Archive: News

Economic Development Committee Chairman Chris Williams says Lansing needs to retain, expand and attract.  Retain existing businesses, help facilitate their expansion and attract new business that will increase the tax base while blending into the character of the Town.  And he says the township needs to look at the rapidly changing technology that is just as rapidly changing

"We're looking at the landscape," he says.  "Then we're trying to say, here's the landscape today.  The economy has been basically moving lumpy objects around, by trucks, buy cars, airplanes, whatever.  The economies of the future will take advantage of this (fiber optics) highway.  if your plan is attracting more of these businesses that take advantage of that, maybe that's a contribution to making this (roads) infrastructure last longer."

The new Economic development Committee is a sub-committee of the Comprehensive Plan Update Committee.  That committee worked last year to revise the Town's comprehensive plan, using census and survey data, among other input, to determine how the Town's development goals have changed since the last revision.  Last week a somewhat restructured committee, now chaired by Connie Wilcox, met.  Sub-committees then broke off for working sessions on topics including housing, agricultural, tourism, and economic development.

"It was a brainstorming session," Williams says.  "We mulled around ideas.  We looked at the current wording of the existing economic plan.  We reviewed whether portions are relevant today.  Are there new things we need to bring to that.,  There was a general discussion of goals we want to achieve.  Largely we are trying to take an inventory, and then bring to the table where we want to go with this."

Wilcox is anxious to complete the process by some time this summer, so the subcommittees will have to accomplish a lot in a little time.  The Economic Development Committee will meet once a month.  It has four members, including Duane Smith, Tom Livigne, Joseph Wetmore and Williams.

Williams says different businesses may be more appropriate in the Town or the Village of Lansing, and his committee will take that into consideration.

"We often talk about quality of life and the character of the community," he says.  "It seems like that is used frequently in every town plan across the country.  I like the word 'texture'.  Character is more human and texture is feel and touch.  The Village and Town have two distinct textures to them.  In terms of a vision for a plan, the texture of the Town of Lansing is not necessarily the same as the texture for the Village of Lansing.  That's illustrated by the businesses that they attract."

Williams notes that one consequence of a future economy that relies on information and data technology instead of the transportation of goods is that Lansing's roads could last longer.

"Look at today, but you also have to look at tomorrow.  I think we can safely say that the economy of 2040 is going to be considerably different than the economy of today.  The current infrastructure is the largest expense.  You ask yourself, do businesses of the future rely as heavily upon that infrastructure as they do today?  If economies that the Town wishes to pursue don't use this infrastructure as heavily as it does today, that extends the life of that infrastructure."

Williams compares two maps that illustrate the present and a possible Lansing future.  The first is a Google map showing Lansing's roads, which he says is the important infrastructure today.  The second is a map that shows Finger Lakes Technology Group's (FLTG) fiber-optics network.

"This (he points to the road map) is the economic infrastructure engine that drives Lansing today.  This (he points to the FLRG map) could very well be the infrastructure that drives Lansing tomorrow.  This is the fiber optic network throughout the Finger Lakes.  The Village is already well connected to it.  But that 'information super highway' does pass right through Lansing."

Williams says that Lansing Supervisor Ed LaVigne's push to make the Town more business-friendly could drive business expansion and help guide the committee's work.

"Ed has really set the tone for a lot of this," he says.  "I think it's very positive about moving forward with a pro-business idea."

The last Economic Development Committee Andy Sciarabba developed a Lansing Town Center Incentive Zone in cooperation with Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD) that automatically brings county tax incentives to developers within the South Lansing zone.  Another idea that came out of the last iteration of the committee was building a business and light manufacturing park on the northwest portion of land that, at the time, was envisioned as a town center.

Williams says his new committee has begun talking about business parks, but wants to determine whether existing parks are being utilized to their full capacity before encouraging new ones.

"As you look at the inventory of assets you have the Dutch Mill (business park) and the Warren Road area," he says.  "If you go into the Village there's the Cornell Business and Technology Park.  We already have these geographic areas.  One of the questions that came up was, are they being utilized to their maximum capacity?"

Once the sub-committee has formulated its recommendations they will be folded into the overal comprehensive plan.  After that, Williams says he doesn't know how the Town will handle enacting them.  Part of the Agriculture And Farmland Protection Plan, accepted by the Town Board last September, was a recommendation to form a new Agriculture Committee that would take the ideas presented in the plan and recommend specific ways to implement them to the Town Board.  Williams says that if town officials decide to handle economic development in the same way he would like to be part of that process.

He adds that with fast developing technologies that dramatically impact the way business is done, future updates to the plan may need to be accelerated, at least informally, for the Town to keep up.

"This is like a resume.  You need to update and review your resume every year," he says.  It gives you a review of what your accomplishments are and then marks them against your goals.  I believe the Comprehensive Plan -- this continually bringing new information to the Town -- it's an ongoing process."

v12i6