EDITORIAL

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It hasn’t been much mentioned in the debate about Madison Square Garden Entertainment’s proposed music festival, but the Town of Springfield has already approved a 20-lot subdivision at Route 20 and Continental Road.
Say the music festival doesn’t happen; that lovely view to the southeast of that intersection may be dotted with 20 McMansions instead.
So what’s really being debated isn’t MSG Entertainment or nothing, it’s MSG Entertainment or something that may be less desirable.
Springfield Town Clerk Jeannette Armstrong is right when she likens the community to “the Garden of Eden.” But so is much of Route 166 between Milford and Cherry Valley Garden-of-Eden like. So is the Butternuts Valley. So is the east side of Otsego Lake. So are many of the fields, forests, hills, dales and byways that make up our delightful county.
We who live here want it to stay the way it is, mostly. But what have we done to ensure that? Some, but hardly enough, as indicated by the sprawl now developing around Hartwick Seminary and a near-miss: 100 towers, each 400-feet tall, could have been blowing in the wind by now, but for Otsego 2000 and a few hundred determined people who dug in their heels.
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One of the problems with win-lose scenarios is somebody loses.
In the case of the windmills, the losers were the developers. In Hartwick Seminary, the developers won and chunks – some, not all – of the surrounding communities lost.
Could there have been a win-win scenario at Cooperstown Dreams Park? As it is, there are some winners from the money spent, but many downsides, too. Rental housing has dried up. Indications are the Susquehanna is being polluted to some degree. The jobs are primarily minimum wage, and they’re seasonal. Cooperstown is ever more crowded.
With MSG Entertainment, there are definite pluses.
For instance, if there is only one three-day event a year, and if the fest-goers do indeed stay on the grounds, then the impact will be limited and, if anything, positive: Tepee Pete Latella will be selling a lot of seven-pepper chili; likewise his sisters, moccasins. The noise will go into the wee hours, no doubt, but folks in the area who may be bothered by that can plan to spend the weekend visiting Aunt Millie in Fort Plain.
Don Simpson, the MSG Entertainment vice president who outlined the plan June 5 at the Springfield Community Center was pretty convincing: MSG Entertainment in general, and Simpson and his team in particular, know how to do this right. No Woodstock II here.
Last year’s Hall of Fame Induction Weekend, attended by 85,000 people, would be an equivalent event. The Monday after in Cooperstown, you’d hardly know that anything out of the ordinary was going on just 18 hours before.
If – and again, if – MSG Entertainment follows through on the rest of its promises, there should be nothing objectionable about the other 360, or 361, or 362 days of the year. The required water towers, Simpson said, will look like silos. The few permanent buildings will look like your typical northern Otsego farm house. The open fields will be open fields.
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So how can any remaining objections be erased or fears quieted?
Here’s a concept that was suggested at one of the public meetings on the topic. If MSG Entertainment is really serious about preserving the open space, why not ensure that? (Not a bad marketing idea to appeal to aging hippies, either.)
The company, in acquiring the land, could surrender the development rights, ensuring it would remain agricultural forever. Or perhaps there could be a covenant in the deed: If MSG Entertainment were to fold its tent and slip away, and land would devolve to the Otsego Land Trust. That would be a curiosity: that commercial use of a piece of property would ensure its preservation. But why not?
MSG Entertainment contracted with Tony Casale of Cooperstown, the lobbyist and retired assemblyman who knows his way around the corridors of power in Albany and Springfield Town Hall. The town, likewise, should reach out to the expertise and clout it needs to go toe-to-toe with MSG’s mandarins. Happily, that clout is close at hand.
Kent Barwick of Cherry Valley, president of New York City’s Municipal Art Society, which advocates good urban planning, would be an excellent advocate and negotiator on the town’s behalf. As it happens, he knows how MSG’s somewhat difficult CEO, Jim Dolan, operates, through MAS’ efforts to ensure the optimum redevelopment of the Brooklyn Navy Yards.
Or Harry Levine of Springfield Center, who happens to be both leader of Advocates for Springfield and president of the Otsego Land Trust, could assume that role. He was associated with real estate and development in the Tri-State Metropolitan Area in and around New York, and could be as effective as anyone, bar none.
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The first question to answer, of course, is: Does the Town of Springfield want the music festival at all? The second: If not, does it have the regulations in place to stop it? (It seems unlikely, after months and even years of delay, that the town board will adopt any development moratorium.)
But if the town could ensure the perpetual protection of those lovely 1,000 acres between Continental Road and Route 33. And if it could receive some economic benefit, through temporary jobs, property-tax revenues and some retail spinoffs. And if the three days aren’t too hellish. Why not?

Labels: 062708, Editorial, Opinion