Planners: Smart building needed
Focus on town centers, group agrees

By Dan Shapley Poughkeepsie Journal April 21 , 2005

NEWBURGH -- Communities along commuter rail lines should encourage dense residential and commercial development within walking distance of train stations, the planning commissioners in four Hudson Valley counties agree.
Stations in Poughkeepsie, Beacon, Amenia and Dover offer prime opportunities to reduce sprawl by building smart, Dutchess County Commissioner of Planning and Development Roger Akeley said.
''Where do we go for our inspiration? We go to communities developed in the 1800s,'' Akeley said. ''We see a genetic code of smart blocks ... where you don't feel handicapped to be a pedestrian.''
While top planners agree, many municipal officials and residents have not been swayed. Many people fled the New York City area urban landscapes for the country, and don't want to see relatively rural landscape built up, Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church said.
There's nothing new in the idea of focusing development in town centers to enliven business districts, reduce traffic and the cost of services, and preserve scenery and environmental quality in outlying areas.
That's been the planning mantra preached for a decade or more in the Hudson Valley, by groups and agencies like the Hudson River Valley Greenway, Scenic Hudson and Mid Hudson Pattern for Progress, a Newburgh-based organization that organized a meeting of planning commissioners last week at Orange County Community College's extension facility in the City of Newburgh.
Regional approach pushed
Those groups promote regional planning cooperation. Pattern for Progress goes one step further, saying local land-use decision-making power should go to regional authorities.
Most Dutchess municipalities have joined the Greenway Compact, which sets a series of planning principles community officials voluntarily follow in exchange for a better chance at certain state grants.
The Dutchess County Planning Department has also sketched designs for several prominent areas, including the former Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center in Wingdale, and the area around the waterfront train stations in the cities of Beacon and Poughkeepsie.
Zoning laws and community opinion have not universally caught up to the idea, and new developments continue to be approved that don't conform to Greenway ideals.
''Some, where we think there's a great opportunity ... they'd like to keep it just the way it is, thank you very much,'' Akeley said.
Beekman resident and farmland protection advocate Thomas Sanford attended the meeting. He said laws that allow for ''transfer of development rights'' are needed. These laws permit developers to build more units in existing population centers if the builders protect outlying rural land. Developers could do that by donating easements on land they own or contributing to a community's open space protection fund, as in some Orange County communities.
''The biggest problem we see is Dutchess County is convincing people along the river to allow clustering around these train stations,'' he said.
Pleasant Valley Councilman Bruce Donegan said these regional planning concepts make sense. He acknowledged there's a lack of interest among many residents and town officials in these regional planning concepts.
''It's not hitting them yet because there's still a lot of open space,'' he said. ''It will when it's too late.''

Dan Shapley can be reached at dshapley@poughkeepsiejournal.com

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