The Advantages of Big Box Blogging

There is no doubt that the transition from the printed newspaper to this on-line forum makes it a bit more challenging for us to share the latest news in our ongoing anti-Big Box battle. As a result, we’ll have to work harder to spread the latest word about Newman Development Group’s plans to build a Big Box Lowe’s and open the Gateway to sprawling retail development.

The newspaper is familiar. It is flexible. It shows up in your mailbox and goes wherever you take it. On-line news, particularly for small towns, is unfamiliar and still developing. You have to realize that our small town exists inside your computer. You have to know where in there it is and go and find it. Of course, you have to have access to and familiarity with computers and the internet.

At the same time, there are also tremendous benefits to electronic communications. What is written here is more or less permanent and always available. No rummaging through the recycling bin to find last week’s paper. It is accessible to anyone, anywhere. It is of almost unlimited size and is also fully searchable. Most importantly, it is immediate and allows for easy and fast feedback.

For my purposes, though, the most interesting feature of this on-line format is how it allows me to tell the sorry story of Newman’s plans and its close ties to the Town developed in furtherance of those plans while also providing readers access to the evidence to support this story.

That effort begins now. For many months, I have written periodically about the billing records of Underberg and Kessler, attorneys for the Town of Geneseo, and what they reveal about the Town’s ties to Newman. Through the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), we have obtained these records and are now pursuing a number of the documents that are referred to in them. Through the miracle of the Internet, these records are available here.

Take a look at them, please. See for yourself what has led us to develop such strong concerns about the manner in which this project has gotten as far as it has. You’ll see well over one hundred documented contacts between the Town and the developers and well over one hundred documented contacts between Town elected officials and the Town’s attorneys to discuss this project.

You’ll see a pattern of contacts with agencies that offered input related to this project, from the State Historic Preservation Office to the Center for Governmental Research to the National Park Service. Leaving nothing to chance, every effort was made to ensure their support or minimize their opposition to this project. In total, you’ll see over 500 different actions taken by the Town’s attorneys at a cost of well over $50,000.

You’ll see that the Town’s relationship with Newman began well before the Planned Development District law that allowed their project to be considered was passed. You’ll see the steps taken by the Town to pass this law, apparently at Newman’s behest and certainly for Newman’s benefit. You’ll also see that the Town Planning Board opposed the passage of this law.

You’ll see that Town has, from the very beginning, sought to expedite review and approval of this proposal. As this memo makes clear even before this proposal was introduced to the public, the Town’s attorney was outlining plans to enact the PDD law and speed review of Newman’s application. As these email messages make clear, Newman recognized the Town’s attorney and the Town Board as advocates for its project and looked to them for support and assistance in expediting approval of their plans. In probably the most damning statement made in these documents, the Town’s plans to silence public input are revealed.

Seeing all this, I encourage you to ask why the Town has worked so hard on Newman’s behalf and why Town elected officials and their counsel have been so closely involved with this project even after they formally handed review of it to the Town Planning Board. I encourage you to ask what it means that the Town has shown so little regard for public input and for the public review processes through which development decisions are supposed to be made.

This column is only the first step in creating what we call The PDDG File. Click on the link at the top of the page for future installmants as we add to the evidence in the file. And finally, in the spirit of the new form of communication before us, I encourage you to post your thoughts on this evidence and the pattern of conduct it reveals by clicking on the comment button below.

Unfinished Business

Over the past 18 months, in more than 70 columns, I and others have used this space in The Clarion to discuss the many ways in which Big Boxes threaten small towns and in which Geneseo is being sold out to developers.

The consistent themes of these columns are that Geneseo’s assets are far too many and too great to be sold for so little in return. And that the scale of Big Boxes and their impacts on our traffic, character, and small business economy are already overwhelming us. And that first rate planning and zoning and open public processes are the only means through which such large and long term decisions should be made.

The present state of affairs makes it clear that our business is unfinished. The Village does not yet have a new master plan or zoning. The Town is actively undoing the excellent planning and zoning it complete for the Gateway a decade ago. Traffic access and planning standards are not yet complete.

The public’s right to know is being violated. Most of all, Newman Development Group’s Lowe’s proposal remains on the table, with a very real risk that it will be approved.
So, though the demise of this paper may represent the loss of one more small business, the work of this column will continue. PDDG will continue its active engagement with the review of Newman’s proposal by the Town Planning Board.

We will also continue to explore and document the Town’s premature embrace of Newman Development Group and their mutual efforts to ensure approval of this project.

The fruits of these labors will be available on this blog and elsewhere on clarioncall.com. Bookmark this site and stop by often. We’re planning to post the documents we have obtained through the Freedom of Information Law and to develop a chronology of the process that has brought us to this point.

Regular updates of the Town Planning Board’s review of Newman’s proposal, important meeting dates, and other developments will be provided via the Community Alert. To join the 400 or more people currently receiving this electronic bulletin, please email Kurt Cylke; fcylke@rochester.rr.com

Though I am confident that the website, email, the coffee shop, and the sidewalk will provide valuable means for getting the word out about the ongoing review of this project and the issues of concern to this column, we must also acknowledge that the loss of this newspaper represents a loss to the smart growth movement in Geneseo.

Put it this way, I’m sure the news is being received with glee in certain offices in Vestal, NY (Newman’s headquarters), Rochester, and Geneseo. But they better not celebrate too much!

We are more determined than ever to stop a Lowe’s Big Box which would be devastating for Geneseo and Livingston County. Its harmful effects on Geneseo’s already fragile small business economy, its already overburdened Route 20A, and its charm and scale simply could not be undone. You cannot rebuild charm and history and character. They are authentic. They exist until they are destroyed and then they are gone for good.

Its effects in cementing Geneseo’s status as a regional retail center and in opening up the hundreds of acres in the Gateway to more of the same ensure that the pressure on Geneseo will only intensify. The result will remake Geneseo into Genrietta, a mostly artificial, charmless, paved landscape. Pockets of charm will remain, but you will have to look too hard to find them and in finding them will long for what once was.

Likewise for the County. Already being sapped of vigor and people by a weak economy and an aging population, displacing that remaining vigor to Geneseo will leave the small towns of the county weaker and their Main Streets sleepier.

We had better rise, and quickly, to the challenge of protecting what we have and being purposeful in what we add. Finally, I would like to thank the many people who offered their support for this column and for our efforts to preserve this and other small towns.

It is difficult to challenge publicly and forcefully the decisions that are being made and the people who are making them in a small town. The support that I have received along the way has been invaluable.