WHITHER COOPERSTOWN?
Attend Thursday’s Community Open House
To Help Chart Future Of Baseball Town, USA
By JIM KEVLIN • from The Freeman’s Journal
COOPERSTOWN – Last October, a two-day “charrette” – a planning exercise – sought inputs from 60 participants on what Cooperstown’s future should hold.
In the eight months since, Elan Planning staffers and a community advisory board have been reviewing the results, and will lay out preliminary conclusions at an all-day Community Open House, 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Thursday, June 11, at the fire hall on Chestnut Street.
There, attendees – and planners are encouraging everyone to attend – will find a series of “idea stations” based on “nodes” suggested at the charrettes: Doubleday Field, Lakefront Park, the Railroad Avenue area and others. Attendees are encouraged to write their comments or reactions on Post-In Note pages at each station.
There’s also a set of stations for children, said Elan planner Sue Caruvana: “We’re encouraging people to bring their kids along, to get them involved. They can either write comments or draw pictures.”
“You can be there five minutes. You can be there two hours,” said Otsego Now COO Elizabeth Horvath, a member of the advisory committee. “You can talk to anyone. You don’t have to talk to anyone.”
The hours were set to make attending as convenient as possible.
The process is a collaboration of the Village of Cooperstown and Otsego Now, the former county IDA, whose President Sandy Mathes was brought in as a “single point of contact” to accelerate economic development.
A comp plan update is also underway in Richfield Springs, where Otsego Now has an option on 130 acres for a commerce park. The focus in Cooperstown has been more on tourism, retail and housing.
The goal of the process, which is expected to continue through the end of this year, is an updated Comprehensive Master Plan for the village; the last was done in 1994, before Dreams Park opened. An update comp plan, identifying community priorities, is the basis for grant applications to follow.
The Community Open House signals the end of Phase I of the process, the information-collection segment. Elan Planning, led by principal Lisa Nagle, and with inputs from the community advisory board, will the begin drafting the plan during Phase II.
On a parallel track, a market survey is about to begin. Its goal is to identify “what kinds of shops will be successful downtown, and other recommendations for a vibrant downtown,” said Nagle.
Kennedy Smith, former director of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, now associated with The Clue Group, planning consultants based in Arlington, Va., has been contracted to conduct the market survey.