A development that has the potential to reshape a vast swath of Amherst's core over the next decade took its first steps forward Monday.
The Town Board paved the way for the construction of a medical and surgery center near the Northtown Center recreation complex.
This project is the launching point for an ambitious redevelopment of Amherst's athletic fields and Audubon Golf Course – and the transformation of the former Westwood Country Club into a nature park.
"We don't have facilities like that in Amherst," Amherst Supervisor Brian J. Kulpa said during the meeting held online because of Covid-19 precautions. "I would venture to say we don't have facilities like that in Erie County."
But the approvals came over the fierce objections of a small number of residents who raised concern about the scope of the development proposal and a lack of public input into town planning.
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They said the town hasn’t shared details as it has negotiated with developers, and Amherst is giving up too much in exchange for its pie-in-the-sky park plans.
"Do we know this is an honest process?" asked Donald Smith, a North Long Street resident, who derided "glorious PowerPoint presentations" lacking real detail.
Since 2012, the town has wrestled with what to do with the Westwood Country Club site, which was purchased by the Mensch Capital Partners group that year.
Neighbors of the golf club opposed the construction of housing, retail and other elements on the property, and the project eventually stalled.
Since 2018, however, Kulpa has tried to fit Westwood within a wider Amherst Central Park linking the former country club to the University at Buffalo North Campus.
Kulpa and Mark E. Hamister, Mensch’s managing partner, in recent months hashed out a deal that would see the town turn over nearly 53 acres of sports fields just east of the Northtown Center, including the three westernmost holes on the Audubon Golf Course, to Mensch.
In return, Mensch would hand the town the 170-acre former Westwood Country Club.
While final details still must be settled, concept plans show the town transforming the Westwood site into a nature park with a theater arts building and turning the 18-hole Audubon course into an updated nine-hole course with a virtual reality golf experience and fields and courts for baseball, cricket, pickleball and other uses.
Mensch is considering constructing mixed-use buildings, senior housing, a day care and other development on a good portion of the 53 acres.
The first phase has a two-story, 195,000-square-foot medical and surgery center for practices connected to UBMD and Kaleida Health that would go on current sports fields to the east of the town's ice rink complex.
The Bones and Guts LLC group behind the roughly $40 million medical center also envisions building a four-story, 800-car parking ramp in a later stage.
The Town Board on Monday voted to rezone the 15-acre site where the medical building and parking ramp would go. The board also approved a contract with Bones and Guts and a tentative agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding, with Mensch that outlines the broader land swap and that required action by the town's self-imposed Monday deadline.
And the board voted to establish an Amherst Central Park task force led by Jonathan Dandes, a longtime executive with Rich Baseball Operations and board chair of the Erie County Medical Center.
Bones and Guts still must receive site plan approval. And the Mensch group and town must figure out the value of Amherst's 53 acres compared to Mensch's 170 acres before completing the land swap.
"The MOUs are a starting point to talk more," said Town Board member Deborah Bruch Bucki, referring to the tentative agreements.
While some speakers praised the project’s potential, most of the dozen or so people who spoke Monday night at two separate board meetings raised numerous concerns about what lies ahead.
They wondered who will pay for any required environmental cleanup of the Westwood site and other project costs, expressed skepticism over the need for the medical center and questioned why the town must give up recreational space now on the uncertain promise of costly future replacement space.
"This is simply a giveaway to the developers," said Mary Shapiro, a former town Planning Board member.
