived already carrying seven area variances the Zoning Board of Appeals had granted just before the meeting — a point the applicant's representative pressed when the board reopened a question about screening a rear “snow storage” area along a residential boundary. Gary Palumbo, the Town of Amherst planner who reviews the village's site plans, said he had not sent that rear screening for a variance because he did not read it as required; village attorney Chip Grieco said the interpretation was the board's to make, subject to the ZBA.
Rather than force the point, the board approved the plan and wrote the protection into a condition: if the neighbors' existing fences along the north and northwest lines ever come down, a six-foot opaque fence must go up in their place. The other conditions require the interior landscape islands to carry at least three feet of clean planting soil, and an accessible parking space in the rear lot, striped and signed, placed nearest the two rear service doors. The reconstruction, all sides agreed, leaves the lot better than the all-asphalt condition it replaces — green islands where there were none.
Running underneath the 5630 Main Street review was a problem no one at the table could permit away: the site's old stone-and-concrete wall along Ellicott Creek — a local landmark opposite the Glen Park footbridge — is failing, and the screening trees that had grown along it were already cut down as “phase one” of the work. With the trees gone and the stumps left to rot, members warned, erosion of the wall will only accelerate. They wanted a commitment that it will be repaired.
The commitment, it turned out, is not the village's to compel. Grieco and Palumbo walked through the jurisdiction: repairing the wall is not a village building-permit action — the code officer confirmed he would not issue one — and any real reconstruction will need a state DEC permit, likely a joint permit with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, plus a State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) consultation because the wall is a local landmark. The village has no tree-cutting law on private property, so the removal broke no village rule either. The board's takeaway: approve the site plan, which sits east of the wall, and let the wall travel its own regulatory track — while noting, as Grieco did, that the owners had already been told in writing the wall is their responsibility.
A creek wall sits at the intersection of several authorities. Work in or over a waterway like Ellicott Creek is regulated by the New York State DEC and, often, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — not the village. Because this wall is a designated local landmark, changing it can also trigger a SHPO historic-preservation review. The Planning Board's reach is the site — parking, landscaping, drainage on dry land — so it approved that and left the wall to the agencies that actually hold the permit pen. Routine in-kind maintenance may be exempt; a full reconstruction would not be.
Chair Catherine Waterman-Kulpa presided; all seven members answered the roll at the top (Colleen Leiker, Walter Pacer, Thomas Petrocelli, Eugene Richards, Wesley Stone, and David Vitka — one response was indistinct in the audio), and the 5800 Main vote carried 7-0. The count at the table fell to six later in the long session, so the 5630 Main motions and the tabling votes carried 6-0. Also at the table: village attorney Chip Grieco, Building & Zoning Clerk Carol Boeck, Town of Amherst planner Gary Palumbo, and Trustee liaison Jeffrey Hahn. Vote tallies below are as recorded in the meeting audio; official minutes are not yet posted.
Motion to approve the minutes of the June 1, 2026 meeting; moved and seconded, carried on a voice vote at the top of the meeting.
Motion to approve the site-plan modification for 5800 Main Street as submitted (sheets SP-101/SP-102), subject to conditions: the shrub-planting detail revised so interior landscape areas carry a minimum three-foot planting-soil depth free of construction debris; an accessible parking space provided in the rear lot with striping and signage, adjacent to the garbage corral and nearest the two rear service doors; and, at such time as the existing neighboring fences along the north and northwest boundaries are removed, a six-foot opaque fence to be installed in their place. The board noted the Zoning Board of Appeals had granted seven variances for the project prior to this meeting. Seconded by member Petrocelli.
Three separate waiver motions, each carried 6-0: (1) §112-16-E2 — required landscaping along the north boundary by the neighboring building waived in favor of grass; (2) §112-16-E3A — required parking-perimeter landscaping at the five-foot maintenance easement waived to allow curbed asphalt with a double-sided “no through traffic” sign, preserving physical connection to the property to the north; (3) §112-16-D-2-B and D-2-D — minimum parking-setback screening along Main Street waived. The waivers were voted before the site-plan resolution.
Motion to approve the 5630 Main Street site plan (site plan only; building elevations struck from this approval) as submitted June 26, 2026 and modified by revision 3 (LA-1, dated 7-20-26), with changes: the tote/dumpster enclosure moved about four feet north to create a man-door gap between the fully four-sided enclosure and the building for access to the west side-yard storage; the area north of the enclosure to be grass in place of broken asphalt; five parking spaces (four interior, one accessible along the new concrete path from Main Street); wildflower plantings changed to a ground-cover type. Seasonal outdoor seating and signage are expressly not approved here and require separate action; engineering and planning technical comments to be satisfied before stamped plans. Seconded; carried.
Motion to table the architectural review of 5630 Main Street to give the applicant time to address the board's concerns and identify the waivers it will seek. Open issues: the exterior finish (proposed EIFS/Dryvit is barred on a one-story primary facade; a smooth Hardie-board alternative was floated); treatment of the west (creek-facing) elevation, now exposed after tree removal, where standard masonry block is prohibited on a primary facade; and unresolved questions under §112-16-F/G on facade materials, wrapping, and transparency. Seconded by member Petrocelli.
The lone Miscellaneous item — a review of the Planning & Architectural Review Board's own Rules of Procedure — was tabled, with a member moving to set it aside after the long site-plan session. Seconded; carried.
Motion to adjourn; seconded by member Vitka; carried. The next Planning Board meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, September 8, 2026, with a work session at 6:30 p.m. and the regular meeting at 7 p.m.
This was a special meeting — the village's published 2026 schedule shows no July Planning Board date; the meeting was called and its agenda posted about ten days out. This brief is built from the live capture of the village's meeting video and the posted agenda; the board's official July 20 minutes are not yet posted (the meeting was held the evening before publication), so votes and attendance are reported as recorded in the audio. Two honest caveats: all seven members answered the roll at the top and the 5800 Main vote carried 7-0, but one roll-call response was indistinct and the count at the table fell to six later in the session (later motions carried 6-0) — which member stepped away will be confirmed against the minutes. The individual representatives for the 5800 Main applicant are named only in the audio and are left unnamed here pending the minutes. Street names were validated with street_check.py against the Town of Amherst street inventory — the Village of Williamsville sits within the Town of Amherst, so its streets are carried on that list — and the references found (Main Street, Academy Street) matched exactly, with none flagged. [*] marks a proper noun corrected from a likely transcription error — here, engineer Jason Burford of GPI (rendered “Berkley”/“Berthford” in the audio). “EIFS” is the industry term the audio renders as “EFIS”; Dryvit is a brand of it.