Rezoning Will Help Business, Neighborhoods, Planner Says

 Look At Map, Discuss Regs Weekly This Month

By JIM KEVLIN

Given the buzz of excitement from the 80-some people gathered in the Atrium at the Foothills Performing Arts & Civic Center the other night, who would have guessed the draw was ... zoning.
But so it was.
The hottest topic among the four breakout tables Monday, Jan. 31, was Suncrest Terrace, that vista-filled neighborhood that rises high into the hills to the left as you head out of the city on West Street.
“That hill is fragile,” declared Jim Baker, a Suncrest Terrace neighbor, as a chorus of concern arose from his neighbors about a new “U” – for “university” – zone that would allow property owner Hartwick College considerable leeway if it chose to develop the hilltop.
Peter Friedman was back in his element:  The city’s zoning enforcement officer for 24 years – he retired in 2008 – had  somehow been tempted out of retirement in November 2009 and onto the city’s ZTF – zoning task force.
Since then, Friedman has been meeting weekly, sometimes twice weekly, with other ZTF members – businessman Ed May, Opportunity for Otsego’s Gary Herzig, Otsego County Chamber President Rob Robinson, and several others – to bring zoning regulations and the zoning map into line with the new Comprehensive Master Plan completed a couple of years ago.
And the work’s not over.  From 4 p.m. on every Tuesday in February, ZTF members will be available in City Hall, where you can review the new maps and ask questions.
After revisions, a final hearing is planned in March or April, with Common Council action on the result, perhaps in May.
The morning after the Atrium hearing, Friedman reflected on the night before, the months before that and what’s to come.
The Suncrest Terrace residents will probably be unhappy with anything short of no development on the hill behind them, he mused, but he was very bullish about what the ZTF hath wrought.
“I’m very happy with this,” he said of the proposed map and regulations.  “I’m very comfortable with this.  If the economy improves, we’ll be poised for some advances in the quality of the community.”
During his year as the city’s ZEO, the Brooklyn native – he spent six years in construction in New York City before moving to New Berlin – observed that many worthy projects simply got bogged down in the city’s review process or were stymied by niches of opposition.
“The city, for all practical purposes, was prohibiting housing and severely limiting the possibility of businesses starting or businesses coming to town,” he said.
Under the old code, housing is prohibited on most of the city’s vacant land, primarily seven acres between River Street and West Broadway and four acres around Silver Creek.
“The zoning process was too open or too sensitive to the opposition of small minority factions to projects that would have had a substantial benefit to the overall community,” Friedman said.
He ticked off a half-dozen proposals that faltered: Jim Baldo’s on River Street; Jim Reeks’ around Silver Creek; Don Lindberg’s near the Old Main Apartments; Fred Bresee’s on Wilcox Avenue, and Mike Ranieri’s on upper East Street.
“And then, of course, there’s the enormous piece of vacant land on top of the ridge north of Hartwick College,” he said.  “That’s probably more than 100 acres.  It has been zoned as one-family housing only, 40,000-square-foot lot-size minimum.”
In his wrap-up comments to the Atrium meeting, Mayor Dick Miller said that, when he was Hartwick College president, the school had determined the code limited it to building two dozen $400,000 homes.
The city, Hartwick concluded, didn’t have sufficient demand for that many houses at that price, so nothing resulted.

But housing isn’t the only concern of the new code, Friedman said, and he mentioned:
• Simplicity – the new code clarifies the language and the process, and also consolidates uses.  For instance, the old code has 13 separate zones in the downtown; the new code has one.
• Neighborhood protection – Conversions of single-family homes into multiple units or student housing will be prohibited in the city’s most residential areas:  the East End, the West End, most of River Street, Suncrest Terrace/Ravine Parkway, and the downtown mansion district.
• Encouraging business – In particular, the new code contains “gateway” zones, Chestnut Street through the West End and Route 7 through the East, where businesses and homes could be mixed.  And some business used will be allowed on West Street between Chestnut and Center, where property owners have historically resisted investing, and it shows.