- By Dan Veaner
- Opinions
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I am cautiously for growth. When I first moved her almost 20 years ago you could dial four digits to call anyone in the 533 exchange. I was enchanted with it, and still miss it even though we got more capabilities when we lost that. We also had a market at the intersection of 34 and 34B. It wasn't the most super market in the world, but it was convenient and it was ours. But those things weren't sustainable in a small, spread out town.
For such a close knit community it is almost shocking that there isn't really a 'center of town' here. The Town Hall complex offers a stab at that with the library, Town records building, Community Center and the Field School House arranged attractively near the ball fields. But there is no real shopping area central in the Town. That has to be at least partly responsible for there being so few shops. That and density.
Density is going to increase in the Town whether we like it or not. Lansing is the fastest growing community in a thriving county that wants more growth here, especially in affordable housing. In fact the County wants the Town to change its zoning to encourage much faster growth than we are already seeing. The question isn't 'will we have growth?' It's 'will we get $150,000 houses or $450,000 houses?' The County wants the former.
So the challenge isn't so much whether to encourage growth as where to encourage it. The tools the community has to control that are sewer/water and zoning laws. By setting the sewer district south of Buck Road the Town is keeping growth away from Lansing's agricultural district, thus preserving a centuries old tradition of farming here. Once the sewer is built it will be up to the zoning laws to further tweak where growth occurs.
When that happens I think it could go two ways. The first, with little attention to zoning, would become an extension of the Village of Lansing in the south of town. Homes in that area would be close enough to existing businesses in the Village that there would probably not be much commercial growth in the town. Lansing already split once because of growth. Do we really want a Northern Village of South Lansing on top of the village that is already there?
The second, with careful attention, could result in a town center that brings business and commerce to the town and contains it in a central area that allows residential neighborhoods to grow as well. If the growth is encouraged in the area near the Town Hall Lansing will become more attractive to businesses. We might expect a market, doctors, dentists, perhaps a Laundromat, restaurants... existing empty storefronts might fill up and a true 'center of town' might result.
If growth is going to happen anyway, the sewer is part of the formula to make it the most beneficial to the community. It could help grow Lansing in ways residents prefer. If you've got to have it anyway, you should get it the way you want it. That makes the sewer worth it in the long run.
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