Members of the Oneonta Town Board mostly expressed support for Cooperstown All Star Village’s expansion proposal Wednesday, Sept. 9.
With the exception of Teresa DeSantis, board members voted in favor of closing a public hearing on the application during the regular meeting. Attorneys for both the town and CASV said doing so was necessary for the town’s planning board to proceed with further review of the project.
Some board members said there would still be an opportunity to comment during public comment. Most expressed that CASV brings significant economic opportunity to the area, and that they believed the company had made efforts to be in dialogue with the town and its residents about changes, particularly with regard to sound, light and traffic impacts.
“We’ve had two golden eggs,” said Brett Holleran, referring to the National Soccer Hall of Fame, which ceased Oneonta operations in 2010, and CASV.
“It’s not too often a community of our size has this opportunity twice, and it seems like they’re embracing the community as much as they can,” Holleran said of CASV.
Joe Camarata said he believed CASV had been a good partner to the town.
“It’s really a breath of fresh air,” Camarata said, that “you have dialogue with us. You called us and we called you.”
“I really appreciate the transparency and the work that you have tried to do,” he said. He added that he was sure CASV would take feedback from residents and “do the best that you can to mitigate some of those issues.”
Town Supervisor Will Rivera said that “this is a historic opportunity for our town” and “the whole county.”
He asked CASV to consider residents’ feedback both about the proposal itself and existing facility activities.
During the public hearing, a person asked the board to respond to prior criticisms from Diane Carlton, the county’s former planning director, that the proposal was segmented and therefore not properly following the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
Town Attorney Keggan Coughlin of Coughlin and Gerhart responded that while the “application did come in a little bit piecemeal” the “board has not made any final decisions yet because we required (CASV) to submit an updated and consolidated application” combining “the site plan, the special permit, the zoning map amendment, the lot line adjustments” and additional items.
“It’s all consolidated into the Planned Development District application, which encapsulates the entire project as a whole,” Coughlin said.
When discussing whether to close the public hearing, DeSantis said the town had not yet received certain updates to the PDD application “and I would be hesitant to act without that in our hands and having been able to review it.”
CASV’s attorney, Javid Afzali of the law firm Harris Beach Murtha, introduced himself during the discussion.
“The issue with not closing it tonight,” he said, was that the Planning Board would not be able to continue with a completed SEQRA review “next month, which means then we’re in October,” impacting the project’s “limited construction window.”
DeSantis said before the vote that CASV has had “dramatic effects” on the town since it was founded more than 20 years ago and that the expansion would do the same “for decades to come.”
Rivera said Thursday that the Planning Board will be pursuing further review under SEQRA and that the public hearing closure did not constitute a project approval.