Water Street Brewing Company’s final site plans were officially approved by the Planning Commission during their latest meeting. P-J file photo

The city Planning Commission has approved the site plan for the Water Street Brewing Company.

Owner Chase Churchill and EcoStrategies Engineering Civil Engineer Andy Johnson briefly discussed some Planning Commission members coming down to visit the site since the last meeting before going into the official site plans. A question was brought up about some of the planned changes to the asphalt and parking area and whether there would be a barrier between the parking and planned green space.

Drainage has also been an issue discussed before with the project, with Mark Roetzer, city public works director, asking for more drains to be added to the project. The original plan was to have a drain go out and collect in a specific place, but since then it has been noted that people will be walking over that area a lot and it could get wet so the plans have now changed to move the drain to a different area, with the possibility of creating a type of rain garden area. This is also in connection to recommendations made by Twan Leenders of the Chautauqua Watershed Conservancy, who has toured the property and made some recommendations about being near the Chadakoin River and taking the turtle population into account.

“What I’ll say is, I know we’ve talked about this in previous meetings, but if and when you do upgrade your parking lot, then we’ll look at the drainage again,” Roetzer said. “For me, for adding a little bit of blacktop, this is plenty as far as drainage.”

The paving of the parking lot is not planned for this year, and Roetzer said once they do that they will need to come in for permits and that is when more drainage work will be done. Churchill said the plan from the beginning has been to be thinking several steps ahead, and for the parking lot they know they will need to be working on drainage eventually, so right now they are thinking about what that will look like.

A question was then raised about a walkway or making a walkable space by the river.

“The plan is to make it a nice spot so people can walk along the river’s edge and hopefully see over the bank and enjoy the beauty of the river itself,” Churchill said. “The fence that I think you see is that darker black line on there, we’ll have to make sure it fits all codes, but based on talking to Twan a little bit about the turtles and also liability about having young children and things and people generally near there, it would be a fence that’s probably about waste high and mostly it is really nicely done with wood. The one we looked at has a screen mesh on it that’s really see-through for the most part.”

The goal, Churchill said, is to protect young children and people going through there while not prohibiting the turtles from coming up the bank.

Other aspects of the site plan discussed included the green space, specific lighting for the turtles, the ability for the project to potentially improve the area over time, planning things in conjunction with the River Walk if the walk comes down that far in the future – though there is no current plan for that – and that the auxiliary buildings or structures will require additional permits. The stabilization of some of the features will also be a separate project.

Water Street Brewing Company’s final site plans were officially approved by the Planning Commission.