To the Editor:
On Feb. 16, I attended a Voorheesville Planning Commission meeting at which Business for Good presented a preliminary proposal for its restaurant/café plan for Main Street. The presentation included detailed sketches of the design of the buildings and clear explanations by the architect.

I appreciate the willingness of the planning commission to listen to comments from community members over the course of what turned out to be a two-and-a-half hour meeting.

I urge the rest of our community to learn about the proposed project and attend future meetings of the planning commission.

Overall, I came away with an understanding of what Business for Good is proposing and a lot of questions about how it would work in Voorheesville.

We need a business plan for the proposed restaurant that answers questions, for example:

— 1. Hours of operation;

— 2. Total number of customers per day, including a number for peak hours;

— 3. Number of customers who would be driving as opposed to walking to the restaurant;

— 4. Minimum number of customers for the restaurant to be financially viable; and

— 5. The extent to which the restaurant would need to draw customers outside of Voorheesville and its immediate surroundings.

The presenters candidly acknowledged they didn’t have the answers but said they would provide them at the next meeting of the planning commission.

Voorheesville developed a Main Street Plan and a Comprehensive Village Plan, both of which served as the foundation upon the zoning law, which was updated in 2019. These documents are all available on the village government website.

Among the purposes of the zoning law stated in the introduction are:

— 1. “To maintain the Village’s traditional small-town character, which includes, but is not limited to well-kept, quaint, peaceful, and quiet neighborhoods, historic structures, and streetscapes as described in the Village of Voorheesville Comprehensive Plan”;

— 2. “To promote walkability, biking, and pedestrian linkages between all locations within the Village”;

— 3. “To lessen congestion on streets, roads and highways.”

There are three basic questions I have with the proposed project:

—  1. Is its scale consistent with the small-town character of the village and the promotion of walking and biking;

— 2. Does it address parking in a way that follows the guidance of the Main Street Plan; and

— 3. Does it sufficiently describe measures that will assure the safety of the active school bus stop at the corner of Center and South Main streets?

The proposed restaurant is quite large. It would occupy the entire lot of the former Stewart’s with no parking spaces on that lot. Instead, the proposal calls for the demolition of an adjacent century-old building, now an apartment house, at 40 South Main Street to become a parking lot.

However, even if, after getting answers from the market study, we concluded the size was reasonable there would still be no need to demolish buildings for parking space.

The above mentioned Main Street Plan included a parking survey of Main Street and found that, of the 130 parking spaces currently available on-street and off-street, well over 50 percent were unoccupied on a daily basis.

The plan also noted that practically all of the surveyed spaces were vacant during evening hours. All of those parking spaces are within a one- to three-minute walk to the proposed restaurant, which the presenters stated would likely be operating only in the afternoon and evening.

A key idea of the plan was that of shared parking.

As stated in the plan: “These figures and concept plan highlight the benefits that could be drawn from a shared parking plan for businesses and property owners on Main Street. Many of the businesses and organizations on Main Street have different parking demands at different times of day. Thus, shared parking would allow for each business to meet their demand while constructing less new spaces. Furthermore, such a shared parking scheme would help the community better balance parking needs without sacrificing green space in the corridor.”

Would this be a perfect arrangement for the proposed project? No.

Would it impose an unreasonable burden on the customer to take a three- to four-minute walk from the end of South Main to the restaurant, if there were an insufficient number of spaces nearer to the restaurant? We are, after all, committed to the walkability of the village.

As mentioned in the meeting, such a walk could be advantageous to businesses on Main Street as potential customers pass by.

In addition, the above-mentioned parking survey did not include the Voorheesville Commercial Park (Drywall Lane). That site includes over 80 parking spaces directly accessible to the proposed restaurant by a four- to five-minute walk by sidewalk.

We were told that the local restaurants and those in development — i.e. the brew pub on North Main (leaving aside the possible creation of a restaurant at the old Smitty’s) — have indicated they will be happy to see the Business for Good restaurant and that a “rising tide lifts all boats.”

But to pursue the metaphor, under the wrong conditions a rising tide can sink a village. My wife and I have lived on Pleasant Street for 45 years and had two sons go through the Voorheesville school system. Voorheesville is a special place. Once we lose that specialness, we will never get it back.

Steven Schreiber

Voorheesville

Editor’s note: See related story.