Alliance charts northern Dutchess growth

st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme- mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme- mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme- mso-bidi- mso-bidi-theme-} The Northern Dutchess Alliance is finalizing a blueprint for economic development for the county from north of Hyde Park to the Columbia County border, an area with busy state roads and bucolic country lanes. The document should be ready for release early next year after six years of data collection under the watchword: cooperation.

“It makes sense. Let”™s work together,” said Mary Ann Johnson, the project director for the effort to chart sustainable and desirable growth for the area.

“That”™s what it”™s all about,” said Pompey Delafield, president of the alliance and supervisor of the town of Hyde Park. “We can work together in an organized fashion for certain principles that have long-range benefits for this area. The type of growth we want is sustainable and regional in a way that makes sense.”Â

Johnson said the original impetus for convening the alliance came perhaps 10 years ago when Metro-North thought about creating regular commuter rail service at stops north of their current terminus in Poughkeepsie. The plan sparked opposition, but even more it created uncertainty about what the 10 municipalities in the alliance saw as their future.

Delafield called the region”™s rural environs, farms and tourist attractions “a marketable commodity,” and said, “These things have to be woven together,” along existing roads and “hopefully public transportation.” But he and other alliance members say that growth along the major roads such as state Routes 9 and 9G should not occur in ways that sacrifice the rural beauty that brings visitors.Â Â Â

Johnson said that state Route 199 and state Route 44 are also the major roads along which development could be focused, but warns that the region could find itself overwhelmed with ugly strip malls if it does not proactively guide growth to locales and designs that match the quality of life and environs already in place.Â

Delafield said it”™s a relatively simple outlook to express. “We emphasize the idea of sustainability of economic growth and the idea of building on what we have here: farms, tourists and weekenders. It means we have to be very careful how we build things out here.”

The economic blueprint is in final stages before being released, most likely at the NDA annual meeting in January. It cites the ABCD method, or “asset based community development.”

The principles involve restoration, preservation and protection of natural resources, supporting local agriculture, encouraging local tourism initiatives and promoting smart growth through focusing development on town and village centers and encouraging a pedestrian friendly approach to commerce.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â

The blueprint involves ten municipalities,Â the town of Hyde Park, with its nationally known FDR and Vanderbilt estates and libraries, the town and village of Rhinebeck with its village center of restaurants and shops that draw numerous visitors, the growing town and village of Red Hook, Clinton, Milan, Stanford and Pleasant Valley and the village of Tivoli. The blueprint was created with $128,000 in 2002 grant money with $64,000 from New York state and the remainder in contributions from local coffers that included in-kind services.

Organizers tout the outreach that was done over a six-year period that led to the creation of the roughly 150 page document. It is consistent with the comprehensive plans of the municipalities and with the expressed desires of residents and business people. Expressly stating a belief in “home rule,” the blueprint says “The concepts and ideas in it are all the products of a cross section of government and business leaders.”

But it is when the blueprint is delivered that the real work begins, said Delafield. He said the document will stress methods for businesses and individuals to get involved in steering the economic development and growth of the region.Â

“The blueprint itself encouraged and gives a number of ways for people to get together and build this development scheme,” Delafield said. “What it stresses is the relationship that works as a unified group.”