A developer's plan for nine new industrial buildings on Morgan Road ran into a wall of board skepticism at the Clay Planning Board's Aug. 13 meeting, with members telling the applicant to come back with more homework done before the board would move the project forward. The proposal, filed as Case #2025-041, calls for one 60,000-square-foot light industrial building and eight smaller 4,800-square-foot buildings on 17.39 acres on the east side of Morgan Road, all leased out for contractor or office use. No tenant has been lined up yet for the large building, which would have loading docks and tractor-trailer parking on both its eastern and western sides. The site plan showed 394 parking spaces where town code calls for 411. Town Engineer Ron DeTota read comments the Onondaga County Planning Board had submitted that same day into the record: the site is vacant and largely wooded, and significant wetlands sit close enough that the county wants either a negative jurisdictional determination from the state Department of Environmental Conservation or coordination with regional DEC staff if a wetland permit turns out to be required. Chairman Russ Mitchell added his own concern about the Morgan Road entrance and exit, noting an existing school nearby and saying a traffic study will be necessary before the board can sign off. Board member Karen Guinup reminded the applicant, according to the minutes, that a planning board meeting is not a work session, and said a pre-planning meeting could have resolved these issues before the case ever reached the board; member Jim Palumbo and member Hal Henty made the same point. Palumbo also raised a separate question about the eight smaller buildings, which could end up housing offices, contractors, home builders or landscaping firms that need to store equipment or materials outdoors, something the current plan doesn't show space for. Mitchell said that if the project is built in three phases, as discussed, the site plan needs to spell that out. The board adjourned the case to Sept. 24, 2025, on a 7-0 vote, sending the applicant back to address the parking count, the wetlands questions and the traffic study before its next appearance. Morgan Road wasn't the only case to run into a technicality. The board voted 7-0 to deny a special permit for outside storage at Pack Rat Storage on Wetzel Road (Case #2025-039), but Mitchell said the denial is a formality of sorts, since an earlier site plan for the same property already established a precedent for outdoor storage there. An amended site plan is expected back before the board in two weeks. Two larger projects did clear the board outright. Members approved a negative SEQR declaration and full site plan for the long-pending hotel proposed at the former Wegmans Great Northern site on State Route 31, now that fire district and wetland documentation has come in. They also approved a negative declaration and an amended site plan for a United Auto Supply renovation on Oswego Road, which added a required sewer lateral and labeled its pump station. The board also recommended two zone-change referrals to the Town Board: one for McDonald's USA to align zoning across the Wegmans Plaza parcel on West Taft Road, and one for a Morgan Road property owner, Marc Lebiedzinski, seeking an R40 designation to accommodate a septic system. Beyond that, the night was largely a holding pattern. Six other site-plan cases were pushed to September without votes on their substance, including a Byrne Dairy project on Buckley Road, where resident Denise Murray asked whether a traffic study had been done at what she called a busy intersection; Mitchell noted the Town Board had already reviewed a traffic study before approving the project's special permit in July. The meeting adjourned at 9:01 p.m.