Sweden presents town's Comprehensive Plan

Town of Sweden officials presented their Comprehensive Plan to residents in a public hearing setting for a second time on April 25.

"We're here to update the community on the plan and focus on the future development of the town," Councilperson Patricia Connors told the residents who attended the meeting. "We're looking at ways to broaden the tax base and that can't be confined to what's already been done."
Many of the residents who took the floor were focusing on proposed development on Redman Road - an item which Connors said was not the direction of the public hearing that night.

"We share the residents' concerns with the potential for commercial development on Redman Road ... we don't want to see strip malls or anything of that type. But that's not the focus of our discussion tonight," Connors said.

Connors said, in a conversation on April 26, that the comprehensive plan committee had been working for the better part of a year on compiling the information necessary to put the plan together. She did say that a property owner on Redman Road had approached the town board with the idea of having the board consider rezoning from R1 residential to commercial.

"The town board doesn't have an economic development coordinator so it is up to us to act in that capacity," she said. "What the developer and the property owner proposed seemed like a good idea."

The idea, Connors said, was essentially a "Victorian community within the community" that would include townhouses, condominium units for senior citizens, and perhaps an assisted living facility and a small retail area.

Terry Cooley, who lives on West Canal Road, commented that he was against any rezoning of the area for commercial use.

"Developing only 25 percent of that land would equal 30 acres," he said, adding that the entire downtown Brockport area was only five acres. "It's not picturesque. It's not quaint," he said. "Once the term commercial is attached to an area, the town board loses control of development as long as that development meets code."

Cooley said he was told that the development was in the greater good of the town but he said that town officials and lawyers would be the only beneficiaries and that the downtown Brockport area would suffer from development on Redman Road.

"Nothing is concrete, no plans have been made or accepted," Connors said. She did say that the town board is keeping an open mind but shares the concerns of the residents in that they don't want to see the area developed into a "strip mall" atmosphere.

"We're looking at the Comprehensive Plan as a living document - one that is subject to change and incorporate new trends within the community," she said.

Comments on the Comprehensive Plan have been gathered from both the April meetings, Connors said, and they would be added to comments received at the May 3 joint Town of Sweden/Village of Brockport meeting.