PUBLIC MEETING:
City of Ithaca Planning Board, Tuedsay August 28, 6:00 PM at Ithaca's City Hall
Sign the electronic petition at:
http://www.petitionpetition.com/cgi/petition.cgi?id=2359
Widewaters is going for broke to persuade the City Planning Board to give them approval for their new site plan for their shopping center across from Buttermilk Falls. This 8/28 meeting is shaping up to be pivotal in this drama that is now two years old. The future of the southwest end of Ithaca will likely be determined by what happens this fall.
Widewaters recently won its lawsuit against the City of Ithaca eliminating the requirement that it pay for the costs to accomodate greatly increased traffic from its proposed Target shopping center across from Buttermilk Falls. But because of their sleazy, deceptive, strong-arm tactics, Widewaters is losing public support. By winning its suit, Widewaters has cut the knees out of the city's justification for promoting the shopping center at the expense of the quality of city and state parklands surrounding the site. Any municipal tax revenues from the stores will be reduced by costs incurred by the public to accomodate the shopping center's traffic on Route 13 and other roads.
This is probably Widewaters's last shot at getting this project off the ground. A citizen lawsuit last winter nullified their original site plan because of numerous violations of state and city environmental laws and municipal codes. Now they are back with a slightly revised plan. But more importantly, it is accompanied by a thick, professional looking document they have called their own "Environmental Impact Statement," which is meant to pre-empt the requirement by the City Planning Board to require a real environmental impact statement. With this document they are claiming that there are no siginificant environmental impacts on surrounding parklands from their 200,000 square feet store complex, its 1100+ car parking lot and the planned intersection with Route 13. This, of course, is absurd, but the document is slick and professional looking and they are hoping to persuade the Planning Board to make a "negative declaration" of environmental impact, so that they can get their site plan approval again quickly and charge ahead with this development, presumably before Target gets fed up and pulls out.
Widewaters made their initial presentation about the new site plan to the Planning Board last month and very few local citizens showed up to voice their concerns. The press interpreted this as waning interest by the public regarding this issue. It is important that people come to the August Planning Board meeting next Tuesday at 6:00 pm for the general public comment period and let the Planning Board and the press know that they want the Planning Board to demand that a full, legitimate environmental impact statement be prepared for this project, something that was not required last year when the Planning Board steamrollered the site plan approval process for this anxious developer.
