Environmental Assessment Report (EAF)
Greenport Planning Board Minutes
Correspondence
from Public Files
Documentation needed
from Town of Greenport
Written Testimony
Presented to
Planning Board
State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR):
Environmental Impact Assessment in NYS
Parts 1-3 of the EAF
The SEQRA Cookbook
Kinderhook Neighbors
for Good Growth
A Neg Dec after all
Members of the Greenport Neighbors Action Group, which has been working to improve Widewaters’ proposed Greenport project, are all very disappointed by the Planning Board's negative declaration. The board asserts that the project will not have any significant negative impacts.
From the first time “Widewaters” was mentioned at a Planning Board meeting, less than a year ago, it appeared to be a “done deal,” arrived at by people who thought no one was watching.
Greenport Neighbors wonders if any of the materials supplied by anyone other than the developer were actually read by the entire board.
Its verbal “acknowledgment of community concern” at the March meeting rings hollow.
Its failure to make a positive declaration on this plan was ludicrous.
Its insistence that this project has minimal impact on the area is absurd.
Its failure to have the developer pay for independent studies is an abdication of responsibility to the community.
Ultimately, the question is, why would the Greenport Planning Board resist using the law to make sure we got the best plan possible? Because this isn't it—economically, physically or for the surrounding area’s quality of life.
We feel this was not the right plan to begin with. For starters, there was (and remains) too much opportunity for our existing businesses to be cannibalized.
Members of Greenport Neighbors are not anti-development. We made many suggestions along the way about other ways to proceed. None, it should be said, involved nature conservancies. All of them would have required stepping back and thinking first about what we all need, with real public input.
It appears that the board members function in lockstep with each other—and, even more troubling, with the developer. For them to have reduced this issue to "pro or con the mall” was irresponsible and disingenuous of them.
The board and developer say they don't even know who the tenants of this mall will be. Judging from a list of their usual suspects, one can guess. But for these two parties to make projections based on complete unknowns and on information supplied entirely by an interested party runs counter to accepted wisdom about running a business. Especially when that business is the running of a town.