Archive: Opinions

In David Dubin's letter to the editor in this week's issue he concludes his argument against the sewer project with, "I moved to Lansing to escape density and enjoy the open space. Let's leave density in Ithaca."

That is one of my arguments for it.  Because of its location near Ithaca and Cornell Lansing is going to be developed with or without sewer.  With sewer and the zoning debate it has already spurred the existing townspeople will have tools to retain our rural open space to a large extent.  As things are going now, development is happening anywhere someone thinks they can make a buck.

Over the years I have heard arguments in which one resident is mad at another property owner for building something (or wanting to build something) that would block or ruin the first one's view.  I understand the first property owner's distress, but the only way to truly prevent that is to buy the second property and not build on it.  I don't think there is anyone around here who can afford to buy the whole town.

So while my first choice would be for the sewer naysayers to buy the town and preserve its rural character, my second choice is to have sewer and control development as best a municipality can.

I lived in Rockford, Illinois, teaching at a college that was located on the rural outskirts of the city.  The school had a beautiful campus including undeveloped land that reached to State Street, the main road that leads all the way downtown.  Sprawl had come from downtown almost to the college, but it was mostly rural eastward from the campus to Interstate 90.

The college, like many others, fell on hard times.  After I moved here it sold its frontage, as did many property owners in that area.  When I visited years later I was shocked.  State Street was lined from Route 90 to well past the college with strip malls, big box stores... you name it.  Traffic was horrendous. Nothing was green.  It didn't smell good.  I was hard pressed to even find the entrance to the campus, squished between the stores.

In Rockford's case they had a perfectly good downtown they could have renewed.  At the time Rockford was a dying industrial city, desperate to find ways to renew itself.  I am told that many people drive the ninety miles from Chicago to shop on that State Street strip, and that part of the city is thriving.  Why they didn't zone to preserve that attractive rural character and offer inducements to build in the downtown area is beyond my understanding.  Shoppers still would have come.

In Lansing's case we have a field that nobody paid attention to until now.  It is in a piece of town that makes sense for denser development as a way of preserving our rural areas.  Having sat in on various municipal meetings I know that development is coming here -- it's here now, really.  We're going from a handful of new single family homes per year to several large projects -- some in progress, and some about to burst onto our rural scene.  Many multi-unit developments with what will amount to hundreds of new dwellings.  I am hearing that developers will build their own sewage treatment facilities if municipal sewer is not available (which is another can of worms), so the absense of sewer may stop some projects, but not all.

I don't think this town is ever going to ban development outright.  If you don't do that the only way to preserve the landscape is to steer development into pockets to save the rest of the rural areas in the town.  Sewer, where it has been initially proposed, is a useful way to do that, because developers will be drawn to sewer like a moth to a flame.  Giving up one field to preserve the rest seems a decent trade-off.

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