This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on the public meeting the Planning Board held last Thursday to discuss upcoming changes to Dryden's zoning laws. Zoning meeting. Much of the meeting was background, discussing the already-written Comprehensive Plan and residential and commercial...
The Tompkins County Planning Department will be holding a meeting about the "Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Element" of their County Comprehensive Plan tomorrow night. The meeting will be tomorrow, October 1st, at 6:30pm at the Dryden Town Hall, 93...
Concerned about the impact of traffic on Route 366? I am. Here's a chance to talk about it. Later this month, residents will have a chance to learn about findings of a transportation study of the Route 13/366 corridor, as...
I meant to post this earlier - I don't yet know if I can make it. Given my lack of trust for county planning, I probably should... JUNE 5TH PUBLIC MEETING ABOUT ENERGY AND GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS COMPREHENSIVE PLAN ELEMENT...
[This is long - it's a complex subject and a couple of years of thought on it.] Nodal development is a popular phrase with planners, as it promises more efficient use of resources, a less-stressful pedestrian way of life, more...
While sorting through the piles of paper that accumulated during election season, I found my printouts of the Route 13/366 Corridor Study, and remembered that I'd promised long ago to write up my concluding thoughts at the end of a...
I finally got to sit down and read the Route 13/366 Corridor Management Plan last night. After disliking the initial visions presented, wondering if and when the report would ever appear, and then finding the opening of the plan discouraging,...
I complained a while ago about the disappearing Route 13/366 Corridor Study. I see today that a Route 13/366 Corridor Study that looks very different from what we saw at the public meeting has finally gone up on the Tompkins...
I've heard bits and pieces about changes to the Route 13/366 Corridor Study, but there's no sign of activity on the project's web site. I believe that they've talked with the Dryden Planning Board about a revised draft that does...
This morning's Journal has a letter from David and Christine Bravo-Cullen of Dryden, reporting their daughter's perspective on what's happening in Iraq. The Monitor reports on a Dryden man's arrest in Ithaca for DWI. There are also a few stories...
If you see helicopters prowling around Dryden Tuesday or Wednesday, they're probably part of NYSEG's power line inspection. Also in Briefly in Tompkins, the Intergenerational Chorus will start rehearsals tonight, and the band will start Wednesday. The county adopted a...
I've criticized the Route 13/366 Corridor Study for ignoring the existing Varna node in favor of looking further east, around NYSEG. Based on conversations I had at their April presentation, it seems pretty clear that the planners automatically removed all...
Since I started paying attention in Dryden, I've had the chance to participate (as an interested and sometimes cranky citizen) on three different planning-related projects: The Town of Dryden Comprehensive Plan, The Cornell-Town of Ithaca Transportation Generic Environmental Impact Statement,...
The Town Board meeting stretched past midnight last night, for the first time that I can remember. It was a long meeting, though actually more focused than many recent meetings, and fortunately they took a five minute break at one...
Back on the 18th of April, the Cornell Transportation-General Environmental Impact Study (t-GEIS) held an open house event much like the one they held in May. While the one in May started with a clean slate of maps, this one...
People in Dryden frequently complain when you threaten to put a trail across their property. I was happy tonight to see that the Route 13/366 Corridor Study plan shows a new trail going across my lot, something I'd never have...
It's been a busy couple of days, and this article is playing catch-up. Yesterday's Ithaca Journal reported on Thursday's Dryden Town Board meeting, including the questions over Advanced Design Consulting's plans to move from Lansing to a much larger facility...
I didn't get to covering yesterday's Ithaca Journal - it was just too busy a day! There was an article exploring how the Town of Dryden plans to coordinate its many stakeholding boards for the zoning process. The current plan...
I missed the Dryden Town Board organizational meeting, so last night was the first time I got to see the newest version of the Board together. Newcomer David Makar joins Marty Christofferson, Steve Trumbull, Steve Stelick, and Mary Ann Sumner...
On Tuesday night, the Tompkins County Planning Department gave a presentation on their Natural Features Focus Areas project at the McLean Fire Hall. I'd guess thirty people were there. The session examined eight of the fifteen focus areas, mostly wetlands...
Better Housing for Tompkins County gave a presentation on Tuesday night in Etna looking at housing issues, and the challenges of creating housing people can afford in Tompkins County. Turnout was light - there were three attendees and three Better...
Better Housing for Tompkins County will be having a meeting Tuesday night at Houtz Hall in Etna (map) from 6:00pm to 7:30pm. One of the organizers, Abi Munro, wrote a description of what will be talked about for the Ithaca...
Last week, I published Town Attorney Mahlon Perkins' opinion on windmills. It turns out that the attorney for the Zoning Board of Appeals, Randy Marcus, also wrote a letter to the Town Board on the subject (110KB PDF, 156KB selectable)....
Last week I stopped in to talk with Carol Schmook and Ken Jupiter, whose plans to put a 10 kW windmill on their property at the corner of Baker Hill Road and Mount Pleasant Road came to a sudden halt...
I've written a few times about what impact rising gas prices might have on Dryden, but it looks like we're now going to be getting used to $3.00 gas that was just speculation two years ago. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman...
This morning's Ithaca Journal visits Margie and George Malepe, who continue to enjoy cruises despite a fire on board a cruise they were taking last month. They're planning to take their seventh cruise sometime in the future. The Monitor reports...
I published Environmental Planner Dan Kwasnowski's proposed alternative energy ordinance and accompanying explanation last week, but I wasn't aware that the Town Attorney, Mahlon Perkins, had also weighed in with his opinion. It's not a particularly legal opinion - it's...
This morning's Ithaca Journal examines the county's affordable housing problems in much greater depth than a confusing earlier article. The basic problem is simple: The study found that the median price of a single-family home rose from $92,000 in 1998...
Apparently last week's Zoning Board of Appeals meeting went much longer than usual, with one of the issues a request for a variance to put a residential windmill at a house on Mount Pleasant. They couldn't grant it, because the...
There's a lot of discussion of soil types at Town Hall. Soil types affect everything from agriculture to septic tank placement to erosion and runoff. The Town of Dryden Comprehensive Plan includes Map 4-1, Natural Constraints to Development (1.9MB PDF),...
There's not a lot of specifically Dryden news, but County Legislator Mike Lane is mentioned in the Cayuga Green tax abatements discussion: IDA Chairman and County Legislator Michael Lane requested a breakdown of financial assumptions and projections by the project's...
This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on Thursday night's Town Board meeting, where the comprehensive plan passed with modification to the trails. The Journal also notes that the New York State Department of Transportation will be reducing speed limits on Route...
After some discussion, the Dryden Town Board approved the Comprehensive Plan tonight, minus the "spiderweb" of additional trails added in September. At the end of the meeting, the board considered both the State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR) and the plan,...
This morning's Ithaca Journal front-pages Thursday night's Town Board vote on the Town Comprehensive Plan. The article mentions the eminent domain controversy which appeared in a letter to the editor last month. Supervisor Steve Trumbull says on the trails that:...
Unlike Dryden's 1968 General Plan or the currently proposed Comprehensive Plan, both of which looked at the recent past and projected change (and responses to change) based on more of the same, another plan for Tompkins County considers a future...
It's been a while since I wrote about the 1968 General Plan, but I've finally scanned in the section on the local economy. You can read it in clearer (1125KB PDF) or selectable form (1035KB PDF). Dryden in 1968 had...
This week's Dryden Courier leads with stories on Freeville's Foxglove Bed & Breakfast, which has been in business since 1997, and the upcoming visit of the Harlem Wizards to take on a team of Dryden school staff and coaches. The...
I was planning to spend this weekend catching up on a number of stories, but instead wound up resting (for the first time in too long), painting and fixing storm windows, and replacing my windshield wiper blades after a chunk...
This week's Dryden Courier comes folded very strangely, to accomodate an "Ithaca Times Menu Guide" that I suspect was sized for the larger Ithaca Times. Inside, though, there's plenty of information. There's an in-depth look at the summer construction at...
I've wondered a bit about the Tompkins County Coalition for Change, not having been able to find much about it. Tom Hatfield, the Dryden Republican Committee chairman and the apparent spokesman for the group, was on WHCU this morning to...
Thursday night's public hearing on the proposed Town Comprehensive Plan demonstrated residents' concerns and hopes for these guidelines for future development in the Town of Dryden. The first speaker, after Supervisor Steve Trumbull had opened the hearing, noting that this...
This Thursday's Town Board meeting will start with a 7:00pm public hearing about the Comprehensive Plan that's been coming through the Planning Board for the past few years. The Comprehensive Plan lays out the proposed future for the town for...
The Dryden Town Board will have two extra meetings in the next couple of weeks. The first will be Thursday night, in joint session with the Planning Board. The Planning Board will have two subdivision public hearings at 7:00pm and...
This morning's Ithaca Journal spends its editorial on the difficulties of sustainable power including hydropower and wind. It doesn't mention Dryden, but in some ways it echoes recent resistance to windmills here. Planner George Frantz, who has been the consultant...
The Planning Board sent the Draft Comprehensive Plan to the Town Board on Thursday night, voting 6-0 to send it forward. Unlike the public hearing, the board didn't take public input this time, instead focusing on earlier comments. Apart from...
This week's Dryden Courier leads with an article on the windmills Cornell has proposed building on Mount Pleasant, which could provide 10-15% of the university's electricity. Neighbors are less than happy, and the Courier reports that 15 of them signed...
In this morning's Ithaca Journal, Briefly in Tompkins and a second Briefly in Tompkins list some positions open to applications from residents of Dryden: The Dryden Youth Commission, a joint commission between the Town of Dryden, Village of Dryden, and...
It's been nearly a month since I last posted pieces of the 1968 General Plan for Dryden, the never-adopted but highly informative complement to the current Draft Comprehensive Plan. The newer plan notes: Residential development, excluding residential development within the...
I've been slack in covering the February Town Board meeting, and the minutes are now available if you want full details on what happened. Some key moments stand out in the meeting, so here are some highlights. I've bolded subjects...
This week's issue of the Dryden Courier includes a detailed story on the Village of Dryden's January Board meeting. There's some explanation of the continuation of the multiple unit housing moratorium extension and its future: Mayor Reba Taylor said Tompkins...
There isn't any news or opinion about or from Dryden in the Ithaca Journal today, but their legal notices include this piece announcing the further extension of the Village of Dryden's moratorium on new multiple residence construction: ATTENTION VILLAGE OF...
This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on last night's hearing on the revised Draft Comprehensive Plan. Residents expressed concern, and some hope, about changes that would eventually come to their neighborhood, and as the article notes, the Dryden Lake area was...
Dryden County Legislator Mike Lane is cited in this morning's Ithaca Journal as saying "he wants the Legislature to vote on changing the cycle to every three years, a move he proposed twice last year but was shot down both...
In this morning's Ithaca Journal, Cathy Wakeman's Dryden Town Talk takes a look at Welsh pony trainer Amy Schwartz and rider Junelle King, National Grand Champion of the United States Equestrian Foundation Welsh Pony Division. Schwartz is raising 30 ponies...
This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on last night's Town Board meeting. They lead with the question of the purchase of land for the new Town Hall, writing that: In an unexpected move, the Dryden Town Board went into executive session...
This morning's Ithaca Journal reports on last night's Town Board meeting. They lead with the question of the purchase of land for the new Town Hall, writing that: In an unexpected move, the Dryden Town Board went into executive session...
The survey in the 1968 General Plan for the Village of Freeville continues to be amazing, again listing use for every parcel as it was in 1966. This graphic shows an inset concentrating on the now vanished railroad tracks in...
The Town of Dryden has posted a revised version of its Draft Comprehensive Plan. This is the one document I'd encourage everyone interested in the future shape of Dryden (including the villages, even though they're not included) to read. The...
The survey in the 1968 General Plan for the Villages of Dryden and Freeville is stunning work, listing use for every parcel. I'll post Freeville this week, and here's the Village of Dryden for now. This graphic shows an inset...
The Zoning Board of Appeals is meeting tonight at 7:30pm at the Dryden Town Hall (map). I'll post the rest of February's meeting list when it's available, but wanted to make sure to point out the ZBA, as they've had...
After the introductory material on land use patterns, the 1968 General Plan goes into one of my favorite features: a building-by-building survey of the Town as a whole, with additional maps for Etna, Freeville, and Dryden. The map for the...
After examing Natural Features, the 1968 Dryden General Plan looks at land use patterns. The opening section of this describes Dryden as suburbanization was starting to affect it, but before many of the newer developments in town were built. Land...
The next section of the 1968 Dryden General Plan looks at a set of issues that haven't changed much since then: natural features, like hill slopes, watersheds, and soils. Natural Features and Resources Topography (77KB PDF, or 4KB text) Natural...
Continuing into the body of the 1968 Dryden General Plan, I've scanned the first two sections, an Introduction and Historical and Regional Context. For completeness, I'm including pictures and maps in separate files, as they tend to be enormous: Introduction...
As the Planning Board comes closer to completing the Draft Comprehensive Plan, it seems like a good time to reflect on the fate of the last plan Dryden did, the 1968 Dryden General Plan. Apparently it was never adopted by...
This morning's Ithaca Journal catches up to the Victorian Christmas event the Village of Dryden held December 3rd, exploring how it and the wreaths along West Main Street came about. Cathy Wakeman celebrates a warm fire and a cup of...
Dryden's number of accidents involving deer is up to nine this year from three last year, though it isn't clear if this year is high or last year was low. On the opinion page, Edward Marx,Tompkins County Commissioner of Planning,...
Today's Ithaca Journal has a picture of children packing gifts at the Bethel Grove Bible Church for the Operation Christmas Child program of Samaritan's Purse. An Etna resident, Susan Morse, and her dogs Kiss and Whisper, are noted in K-9...
Although the Town of Dryden notices page still shows the October 28th meeting of the Planning Board, I'm pretty sure that tonight is the Planning Board's November meeting, the 3rd Thursday of the month, at 7:30pm at the Dryden Town...
This morning's Ithaca Journal takes a look at the silt problems in Ellis Hollow that came up at this month's Town Board meeting. Jennie Daley talks with residents near the intersection of Turkey Hill, Ellis Hollow and Quarry Roads about...
Today's Ithaca Journal explores the many issues around land-use planning and agriculture in Dryden. The article looks at farmers' concerns about disappearing ag land, their financial needs, and different possible ways of addressing the issue. There's also an article on...
The Dryden Planning Board met Thursday night, first approving a subdivision and changes to an existing subdivision, and then focusing on two of the more difficult parts of the Draft Comprehensive Plan, agriculture and trails. The first item on the...
I was away last week, so I'm covering two issues of the Dryden Courier in one article. Both issues focus on farming issues and the start of the school sports seasons. In the September 8th issue, Courier reporter Tony Hall...
As I just mentioned, there will be a meeting to discuss agriculture and planning in the Town of Dryden on Monday, September 13, at the Dryden Veterans Memorial Home (map) from 7:30pm to 9:30pm. Debbie Gross, the Dryden Environmental Planner,...
Dryden Environmental Planner Debbie Gross wrote me today with news that the August meeting of the Town of Dryden Planning Board has been cancelled....
As I get closer to the Dryden/Ithaca boundary, one parcel really stands out. It's 45 acres of Cornell fields, actively farmed. It's large enough to build a community on it, and it's convenient to Cornell and not far from East...
This morning's Ithaca Journal examines the Village of Dryden's possible extension of its moratorium on multi-unit housing development. New York State has awarded the village a grant for executing a comprehensive plan, and the planning process is underway. I'll be...
This morning's Ithaca Journal has an article on the volunteers keeping the Lakeview Golf Course going. Town Supervisor Steve Trumbull appreciates their efforts: "Those members who are donating time, fully free, mowing the course, mowing the greens, donating money for...
At last night's Town Board meeting, the board heard five different public hearings, as well as two points of citizen's privilege. (The Recreation Partnership discussion was apparently postponed.) The first hearing was on an application by Andrew and Elaine Morenus...
The Environmental Planner's report examined the need to revise the Town Hazard Mitigation Plan and a kiosk on the Jim Schug Trail. Debbie Gross reported in a letter (247KB PDF) that while "Dryden chose not to participate in [the county...
It doesn't look like I'm going to have time to write up the rest of the June Town Board meeting the way I'd like to, and the town's minutes are already available, so I'm just going to talk a bit...
The Town of Dryden Planning Board gathered Wednesday night and held public hearings on and gave approvals to two subdivision proposals in Etna. Phase I of the Daniel Armitage subdivision, lots A, B, C, and D on the map (134KB...
For the second time this year, the Planning Board didn't have a quorum, so the meeting was purely discussion of the Draft Comprehensive Plan's agriculture section with the crowd of farmers and farm representatives who were there. (The three public...
The Planning Board meeting , tonight at 7pm at the Dryden Town Hall (map), will include hearings on three subdivisions near Etna: two phases of the Daniel Armitage subdivision (one at the corner of Wood and Sheldon Roads, and the...
Most of my Town Board reporting this month has been late because I've been too busy to get to it. Today's story is a little different, in that I'm lucky to have waited for the final draft of the Town...
The May Town Board meeting opened with a hearing on amendments to the local law on siting telecommunications towers, changing the rules to encourage the shared use of existing towers. No one spoke on the matter, and eventually it passed...
Last night, the Planning Board approved a subdivision modification, scheduled a hearing for a subdivision, and had a sketch conference on yet another subdivision, before talking about the agricultural parts of the Draft Comprehensive Plan. The first discussion dealt with...
There are two planning-related meetings in Dryden tonight: The County Planning Department will hold a meeting explaining the draft of their Comprehensive Plan at Freeville Village Hall (map) tonight at 7pm. The Town Planning Board is meeting at 7:30pm tonight...
County Legislator Mike Lane is quoted in today's Ithaca Journal on the state's Empire Zone program, which has left Tompkins County as one of 11 counties without one. Lane says that "it would be different if only really economically depressed...
Kathy Zahler writes with news from a neighbor: Dryden's Conservation Board is seeking two members to fill open positions. The board meets on the second Tuesday of each month at 7:30. Its job is to analyze data and make recommendations...
Today's Ithaca Journal includes schedules of assessment hearings and comprehensive plan meetings. The local advisory board for assessments will meet at the Dryden Town Hall (map) on Thursday, May 20th, from 3pm to 6pm to hear property owners who wish...
As part of the process for the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan, the Planning Department held an open house and meeting on Thursday at the Dryden Town Hall. The open house started at three, with displays up and Deputy Commissioner of...
While the Draft Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan contains a lot of information, it's pretty enormous overall. They've broken it down into pieces by section, but even those sections are pretty large. Using Adobe Acrobat, I've broken it into smaller pieces...
If the Town of Dryden Draft Comprehensive Plan wasn't enough planning excitement for you, you can now add the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan to your reading list. I haven't had a chance to read it, but I'll be looking it...
Thursday night's Planning Board meeting included a sketch conference for a proposed sudivision on Sheldon and Wood roads near Etna (map) as well as continued discussion of the Draft Comprehensive Plan's sections on hamlets and agriculture. The Planning Board welcomed...
The Planning Board will be meeting tomorrow night at 7:30pm at Dryden Town Hall (map). Their focus will be on the Draft Comprehensive Plan, particularly agriculture and transportation. Last month's Planning Board meeting was pretty active, and closed with concerns...
A lot of Thursday night's Town Board meeting was spent on infrastructure issues, ranging from sewer issues to cell phone towers to roads. The meeting included two public hearings on sewer districts, one affecting the area north of the Village...
As noted here previously, the Town of Dryden will be having a public hearing on the removal of phosphorous from the City of Ithaca's sewage treatment plant, which serves the Varna and Route 13 area sewer districts. Today's Ithaca Journal...
Lynn Richards, Senior Policy Analyst at the EPA, gave a general presentation on Smart Growth last night, explaining how planning is changing to encourage the creation of landscapes which accomodate people - and not just cars - once again. Smart...
EPA Senior Policy Analyst Lynn Richards will be speaking at 7:30pm tonight at the Ramada Inn (map) on "Smart Growth: More Choices, Better Places". I'm especially interested in this, as Richards has written recently on Alternatives to Subsidizing Edge Development:...
Thirteen people, including four Dryden residents, met last night at Rogues Harbor in Lansing as part of the Sustainable Tompkins project. This was the first meeting of the "salon", which will gather every Monday there through May 3. (There are...
Today's Ithaca Journal includes a guest column on the Sustainable Tompkins initiative: Its aim is to consider what this region would be like if it were better designed to assure economic stability, social well being and the continued integrity of...
Senior Planner Heather Filiberto and Planning Analyst Tom Mank of the Tompkins County Planning Department presented work on the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan last night at the Varna Community Center. The scope of the county plan is very different from...
The Tompkins County Planning Department will be presenting the Tompkins County Comprehensive Plan on Wednesday, March 24th, at 7:30pm at the Varna Community Center (map). The plan hasn't yet been released to the public, and this meeting (along with others...
This month's Planning Board meeting had a quorum, unlike last month's meeting, and was able to move forward with changes to the plan, though only two members of the public (myself included) were in attendance. Four planning board members, Dryden's...
Tonight's Town of Dryden Planning Board meeting will continue to examine the Draft Comprehensive Plan and proposed changes to it. The Draft Comprehensive Plan page on the town's site notes: The Planning Board discussed the first three topics at its...
Conservation issues were important at Thursday's Town Board meeting, which started with a (very quiet) public hearing on changing the Conservation Advisory Council to a Conservation Advisory Board, spent time on environmental planning issues, and concluded with a discussion about...
[This Thursday's Town Board meeting had enough to it that I'm going to publish a series of articles on what happened, focusing on specific topics, rather than try to cover it in one huge piece.] The Town Board resolved the...
Yesterday I looked at the populations of the Dryden portion of McLean and the hamlet area north of the Village of Dryden. The Draft Comprehensive Plan proposes an average density for these hamlet areas of eight units per acre, like...
The Draft Comprehensive Plan actually defines four hamlets within the town, though Etna and Varna are the two most frequently discussed. The other two hamlets are fragments, one being the Dryden side of McLean, which is largely in the Town...
The legal notice for the hearing on the law turning the town's. Conservation Advisory Council into a Conservation Board has been published. The hearing will be at 7:00pm on March 11, coinciding with the regularly scheduled Town Board meeting....
I didn't make it to this month's Town Board meeting, so I was especially interested to see the minutes which recently appeared. As a number of issues were discussed at different points in the meeting, the summary below attempts to...
Yesterday's article explored the population of Varna and Etna, but even though it's interesting to know that downtown Varna's population is larger than Freeville's (679 to 505), the numbers needed to evaluate the statements about density in the Draft Comprehensive...
This week's sort-of Planning Board meeting on the Draft Comprehensive Plan's impact on Etna and Varna left me wondering about how many people actually live in the hamlets and what we data was available about them. In particular, the rental/owner-occupied...
Last night's meeting for "discussing revisions to the Draft Comprehensive Plan" wasn't precisely a Planning Board meeting, as only two members of the board were there (four are necessary for action), and only six people were in the audience, including...
Tompkins County will consider ending annual assessment, after a number of years in which real estate prices and assessments have increased substantially. State aid supporting annual assessments may not come this year, and property-owners have been unhappy. On the other...
While the Town of Dryden Planning Board takes up revisions to the Draft Comprehensive Plan for hamlets tonight, the Ithaca Journal reports that the Village of Dryden will have a public hearing on maintaining their housing construction moratorium while discussing...
The Town of Dryden Comprehensive Plan page now indicates that: The Planning Board will be discussing revisions to the Draft Comprehensive Plan over the next several meetings. Public comments have been summarized into the topic areas listed below. This list...
Planner George Frantz (who is, among other things, the consultant working on the Town of Dryden Comprehensive Plan) has a strange but certainly thought-provoking guest column in the Ithaca Journal today. While it purports to be about a specific traffic...
David Weinstein, a member of the Town Planning Board who commented here a while ago, sent me some letters he's sent the Planning Board suggesting changes to to the Draft Comprehensive Plan. There are two sets of suggestions. The first...
The Town of Dryden Public Notices page (local copy) announces a meeting for Tuesday, January 27, at the Dryden Fire Hall (map), noting: The purpose of this meeting is to discuss ways to improve communications between the Town of Dryden...
I pulled out my Town of Dryden Zoning Map (available at the town office - I haven't seen it on the Web) to compare it to the Future Land Use Plan, and was reminded of a a feature on the...
While the Draft Comprehensive Plan notes the existence of mobile homes in Dryden, it doesn't talk much at all about their future. It recognizes that: Manufactured housing (a.k.a. mobile homes) accounts for a significant proportion of the housing stock. There...
I made it to last night's informational meeting on the Town's Draft Comprehensive Plan, held at the Dryden Town Hall. (The hearing on annexation was at the Village Hall, at the same time, and there was a bit of confusion.)...
The last of the informational meetings on the Draft Comprehensive Plan will be held tonight from 7 to 9 PM at the Dryden Town Hall, 65 E. Main Street (map). I'll be at this one, finally!...
After writing about how NYSEG's headquarters building seems to be in steady decline yesterday, I started thinking about how it's always been a strange island anyway. While it dominates the Route 13/366 intersection, it doesn't feel like it's actually contributed...
The building I refer to as "NYSEG headquarters" looms everytime I drive home along Route 13. It's an enormous complex, and dominates the overlapping area of Routes 13 and 366. The "Utility Headquarters" sign indicates a left turn lane just...
I've been away all week, so I didn't get to attend either the Varna or the Freeville informational meetings on the Draft Comprehensive Plan for Dryden. The Varna meeting seemed pretty well-covered in the paper, but I've seen no similar...
I couldn't make it, but I'm happy to read that three dozen people showed up for the Varna informational meeting on the Dryden Draft Comprehensive Plan. It sounds like the tough questions about increasing density in Varna while having no...
There is a public information session about the Draft Comprehensive Plan at the Varna Community Center (map) tonight from 7 to 9 PM. Unfortunately, I can't make it, being a couple of hundred miles away. The counter on the page...
George Frantz, of the firm creating the Dryden Comprehensive Plan, has an editorial in the Ithaca Journal today about visions of a much more compact Ithaca at Cornell's Urban and Regional Studies program. He's right that the distributed "American city...
After spending the past few days talking about things in the Draft Comprehensive Plan that worry me, it's probably a good idea to talk about things in the plan that intrigue me. The discussion of Cluster Subdivisions on pages 50-52...
The Draft Comprehensive Plan makes some suggestions based on water and sewer systems that leave me wondering whether water and sewer are a blessing or a curse for a community. Given the taste of the water from the (barely functioning)...
In reading the Town of Dryden Draft Comprehensive Plan, I'm growing more and more concerned about things that I'm not seeing discussed, in particular the balance between rental units and owner-occupied housing. The plan notes on page 40 that: In...
In addition to the Draft Comprehensive plan mentioned earlier, the 1999 "Future Land Use in the Town of Dryden: Alternatives and Recommendations" is available online. It was performed by Cornell's Department of City and Regional Planning. More food for thought....
The Town website now hosts the 2003 Draft Comprehensive Plan. This is a fascinating document with lots of pieces, but I'll be a while digesting before I comment on it in depth. The draft (without maps) is 2.4MB long, so...