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| May 05, 2024 |
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General News: Town, Village Differ on Planning
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| Some buildings on Main Street are in need of revitalization. |
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| The intersection of Duncan Avenue and Hudson Streets has been targeted for improvement. |
October 01, 2009
Two years after the village and town of Cornwall agreed to pursue funding to come up with a plan to revitalize their business districts, expectations of a common strategy have all but disappeared. In 2007 the two municipalities received a $20,000 joint planning grant from Orange County and leaders of both communities say that since then they have gone off in their own direction to fund individual projects and that a large chunk of the money still has not been spent.
Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church says the inter-municipal grant was awarded in late 2007 to fund a proposal to do a study for developing a downtown revitalization strategy. A study like this could be the first step to attaining state and even federal funds to upgrade the business districts.
Town Studies Making Bridge Street a Park
By November 2008, with no projects started with the grant money, the county agreed to extend it until the end of 2009 and agreed that town officials could use part of the grant to do an engineering study of the now-closed bridge on Bridge Street. Supervisor Quigley says the town is exploring the possibility of creating a park on Bridge Street where it intersects with Main Street because any overall of the business district would cost too much. “Anything you’re going to do on Main Street is going to do costs a lot of money, like moving poles, and the grant wouldn’t even begin to pay for it,” Quigley said.
Quigley also said that he met with officials of the Greater Cornwall Chamber of Commerce to collaborate on a study of Main Street. Randy Clark, an active member of the Chamber who also sits on the town council, said he was excited earlier this year about the possibility of applying for state funds through the Industrial Development Authority that has access to several million dollars of grants.
State Funds Are Available for Well-Planned Projects
The chamber agreed to do an inventory of the properties in the business district in order to improve its chances of being awarded a grant. Clark said that before the chamber could start, it needed a survey template from the engineers who consult to the town. Now, as the November deadline for applying for the grant approaches, he has heard nothing from the engineers and is pessimistic about the town’s chances of submitting an application.
Town councilman Randy Clark says what the town needs is an architectural code and a grant writer who can make sure that the town is prepared to take advantage of state and federal grants for shovel-ready projects.
Major Gross Says Walkability is Key to Development
In the village, Mayor Joseph Gross reports that he intends to use the village’s half of the $20,000 planning grant to pay for a traffic consultant who has studied three intersections that the village square improvement committee designated as hazardous along Hudson Street (Route 218). The mayor says his vision for revitalization of the village is all about walkability. “It's all about making the village a more pleasant place to walk so that people will want to come here, take a walk and have a meal,” he said recently.
The traffic survey comes in at just under $5,000 and with the remaining funds, Mayor Gross said he’d like to do a pedestrian planning survey. The village is also requesting a new grant from Orange County that would study how the village could become more “green” by reducing paved surfaces, installing green roofs, and re-using rain water, among other practices. That request was filed in place of a proposal authorized by the village board in June that would have asked the county to fund a planner to help move ahead the master plan.
Town and Village Follow Separate Paths
Asked if he had discussed creating an inter-municipal revitalization vision with the town, Mayor Gross noted that he was the person who originally proposed the inter-municipal plan to then-supervisor Richard Randazzo and said that he had hoped that the two could focus on the strip of Hudson Street that connects the two village to the town. He also said but that he hadn’t spoken to supervisor Quigley about the grant in a while. “They are going to do what they think is important,” Gross said about the town’s use of the grant, “you do what you think is important.”
Back in the town, town councilwoman Mary Beth Greene Krafft says she is still committed to using the rest of the planning grant to help come up for a plan for Main Street. She notes, however, that no new proposals have been presented to the town council for spending the remaining grant funds before they expire at the end of this year.
With three months remaining for projects to be submitted to the county for payment, planning commissioner Church has the final word. “We were looking forward to having a good town-village grant,“ Church noted, “and we still are.”
Comments:
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Here's a plan for Main Street: have the slumlord who owns the ramshackle black-lacquer storefront (the bookstore that never materialized, among other things) clean it up and make it look half way decent. Jeez - even poor folk know how to clean their fingernails...
posted by Kate Benson on 10/02/09 at 9:30 PM
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