A rezoning application tabled since a public hearing September 13, 2000 was approved by a vote of 4 to 1 at the Wednesday, March 14 meeting of the Ogden Town Board.

An application by Westside News Inc. President Keith Ryan requested a four-acre parcel at the northwest corner of Colby Street and Route 259 be changed from residential to restricted business use zoning.

Council members Tom Cole, Tom Uschold and Dave Feeney and Supervisor Gay Lenhard voted in favor of the rezoning request. Uschold, Feeney and Lenhard said they agreed with Cole who said he thought the proposed use was a good one for the land. “It would offer a buffer between commercial on Union Street and residential areas west of Colby Street. I’m very comfortable with the proposal.”

Councilman Tom Vandertang cast the only no vote and made no comments regarding his decision.

Ryan, publisher of Suburban News and Hamlin-Clarkson Herald newspapers, said at the September public hearing that he had no immediate plans to relocate his offices and distribution center, but wanted to be prepared for the possibility in the future, should the need arrive. Currently, offices are located at 1835 North Union Street (Route 259) and the company uses warehouse space located on Route 104.

To accommodate such use, the property, owned by Paul and Eleanor Humphrey, had to be rezoned. The couple considered selling when their daughter, who doesn’t live in the area, said she wasn’t interested in the land. The Humphrey family has owned the land for 175 years. “Our main motivation in disposing of some of our property was to find someone in whom we had confidence and faith, and whose word we believed,” Paul Humphrey said at the public hearing. “The commercial development of this area is inevitable and we have been approached by others. What Keith (Ryan) proposes is a nice, useful purpose for the whole community,” Humphrey said at the hearing last year.

At the September meeting, several area residents registered concerns with traffic, and the creation of an “island” of business use in a residential area. At the March 14 meeting, town board members also approved the Environmental Assessment Form for the rezoning which registered a negative declaration.

Ryan’s plan includes a 4,000 square foot office building with parking for 20 cars and a driveway exiting onto Colby Street. Following the March 14 meeting, Ryan said the project would now be presented to the town’s planning board.