Vestal Cottage Development Plans Dropped

As some residents living near a planned housing project off Bunn Hill Road in Vestal vowed a fight last week, the developer reportedly withdrew the application for the apartment complex May 3.

LCD Acquisitions of Athens, Georgia, also known as Landmark Properties, has not commented on the move to drop the plans for 58, multi-bedroom cottages.

The 42-acre site where the apartment complex had been planned is located near the Binghamton University Vestal Campus and could have housed several hundred people in the largely rural area.

Landmark Properties had billed itself as “the nation’s top developer of student housing” and had sought a zoning change to allow for the construction of the two-to-five bedroom cottages and 700 parking spaces.

Opponents had complained the development would negatively impact a bird sanctuary and hiking trails and increase erosion problems along Bunn Hill Creek.

Plans for a student housing project at the same site in 2008 fell to neighborhood opposition.