CircleTheUSA

Cooperstown looks at you with two faces. There's the baseball Cooperstown, with its dignified National Hall of Fame, with its rows of brick-faced Main Street buildings (selling baseball merchandise of every variety), and with its very special ball field right in the center of town.

Then there's the other Cooperstown, a town of  single-family homes, working their way outward from beautiful Otsego Lake, a town of parks, schools, churches, and, not to be overlooked, a dignified County Courthouse (built in 1880 and barely saved from demolition in the 1980s).

Perhaps this sense of wearing two faces is common to most tourist-oriented towns. Yet somehow, the two faces of Cooperstown didn't seem out of harmony (though, of course, I was visiting well before the Summer tourist season).

In fact, the photo of Doubleday field below seems to capture the linkage between the baseball town and the residential town.  

I'm in the middle of reading Lauren Groff's The Monsters of Templeton, a novel about a young woman's return to her home town of Templeton (which, as the author readily acknowledges, is her re-imagined version of Cooperstown). Groff, a native of Cooperstown, tells an entertaining and absorbing story. But it's also the story of the town itself. As the "running buds" (a group of six male jogging buddies in Groff's story) tell it:

"We run in the morning, when the beauty of our town gives us pause. When it is ours and ours alone, the tourists still tunneling into their dreams of baseball, of Clydesdales, of golf. Oh, the beauty of the town, oh the sunrise over the town as we crest the hill by the gym all spread before us like a feast, our hospital with its fingerlike smokestack, beyond, the lake like a chip of serpentine, and the baseball museum, and the Farmers' Museum, and the hills, and in the foggy hollow, our houses fanned across the town ... And we are the kings of this town as we run, we own this town, some of us have owned it for generations ... ." 

Terry Bliss is a "utility player" among planners. Just like baseball's utility fielders, Bliss is called on to play all sorts of roles on the field of planning.

In many ways, that's not an uncommon position for planning directors in rural counties like Otsego County, New York (population 62,000). But for Bliss, it's a truly appropriate position, since he works in Cooperstown, New York, home town of baseball in America.

I met Bliss in his office not far from downtown Cooperstown -- and across the road from a herd of Cooperstown Holsteins. Fortunately, Bliss is also a baseball fan, and his comfortable office is chock-full of memorabilia (don't blame Bliss for the baseball card above-- I take full responsibility!). He regularly gets to seven or eight games out-of-town each year, usually preferring the atmosphere and reduced price tag of minor league parks.

When I asked Biss what sort of work the Otsego County Planning Department was involved with, he rattled of a long and varied list:

-- technical assistance (such as zoning & comp plans) to the 34 municipalites.
-- grant writing.
-- training sessions for planning commissioners.
-- staffing the County planning board's monthly project review meetings.
-- environmental review work under New York's SEQRA law.
-- working with municipalities on hazard mitigation plans.
-- grant writing
-- overseeing a countywide housing needs assessment.
-- working with a local agricultural land trust
-- administering the County's transportation services programs.
-- grant writing
-- preparing a telecommunications plan for the county.
-- working on solid waste planning issues.

You might have noticed the words "grant writing" more than once. I was hoping to catch your eye -- and emphasize the fact that a good part of what the Otsego County Planning Department is involved with depends on access to grants.

Bliss told me there's no single comprehensive plan document for the County. Instead there are various pieces focusing on a diverse range of issues, driven in good measure by what grants are available for.

Is this the best way to do planning in rural counties? On the one hand, availability of funds for specific issues may well be an indicator that those issues have signficance. On the other, can a county develop a comprehensive planning and land use strategy in this piecemeal sort of way?

note: I don't have space in this post to give you a look at the town of Cooperstown -- a place I hadn't visited since high school (more than a few years ago!). More on this later today.

The residents and business owners of Saratoga Springs, New York, treasure their downtown. With its wide sidewalks, Broadway is lined with stores, restaurants, banks, historic hotels, and a wonderful park.

During meetings with Saratoga planners, one common refrain I heard was that downtown was the city's "economic engine" and the top priority for local planning and development efforts.

One of the focal points is to increase the amount of housing downtown. Interestingly, according to Planning Commission Chair Clifford Van Wagner, as much as half of the new downtown housing is for second homes (not altogether surprising given Saratoga's long history as a destination for horse racing enthusiasts, and its many other attractions). Van Wagner views this as a positive, noting that the City benefits from tax revenues and spending from part-time residents, without much in the way of additional demands on schools and other municipal services.

Much of the new housing is being built just a block off Broadway, Saratoga's historic main downtown thoroughfare. See photos above & immediately below the postcard, taken on Broadway; in fact the old postcard image is not totally out of character with Broadway today.

In some ways, what is happening in Saratoga reminded me of the Country Club Plaza district in Kansas City, where famous developer J.C. Nichols built a substantial amount of housing close by the central retail core (see my 2007 blog post, Country Club Plaza).

While we discussed a number of issues related to Saratoga's downtown, I want to highlight two ways in which Saratoga Springs seems to have taken a different approach to downtown development.

  1. Downtown Parking. As part of its new "Transect" zoning, the City has eliminated parking requirements for downtown development. That's right, developers don't need to put in any parking.

The aim is to make investing in development downtown more attractive by reducing the cost of building on-site parking, while also making for a more walkable environment (downtown is very compact). Van Wagner indicated that the business community has supported this zoning change. He added that business owners are a strong constituency, with the Chamber of Commerce having some 3,000 members, a remarkably large number for a city of just 30,000.

While the parking requirement has been eliminated from the zoning ordinance, Community Development Director Brad Birge noted that developers of new housing are still building parking. It's just that the amount is based on what they feel they need to market the project, not on a city requirement.

2. Ground Floor Commercial. While the City has taken a market-oriented approach to downtown parking, it's gone the other way in requiring that the first floor of new downtown developments be set aside for commercial use (much of it retail). As Birge explained, the impetus for this also lies in the desire to create a walkable, pedestrian-oriented environment. Having commercial uses, especially retail, on the street level of all new downtown buildings is one important way of achieving this.

Not everything is rosy downtown. While some affordable housing has been built downtown, efforts have encountered difficulties, and there are no inclusionary zoning requirements. As Planning Commission Chair Van Wagner also noted, the "high cost of land in Saratoga takes affordability out of the question." This is compounded by the fact that a lot of housing is leased out during "the season," as it generates very high rents.

As with any city, there are areas of local controversy in Saratoga when it comes to land use and development issues (for example, a storm is brewing over the design of a major planned addition to the downtown convention and conference center). But despite this, everyone I met with agreed that there's a strong consensus that downtown needs to continue to be the economic engine that drives the city.

p.s., thanks to (from left to right) Community Development Director Brad Birge; Senior Planner Susan Barden; Principal Planner Jaclyn Hakes; and Planning Commission Chair Cliff Van Wagner -- and also to former city commissioner (and county planner) Lew Benton & to Mark Baker, president of City Center -- for taking the time to meet with me.

Finally, for those of you who care about coffee houses, if you're in Saratoga Springs you must stop at Uncommon Grounds -- it sure seemed like the hub of morning activity downtown. Given the coffee, it's understandable why.