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Friday, January 25, 2008Janurary 25 2008Cooperstown Might Add Historic Review They were warned by legal counsel not to draw a line in the sand on aluminum siding. They were advised not to block demolition of an architect-built Modernist home at the end of Spring Street. They were troubled by reports that a River Street home, one of the oldest in the village, might be demolished. (It turned out to be a false alarm.) So the village Planning Board is exploring whether the Village of Cooperstown should join 58 communities statewide in becoming a Certified Local Government (CLG), a designation created by the National Park Service to allow consistent, litigation-free historic preservation. “It’s a model that we know works,” Julian Adams, community liaison coordinator for the SHPO, the state Office of Historic Preservation, told a gathering of Planning Board members, village trustees and members of the public Tuesday, Jan. 22, at 22 Main. “We do need to shore up a few sections of our present zoning code,” said Charles Hill, a three-year Planning Board member, “ because recent case law has found perhaps we would not be able to enforce some provisions of our local law.” “I think there’s merit to it,” said Mayor Carol B. Waller, who attended the session. She said the idea is to have a new vehicle in place by the time a demolition moratorium expires six month from now. Created by Congress in 1980, a CLG is empowered to created a Historic Preservation Commission that would develop regulations appropriate for maintaining or enhancing local appreciation of history and historic structures. The commission would include an architect, a historian, someone who lives in the historic district, and an individual who can demonstrate an interest in historic preservation. The commission would issue or deny what’s called a “certificate of appropriateness” on any given project. It would also perform an educational function, raising the level of public understanding about historic resources. And, whereas the survey conducted in 1999 when the Glimmerglass Historic District was created has not been updated, the commission would be surveying and adjusting the list in an ongoing way. Things have changed in at least two ways, said Cindy Falk, a Cooperstown Graduate Program professor and the member of the Planning Board who has set this initiative in motion. For instance, the Clara Welch Thanksgiving Home was considered a “contributing structure” to the Glimmerglass District, but the original building has since burned and been replaced with a modern structure, (although one that echoes the original.) On the other hand, the home at the end of Spring Street, built by noted Modernist architect Carl Strauss of Cincinnati in the 1950s, was not 50 years old in 1999, so wasn’t eligible to be included in the district. By the time it was demolished, it had crossed that line, but the survey hadn’t been updated. “If we go from recommending to requiring,” said Falk, “there’s a question of whether that would stand up in court. When it was enacted, ours was a model law. But it needs updating.” Most recently, the Planning Board found its hands would be tied if it attempted to prevent the owners of The Inn at Cooperstown from demolishing a carriage barn on that Chestnut Street property. It looked like demolition would occur, although it now appears a compromise will result in the building being moved, Falk said. “Demolitions have really been our biggest hurdle,” she said. Cooperstown Tarnished, Notre Dame Magazine Finds When the winter edition of the award-winning Notre Dame Magazine showed up in his mail the other day, alumnus Jim Gates, director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s research library, was even more pleased than usual. For on the cover was a photo of Main Street in his favorite small town – Cooperstown – keying to an eight-page spread of an article entitled, “The Once and Future Neighborhood.” About that same time, other Notre Dame alumni were getting the 150,000-circulation magazine, and Notre Dame alumni from all four points of the compass began calling their relatives in “America’s Most Perfect Village” with the question, “Have you seen...” The article, by John Nagy, the magazine’s associate editor, comes to a mixed conclusion about the semester-long study a group of six architect grad students under Professor Philip Bess devoted to Cooperstown, resulting in a draft master plan that was unveiled December to a local audience in the ornate courtroom at the Otsego County Courthouse. “The jury was not convinced,” Bess tells Nagy, even as he is preparing the final report for local folks. When the students detailed their proposals to a panel at Notre Dame in October, it was criticized for “missing overall coherence.” Still, Trustee Lynne Mebust, who attended the October critique, is quoted in a more positive vein: “I think you’ll find when you come back that it’s generated a lot of interest,” she tells Bess. “A lot of people are eager to hear what we’ve learned here.” The article is sprinkled with familiar names: Mayor Carol B. Waller, Trustee Jeff Katz, Ed Landers, who with wife Margie hosted the students at his White House B&B on Chestnut Street, and Giles Russell, former trustee. Waller tells Nagy of a “mass exodus” from the village since 1990, as tourism clogs the downtown during the summer months. Russell estimated that the proportion of people living in the village to those living nearby was 60-40, but that’s changed to 30-70. The article hits several of the highpoints of the students proposals – the Doubleday Field parking lot redo, a housing development called “Brooklyn Heights” on the hill beyond the Clark Sports Center – but doesn’t treat them all positively. But Nagy demonstrates the same clear vision that local folks praised in the students, compared to the local vision blurred by familiarity. “Decades have passed since my first trip, and I’ve learned to take a closer look. The storefronts are full; what’s changed is what’s in them. “Once, there were grocery and hardware stores, a movie theater, furniture dealers, craft and clothing shops – places my mother could escape to when she got sick of Ebbets Field and Wee Willie Keeler. “Now, it’s almost entirely baseball memorabilia: high-end history and low-end crap.” Erhmanns Return Home To Toaster-Sparked Fire Here’s a cautionary tale. It was like any other day, except Christmas was four days away. George and Joyce Ehrmann had been shopping at Sangertown Mall, stopped on the way home to visit friends in West Winfield, and drove up to their Elm Street home at about 12:15 a.m. on the 22nd. They opened the front door. “The first thing out of my mouth, I said to Joyce, ‘Our house is on fire,’” said George, a pharmacist who is well known in Cooperstown from his days as head of the Mount Otsego ski patrol. The firemen were there in five minutes. They got under the floor to the source of the electrical fire and doused it without water, causing very little damage. Within a day, a Service Master crew from New Hartford had cleaned the house the house the couple had lived in for 38 years and they moved back in, although they can still smell the smoke. Here’s the cautionary part. The Ehrmanns discovered the fire was caused by a toaster that had been sitting placidly on a kitchen counter for at least 25 years. After all that time, the toaster had caused the current to arc, sparking the fire. Shopping for toasters, George discovered all of them now contain a lengthy warning, beginning with “Do not operate while unattended.” Don’t spread the bread first. Don’t use near curtains or wall. And finally, “Always unplug toaster when not in use.” It had never occurred to the Ehrmanns to unplug the toaster. Today, the warning says, “failure to follow these instructions can result in death or fire.” George stopped by the other day after dropping off Joyce for an appointment with the physical therapist and shared the story. This writer went home and unplugged the toaster. CCS Seeks Nominations For Sports Hall of Fame Cooperstown Central School is seeking nominations from among the titans – the Red Burseys, the Dutch LaDukes – for the first class of inductees into a prospective CCS Sports Hall of Fame. Nominations are due by March 15, limited this year to people who made their contributions before 1970. Applications are available at the high school office. A committee will meet in March to review the nominations, and a maximum of five inductees will be chosen. An induction banquet is planned in October. Next year, candidates from the 1970s will be selected. Labels: Archives
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