Downtown study calls on community for vision

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September 23, 2008

Grant to pay for study for brownfields remedy

By RYAN HUTCHINS The Press Republican Tue Sep 23, 2008, 12:00 AM EDT

PLATTSBURGH -- The City of Plattsburgh will use state grant money to fund a community-based planning study on revitalizing downtown lots.

The $70,000 grant, a 90-percent matching contract from the Department of State, will allow an Albany-based group to examine polluted areas known as brownfields.

The company, Barton & Loguidice, P.C., told community members at a recent meeting that residents would be at the heart of the study -- a central technique of the grant program, Brownfield Opportunity Areas.

"This is designed around what you think of your community, not what we think," said Nadine Medina, an engineer with the company.

The group will hold workshops with community members on Oct. 7 and 28.

They plan to ask residents not just about brownfields, but about the possibility of revitalizing under-utilized, abandoned, vacant and potentially contaminated sites or about other issues that could be holding back an area's development.

"We're like your toolbox," said Ted Kolankowski, the group's senior land-use planner.

Medina and Kolankowski billed their study as broadly focused.

The two, joined by Dave MacLeod of the Department of State, also promised to bring grant facilitators, property owners and developers together in hopes of seeing their recommendations through.

"The idea is to bring all the stakeholders to the table," MacLeod told dozens of residents attending the meeting at City Hall.

He said the state would be able to fund the drafting of any needed zoning changes.

Barton & Loguidice has done studies in the North Country before, examining the Cumberland Head connector road and providing land and site planning services in villages of Saranac Lake and Tupper Lake.

The city is providing 10 percent of the cost of the study in labor, said Jonathan Ruff, the city's environmental manager.

The community workshops have been advertised in the majority of utility bills, but Ruff and City Councilor Chris Jackson say the more residents, business owners, community organizations, developers and Realtors who come to the sessions, the more likely the study will be successful.

"This is where we the residents of this city get to tell what direction we want it to go in," Jackson said.

A follow-up public information meeting is tentatively scheduled for late January.