From Auburn resident Walt Aikman

A company named Calamar is working with the owners of several wooded lots between North Lewis and Catlin Streets, Standart & Grant Avenues to build more than 100 senior/low-income housing units, 80-odd garages, several parking areas, two roads (one from North Lewis and the other from Catlin), and a huge storm water retention basin in a quiet and stable R-1 neighborhood. If it is built, the three-story senior/low-income housing project will loom over a great neighborhood and send out a lot of unwanted and unnecessary bright light, noise, and traffic. Huge, multi-unit housing like this is not what Auburn seniors said they wanted when the City used $55k of special HUD funds to hire the nationally recognized Novogradac & Company to conduct the Auburn Housing Market Study in 2006. Most seniors are looking to downsize from their two-story colonial homes into single-story living, the study reported, noting that ranch homes are in particularly high demand. Seniors want small, single-floor detached ranch-style homes; not dorm rooms, shoe-horned into remote Citys back lots far from friends and services. In the process of building senior/low-income housing that is not needed and not wanted, the developers will cut down one the last five contiguous urban forests found on private, residentially zoned land in the City of Auburn. While this is not outstanding timberland, the emerging forest in this nice little bit of urban open space does buffer the neighborhood from bright lights and traffic noise on Grant Ave. If the developers tear down these woods, there will seventeen more acres of woods lost, and all the water retention, cooling effects, wildlife habitat, and property values will be lost. The sewer and water woes are even worse. The sewer discharge from this proposed development will overwhelm the Citys North Sewer Interceptor and place more residents in Standart Woods apartments at risk to sewer overflows into lower level apartments. This huge sewer pipe drains all the developed Grant Avenue corridor from the Home all the way out to Lowes. It crosses under Grant Ave. between Walgreens and Taco Bell, then follows Hunter Brook through the Standart Woods apartments on the way out to the Citys Sewer/Storm water Storage and Release facility found at the end of John Walsh Blvd. (the road to no-where). Years ago this sewer line was upgraded to handle the massive combined sewer flow that used to flood the Standart Woods area every time it rained, and even now it cant handle the extra flow from the huge housing complex planned for the woods behind North Lewis and Catlin Streets. Lets do something! Come to the City Planning Boards meeting on Tuesday, 3rd April, at 6:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall. Please come and get involved in caring for Auburns threatened neighborhoods and our shrinking urban forest!