Barb Fenton lives right behind Ellsworth Commons in Malta. She always thought her home was in a perfect rural location, with the small-town feel she desired for her family. Now, though, she says she hates the monstrosity in her backyard and doesn’t want the downtown plan that the Town Board accepted 4-1 at its meeting in early March.
`Quite frankly, in my opinion a lot of people in the town basically ruined it. What they’ve done is like kids in a candy store; bigger is better and they’ve created such a mish mash of buildings that it’s laughable,` said Fenton.
There’s not much Fenton can do about it.
`The Town Board voted to go ahead with an urban downtown area and the next step is to begin to address the standards that will apply,` said Supervisor Paul Sausville, who was the lone dissenting vote.
Sausville, like Fenton, wasn’t in favor of the revised master plan that pitted a downtown area with an urban feel against a town seemingly set in its rural roots.
`We do need a downtown and we do need to concentrate retail facilities in that area, but we have huge shopping malls at Exit 9 and Exit 15, so we don’t need big box stores,` said Sausville. `I don’t want downtown to be like Saratoga. It’s lovely, but we don’t need to undermine [the city] by developing land in Malta.`
The downtown plan has gone through revision after revision in an effort to satisfy varying tastes and opinions for how the downtown area should look and operate, largely in an effort to accommodate repercussions from GlobalFoundries and the wave of workforce and business it is expected to bring.
Tara Thomas, a town board member in her first term, said she’s `delighted` with the progress that’s been made on the plan and feels portions of it are on point.
`My big concern was always the size of the downtown, what was supposed to be 1.8 miles of commercial overlay district. Now, what’s being proposed is three separate zoning notes I think the downtown planning team took a close review of how those areas were going to interconnect with each other and grow and fit the overall theme of having a walkable downtown gathering area,` said Thomas.
The three proposed areas would be broken into a `town center` that would accommodate higher density development along Route 9 with three- to four-story buildings, a `village-style hamlet` that would be pedestrian oriented with smaller scale development along Route 67 with one- to two-story buildings and `gateways` that would be less developed with more flexible design standards.
`This is the first step, that we’ve adopted an overall vision and we’ll work on this progressively into the next phase of addressing zoning recommendations and amending those guidelines and standards,` said Thomas.
Thomas said the board and planning team will have to look at infrastructure issues, how pedestrian travel will flow and how heights of buildings will play a role in architectural enhancements and styles that developers may want to include.
The three distinct zones with various storied buildings is exactly what Fenton said has `destroyed` what Malta should be, and she doesn’t think there’s anything that the Town Board can do to fix things.
`They’re trying to fix a mess they created by not having a vision as to what they were creating they’re trying to backpedal now and I don’t know how they can do it,` said Fenton. `Ellsworth is massive and you have that on one side and then on the other side are one-story buildings. Everything they’ve done is to placate the builders. We’re not Saratoga and we’re never going to be Saratoga.`
Fenton said she’s lost `all faith` in her government leaders and is done worrying about what she can’t change and what she feels she never had a say in.
`There are a number of people on that board who, when trying to get elected last year, sat at our homes and ‘totally understood’ our concerns but in there, they have their own agenda,` said Fenton. `I have no respect for anybody on the board who can’t stand up for their platforms when they were running.`
The neighborhood Fenton said she’s losing is perhaps the biggest reason she moved back to the area after spending many years in Maryland.
`We wanted to be in a little nice neighborhood-type community. We didn’t want the congestion of Clifton Park or the big city and we don’t have any of that now,` she said. `I remember what Malta was. I’m not against progress, but I just don’t feel like it should have been done at the scale they’ve done it.`
Instead of tall office buildings and apartments lining the streets, Fenton said she’d rather see a `New Englandy` downtown with places to shop and where residents and visitors can walk leisurely on the street.
`It’s sad because they took a beautiful little rural downtown and [ruined] it,` said Fenton.
Sausville said he shares many of Fenton’s sentiments, as do residents who continuously call and e-mail him. They’re part of the three major reasons he voted against the downtown plan.
`No. 1 was the feedback I’ve received from the public that it’s out of scale with their wishes and desires they feel to recreate an urban area in our town was catamount to sprawl and they’d rather keep the small town character and charm we have in place,` said Sausville, referring to a door-to-door canvass he said he conducted last year.
Safety concerns were also an issue for Sausville.
`We had a meeting with the State Department of Transportation where they concluded and recommended we not choose Route 9 as Main Street for downtown because it’s a five-lane highway and they said it really wouldn’t be safe and would be very expensive to make pedestrian crossings and stop signs and lights,` said Sausville.
That expense to construct adequate signage for safety is the third reason Sausville opposed the plan.
`We don’t have a town tax, so if we have urban services then we would have to impose that tax and it would fall on the shoulders of everybody in the town, not just businesses downtown, so there was a financial component here that has not been evaluated and not been assessed,` said Sausville.
According to information Sausville got from the DOT, to construct one pedestrian crossing with a pedestrian activated light on Route 9 would cost $100,000, not counting maintenance.
Overall infrastructure care is another expense Sausville said didn’t receive enough forethought.
`Sidewalks add extra costs for developers and the town. They recommended forming a downtown business district to cover the cost of snow removal but I don’t know if businesses would want to self-impose a tax on themselves like that,` said Sausville.
Despite opposition, the master plan’s approval now sets it in motion for the next step, which could take months.
Fenton said she won’t be sitting around waiting for news.
`I don’t really care anymore. I’m tired of listening to them, tired of listening to the political rhetoric they’re gonna do what they want to do,` said Fenton.
A presentation and pamphlet with additional details about the downtown master plan is available online at www.malta-town.org.
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