IDA Ends Broad Band Project,

Puts Pony Farm On Fast Track

Rebuffed By County, Board Focuses On Own Priorities

ONEONTA – The Otsego County IDA has received 20 queries from small businesses with expansion plans, but will now forward them to the county after a key committee has decided not to participate in “single point of contact” economic development.

“We remain open to cooperating,” said Sandy Mathes, the IDA’s CEO, at the end of an action-packed meeting. “But we are happy we can now focus on things that we can do.”

The IDA board today reviewed a letter from count Rep. Betty Anne Schwerd, R-Edmeston, who chairs the Inter-govermental Affairs Committee, saying the IGA “is not taking action at this time” on transferring small-business and community-development responsibilities, which the IDA had offered to assume.

County Board Chair Kathy Clark, R-Otego, was at the IDA meeting, and said she was seeing Schwerd’s letter for the first time.

At Wednesday’s county board meeting, Schwerd said the county Economic Development Office, which has lost all its staff, had received on ec-dev queries. It surfaced today the county has hired a temp to answer the phones, but that’s the extent of the staffing.

The relationship with the county was a small part of a decision-packed meeting in the IDA’s new quarters on the fifth floor of 189 Main, and among the foremost decisions the Otsego County IDA reached this morning were:

• One, it terminated Comp Direct USA’s project to provide broadband Internet access to all corners of the county after concerns weren’t met that, if the county’s communication towers were used, it would interfere with emergency transmissions.

The county’s topography may require that Comp Direct’s wireless plan be replaced with one that uses fiber-optic cable in community centers, with wireless to fill gaps in rural areas, according Mathes.

• Two, it approved an agreement with Delaware Engineering P.C. to have sites “shovel ready” in the Pony Farm Industrial Park within four months.

Mathes said Pony Farm is closer to “shovel ready” status than he anticipate, with access to water, sewerage and I-81, and with both vacant buildings and acreage for new construction. He noted Clough Harbour, the IDA’s previous consultants, and recommended sites for several small buildings, but demand seems to be for larger structures.

• Three, the IDA board approved five applications for CFA funds, and four for CDBG funding.

The CFA applications are for Springbrook ($390,000), a dome over field adjacent to the former National Soccer Hall of Fame ($100,000), Morris Tent ($64,000), Custom Electronics ($150,000) and Cooperstown Bat Co. ($50,000).

The CDBG applications are for the IDA’s prospective Susquehanna Center for Jobs ($750,000), upgrading Springbrook’s group homes ($400,000), ag microenterprise grants ($400,000) and a feasibility study of uses for the former D&H yards.