A powder coating shop wants the old garage lot at 751 Route 40. The Planning Board hears it Wednesday.

Update, October 7: The Planning Board approved the permit. The public hearing drew no comment; the applicant, Ken Murray, told the board the work is all indoors, mostly powder coating of parts rather than whole vehicles, with three to five pickups or drop-offs a week and no set hours. The board issued a negative SEQR declaration and then approved the site plan and special use permit unanimously. The 8-by-20 storage container is allowed outright under the zoning code, so it was not a condition of the permit. One wrinkle for the record: the hearing notice gave the parcel as Tax Map #206.-1-11, while the chairman’s agenda and the hearing as read give #51.01-1-6. Our summary of the meeting is in the minutes archive. The original story follows.

The small commercial lot at 751 Route 40 in Melrose is back on the Planning Board’s agenda, this time with a different kind of business. The town posted a public hearing notice this week for The Kustom Addiction, whose owner, Ken Murray, is seeking a special use permit and site plan approval to run a powder coating, metal finishing and refinishing shop there, and to place an 8-by-20-foot shipping container on the property.

The hearing is Wednesday, October 7 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 290 Northline Drive. The parcel, Tax Map #206.-1-11, sits in the Hamlet zoning district, where this kind of use needs the board’s permission rather than being allowed outright.

What powder coating is, and why the board will ask about it

Powder coating is a dry finishing process: a part is sprayed with charged powder and then baked in an oven so the coating flows and cures. It is common for wheels, railings, truck parts and furniture, and it is cleaner than wet spray painting because there is no solvent. The questions a planning board typically asks are about the oven and its venting, how parts are stripped before coating (sandblasting or chemical stripping), where media and waste go, hours, noise, and how much customer traffic and parking a shop generates. In a Hamlet district with houses nearby, those are the details that decide conditions on a permit.

The application also lists “metal finishing and refinishing,” which is broader than powder coating alone. It would be worth asking at the hearing exactly which processes are proposed.

The history of the address

Readers with long memories will recognize the lot. The site was SRM Motors, a repair shop, for years. In September 2022 Al’s Towing and Motor Vehicle Repair came to the Planning Board proposing a minor repair shop and used-car sales there, and the discussion turned quickly to safety: the code enforcement officer described dismantled cars crowding the Route 40 frontage at a blind curve with a 40 mph limit that traffic ignores, and said the state DOT had visited. The Planning Board asked the Zoning Board of Appeals whether the operation was a repair station or a junkyard, and in February 2023 the ZBA ruled it a motor vehicle junkyard, a use not permitted in the Hamlet district, after the company produced no records of repair work.

Our minutes archive has the full record: Planning Board, September 7, 2022, ZBA, December 8, 2022 and ZBA, February 2, 2023.

None of that history attaches to the new applicant. But it does mean the board, the code officer and the neighbors know the lot’s constraints well, especially the sight lines on that curve and how much can be stored outside. Expect the shipping container and any outdoor storage to get attention.

The rest of Wednesday’s agenda

The agenda, posted October 5, carried three other items: final approval of the Fane one-lot subdivision at 5 Warren Lane, a pre-filing conference on a roughly 71-acre Kocienski timber harvest on the west side of Route 40 north of Route 67, and review of the September 2 minutes. At the meeting the board granted final approval to the Fane and Madigan subdivisions and set a November public hearing on the timber harvest. Details are in the meeting summary.

How to comment

In person Wednesday at 7, or in writing to the Town Clerk, 290 Northline Drive, Melrose, NY 12121, or townclerk@townofschaghticoke.org. The notice is on our notices board.

Sources: the Town of Schaghticoke public hearing notice dated September 30, 2026 and posted on the town site (text only, no PDF); the chairman’s October 7 agenda; a community recording of the October 7 meeting; the town’s Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals minutes for September 7, 2022, December 8, 2022 and February 2, 2023, as summarized in our archive. The description of powder coating is general background, not a description of this applicant’s proposed process.