Archive: Opinions

As a member of the Village Planning Board when the Lansing Meadows project was first proposed almost 10 years ago, I am amazed and very disappointed that this project has still not reached fruition. I can understand and share Ronny Hardaway’s frustration at the lack of progress and the continual revisions of the plans, and I fully support his refusal to accept more changes to the plan.

The current plan is unrecognizable from the original plan that we approved a decade ago, and in my opinion, not an improvement. Eric Goetzmann’s excuse that, "The market has dramatically changed since the time that we started the construction of this project…" is unacceptable because, if they hadn’t delayed construction, they would have beaten the market change and would have been on the crest of the housing wave. Now, because of their procrastination, they are using this reason as an excuse for once again revising the plan. I hope the planning board supports Hardaway’s position.

In reference to another topic reported in the Star, the Cornell reopening with in-person classes and their justification that it exposes Ithaca to less of a threat by the coronavirus than if they taught only online classes, I find this premise to be less than counterintuitive as they claim. Granted, their student testing plan is impressive, but I would expect that the absence of the majority of students in Ithaca would be more effective in preventing a second wave of infections. The only students that would have any justifiable reason to be in Ithaca would be graduate students who need the lab facilities to carry out their research. I assume that this decision is a fait accompli at this point and hope that Ithaca does not suffer from this decision.

Sincerely,

Richard Durst
Koefering, Germany

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