Editorial of May 30, 2024
When Is Enough Enough?
Among the most unsightly business development that has unfortunately survived the growth and development of our country in recent decades is the strip mall, called as well a plaza, a type of shopping center where multiple stores and eateries, often of the box and chain variety, are generally built on the outskirts of cities and large towns, on or near the larger traffic arterials. They offer little connection to their nearby towns and villages, often leading to precipitous declines in traditional “Main Street” commerce, and tend to overwhelm their once bucolic surroundings, replacing open spaces and obscuring roadside views.
The first such mall, the Park and Shop, was opened in Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C., in 1930. Today there are upwards of 115,000 such malls in the United States, over a quarter of them in California, Texas and Florida, where it is often difficult to find the original town centers that have been laid waste by the seemingly endless commercial expansion and urban sprawl. Lately, however, these malls have been giving way to online sales and a global pandemic, and their customer numbers have plummeted. The shop owners have had to come up with new ways to encourage their customers, and they have done so by shifting their purpose from selling purely consumer products to becoming destinations for entertainment and culture. The infamous Mall of America, in Minnesota, now contains an aquarium, a theme park and adventure golf, among other attractions.
Which leads us to our own back yard, just south of Cooperstown on Route 28 in the Town of Hartwick, where the hamlet of Hartwick itself is so far removed from the chaos of the town’s Route 28 hamlets of Hartwick Seminary, Hyde Park and Index, that planners seem to have no qualms about placing the value of tax revenues well above concerns related to density, traffic, and quality of life. While this unbridled development does nothing to diminish the placidity of life in the hamlet of Hartwick itself, it has an enormous impact on the reputation and serenity of Cooperstown, a place often called America’s favorite hometown and sometimes America’s most perfect village.
Presently, we are seeing the construction of yet another chain hotel and something to be called the “Cooperstown Experience,” a soon-to-open, one-of-a-kind baseball and softball tournament complex that promises a complete family vacation experience in “The Baseball Capital of the World.”
To accommodate this development, a previously untouched early 19th-century federal farmhouse was scraped from the earth in a manner that would have been nearly impossible in the Village of Cooperstown. One wonders when enough might be enough.
It has been noted that a significant number of visitors who stay in Hartwick’s chain hotels and recreate in the attractions there sometimes do not actually make it into the Village of Cooperstown and leave with no idea of why it would be called America’s perfect village, or even that there is a lake here. These people leave with no true Cooperstown experience.
Fortunately, Cooperstown is blessed with a village government that consistently strives to retain the peace and beauty of the village, as well as The Clark Foundation, which not only supports the village leaders, but also maintains an expansive and bucolic “green zone” that stretches from the northern boundary of the Town of Hartwick to Cooperstown itself. Perhaps those who are in charge of affairs in Hartwick could take a page from their neighbors and consider some more sensible zoning to prevent sprawl, or at least to ensure these new enterprises are more attractive—from sign ordinances and density requirements to building design guidelines and light pollution mitigation. Locals would be happy, and visitors might enjoy a more sustainable and attractive “Baseball Capital of the World” experience.