Stand fast: Supersizing isn't a virtue

Economic forces — often larger than any single community — shape the way we live.

Mary Ellen Johnson has painstakingly searched through old issues of The Altamont Enterprise, going back nearly a century, to trace what she terms the village’s “narrow escape” from an unwelcome railroad overpass or underpass, first planned in 1928 by the state’s Public Service Commission.

Villagers were fine with the grade crossing on Main Street and did not want the tranquility of their bucolic setting disturbed, Johnson writes in the current Guilderland Historical Society newsletter. Years of hearings, protests, board resolutions, citizens’ petitions, and meetings did no good. In June 1935, the commission ruled the underpass must be constructed; any additional delay would mean loss of federal funds.

In the end, it was the Great Depression that stopped the project. The commission reversed itself in 1937, citing declining passenger rail traffic.

By the time the economy picked up again after World War II, the highway became king. The rail commuters were replaced by road commuters and suburbs sprang up — neighborhoods accessible by road, rather than rail like the old village and city centers.

Last week, in our real estate section, “The Conundrum of Commerce,” we dipped into some of the more recent trends, citing a University of Virginia study, “The Changing Shape of American Cities,” which maps important shifts in the last two decades. The “donut” shape of many American cities in the 1990s, with wealthier residents in a booming suburban ring around a decaying core, has given way to a “new donut” with three, rather than two, rings.

Many city centers have attracted young, educated, high-income residents as poverty migrates outward, creating an “inner ring” of urban and early suburban neighborhoods around the core — in that ring, incomes have fallen and education rates are stagnant. Beyond the inner ring, an outer ring of newer and larger suburbs continues to grow.

Cities and suburbs here in our midst are growing, according to Rocco Ferraro, executive director for the Capital District Regional Planning Commission, with a younger generation tending to choose urban living. After 60 years in decline, regional cities’ populations saw increases in the last federal census, in 2010, he said.

If we’re aware of the larger economic forces shaping us, we can work to preserve what we still value. A case in point is the declining enrollment in the Guilderland schools. A consultant hired by the district last year came up with recommendations, all but one of which involved closing an elementary school. As people protested, the school board appointed a task force to look at alternative uses of empty classroom space that could keep the neighborhood school concept in place.

Another powerful tool New Yorkers have at their disposal is zoning. New York is a home-rule state, meaning municipalities can set their own laws on what is built where.

Altamont several years ago went through an open and involved process to develop a comprehensive land-use plan for the village and enacted zoning laws to follow. The plan is to keep a mix of residences and businesses in the heart of the village so that it remains a vibrant, walkable community.

Recently, Stewart’s, one of two gas stations and convenience stores in Altamont, has shared plans to expand. To make a bigger building and increase its gas pumps from two to three, Stewart’s proposes buying an adjacent duplex and tearing it down. This would require the village board to change the zoning for the duplex parcel from residential to commercial.

Sometimes a zoning change can be beneficial. Across the street from The Enterprise offices on Maple Avenue, Dennis Cyr has taken a run-down formerly vacant cement-block building at 124 Maple, and remodeled it attractively to serve as Mountainview Prosthetics. The building had once been a firehouse and later an auto garage. While the street already had the Enterprise print shop, a restaurant, a medical building, and a spa, mixed in with homes, Cyr needed a “light industry” designation to run his prosthetics business. The village board approved the change, a decision we support.

The change Stewart’s is requesting, however, would be more dramatic, from residential to central business. It would chip away at a neighborhood designated for homes. And what benefits it would have to residents is unclear. No new services would be offered and no unsightly property would be refurbished. It is not even clear, as one resident argued, that a bigger store would bring in more tax dollars; it may just put the competing store across the street out of business.

Jack Pollard, a longtime business owner in Altamont, spoke at the last village board meeting, giving a colorful and no doubt accurate picture of what the village used to be like — loud with coal and lumber trucks and a business that used an “old flathead Ford engine with no mufflers” to grind feed and mix molasses, and smelly with a chicken barn whose owner burned the chicken excrement once a week.

He lamented that Altamont has become more of a bedroom community. We would argue, though, that the forces shaping that trend are larger than the village. Just as corporate farms have replaced the family farms of the Midwestern landscape, individual commercial enterprises are no longer at the center of small villages. Altamont’s zoning is an attempt to encourage small businesses to come to or stay in the village, while making it also a desirable community to live in.

“During the past three decades, the Capital District has been experiencing the challenges of a rapidly changing economy,” says a report from the Capital District Regional Planning Commission. It notes that the region’s economy has had three traditional pillars: government, heavy industry, and education. “Heavy industry has suffered the brunt of the economic changes,” the report notes. “As older manufacturing facilities became obsolete and globalization permitted many manufacturing operations to move out of the country, the Capital District saw a dramatic decline in large, traditional manufacturing operations. To make matters worse, the lost jobs were in the highest paying segment of the Region’s economy.”

The report goes on to note, however, that the region with its extensive system of higher education can be leveraged to produce both the workforce and businesses required by the “new economy.” Guilderland with its proximity to the University at Albany and the new Polytechnic school is in a good position to gain from this.

We urge the village board to look at the big picture as it makes its zoning decision.

— Melissa Hale-Spencer

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