Planners Suggest 'Green Apron'
From Main Street To Doubleday
By JIM KEVLIN • allotsego.com
COOPERSTOWN – Having learned Monday evening that local folks consider Doubleday Field a major “icon” and “destination,” Elan's planners this evening proposed a "green apron" leading from Main Street to the front door of baseball’s foremost shrine, dissecting the 130-car parking lot.
Instead of dodging cars pulling in and out of parking spaces, fans and tourists could stroll up to the "Home of Baseball" – as Doubleday is being called these days (rather than "birthplace") – along a 12-foot-wide walkway lined by a grassy strip where youngsters (and not-so-youngsters) might be tossing a ball back and forth.
To the west, where the village's Chestnut Street lot and Vinnie Russo's private parking lot are now, perhaps there would be a parking deck, low-slung and landscaped, replacing the 30 spaces that would be eaten up by the "green apron" and adding many more.
Emcee Lisa Nagle, Elan Planning’s principal partner, emphasized this evening's presentation was an initial effort to respond in an initial way to inputs provided by a 90 participants in Monday's visioning session and not carved in concrete. It was part two of a two-part “Design Charrette.”
The Doubleday piece was perhaps the most dramatic of a number of ideas the Elan team presented in four areas of interest. All of the ideas, with related maps, drawings and charts, will be posted in the next few days on a web site the planners are setting up specifically for that purpose. The other three areas are as follows:
