Archive: Opinions

If you start with the premise that we want a Town Center, the solution seems to me to be a no-brainer.  A flap over the past couple of weeks revolved around what goes into the Town Center, where it goes, and who decides on what goes there.  Some people wanted to put the whole thing on hold to get more public input or to simply halt any building on the Town Center land.  Others wanted to bull forward.

Many on both sides understand there is a 'now or never' aspect to the sewer project.  Two senior housing projects have been proposed for about 25 of the 165 acres of Town Center land across the street from the Lansing ballfields on 34B.  The way a sewer district works is that the property owners within the district pay for the construction and maintenance of the sewer.  The more people in the district, the less each parcel has to pay -- the cost is spread out among all of them.

If you don't have dense development it's harder to get the critical mass of units you need to spread the cost enough to make it affordable for everyone in the district.  So the Lansing sewer needs the two projects to bring that number of units up.  Negotiations are being held to get the developers to pay for the units even before they are completed, which makes the project affordable for current residents.

Some residents have expressed alarm that the new Town Center will be inundated with seniors, and won't have the diversity of community they envision.  Many have said that affordable housing for young families is desirable, though others say senior housing brings the tax revenue without burdening the schools.

In March NRP Group presented a vision for the entire Town Center.  At the time I thought that while it was more senior-heavy than I expected, it pretty well reflected what Lansing residents were saying they wanted in a town center.  I base that on the Town Center meetings a few years ago that attracted a lot of people interested in having a densely developed mixed use center in the town.

This week the Sewer Committee was told that the Town Council will likely get on board with the sewer proposal and the two senior projects on two conditions: first, that the market rate project move to a different spot, and second that the rest of the Town Center be put up for grabs, allowing any developers to propose projects and also allowing more time for citizen input as to what projects should be accepted.

That's where the no-brainer comes in.  Go forward with the two projects that are going to help make the sewer possible at all.  Then decide what else you want there.  In my opinion the planning for the center has been rushed and is nowhere near complete.  I want to see some stringent guidelines for the retail piece, for example.  What kind of building?  What color?  What facade materials?  Awnings?  All the same or different?  I don't just want a town center.  I want a really nice town center.

Allowing the two projects, birds in the hand, to go forward makes all the other things possible by making the sewer possible.

Tax revenue estimates are very promising for the two projects alone.  If you add more -- a business park, retail, more residential parts -- the sickening loss of tax revenue from the AES Cayuga power plant turns into very little loss, then no loss, then gain.  It takes the giant single egg out of the tax revenue basket and replaces it with lots of little eggs that add up to a healthy, robust community.

So, yeah, negotiate the locations, price of land, who builds the roads, all that stuff.  But make those projects happen so sewer can happen.  Because no sewer, no town center.  That gives Lansing the possibility to build the rest of a town center any way Lansing wants.

v8i33