Letter from Chip Northrup

Alternate Housing Sites Are Available

The Notre Dame Cooperstown Land Use Plan identified affordable housing as a need for the village. One of the sites they recommended were the vacant fields on Brooklyn Avenue leading to the Clark Sports Center. The study did not recommend clear-cutting the forest on Irish Hill for apartments, nor did it recommend demolishing an historic building in Fly Creek for apartments, as previously proposed by the owner of the Irish Hill property and the Brooklyn Avenue land. For that matter, it didn’t recommend block-busting an historic single-family home block for an apartment. What it did recommend and what village officials should encourage is to develop affordable housing and apartments in under-developed areas. Fortunately, the village has recently annexed the industrial land along Linden Avenue that is now used as a storage yard by the county. Those facilities can be relocated outside of the village, and the land zoned for multi-family housing. No more block-busting or clear-cutting necessary. And Brooklyn Avenue can remain a scenic meadow. A win-win-win, as if a triple play.

Chip Northrup
Cooperstown