Civitas No. 35 -- Weds March 12 2003

Quote of the Month: “War is like love, it always finds a way.” — Bertolt Brecht

Suspicious Doings at Exit 14 and other ominous notes in a minor key

by Jim Kunstler

A committee formed to study spot zoning and road realignments around the intersection of Route 29 and Weibel Avenue has been hijacked by a major Exit 14 property owner who wants the area re-zoned to permit an office park and other large scale suburban sprawl-type developments.

Susan Anderson Touhey, daughter of Wolf Road mall developer the late Willard Anderson, got appointed to the Weibel South study area committee after paying a large sum of money to help pay for the study.

Also in on the deal was the Stewarts convenience store company, owned by Bill Dake. Both Stewarts and Anderson were given seats on the committee after they came up with "matching funds" to a grant from the Capital District Regional Transportation Commission.

Stewarts is represented on the committee by Tom Lewis, former Republican Party City chairman, who runs the convenience store chain’s site acquisition department. Stewart's owner, Bill Dake, chaired an earlier Master Plan Review in 1999 which sought to designate the Anderson property a Special Development Area. It also included the prospect of cutting a major new road from Lake Avenue to Union Avenue on which major commercial development would be allowed to happen a la Route 50 in Wilton. The more recent 2001 Master Plan Review Commission scratched the road idea and changed the whole area to a Conservation Development District, the intent of which was to preserve rural character and minimize building along the Union Avenue gateway to Saratoga.

The current round of mischief began at the end of the latest Master Plan review process last year when Public Works commissioner Tom McTygue suggested that a design study charrette be held to resolve minor issues around the Route 29 / Wiebel intersection. The new committee was formed for that purpose. Civitas has heard rumors, not yet confirmed, that in addition to the money paid to help fund the charrette, Anderson made a back-room deal with McTygue to donate land along Gilbert Road for a future city recreational field in exchange for an appointment to the committee.

Miraculously, the committee's study area was then expanded beyond the intersection of Wiebel, Route 29, and Gilbert Roads to include 200 acres between Lake and Union Avenue at Exit 14 of the Northway. 150 of those acres are owned by Anderson near Exit 14, amounting to 77.5 percent of all the land in the study area.

Meanwhile, Susan Anderson’s lawyer Peter Lynch, has made appeals to the city council both in person and by letter challenging the legitimacy of the city’s most recent master plan. He also challenged the legitimacy of a nine-month development moratorium in the study area which the council is scheduled to vote on later this month. The purpose of moratorium is to allow for the completion of codes that will govern futuredevelopment under the new master plan.

On one occasion, committee member Lewis of Stewarts suggested that Anderson’s attorney be brought into assist the committee in consultations with the city.

It seems to us that these strange doings raise several questions. Is Susan Anderson enjoying extraordinary privileges to influence a public process in conflict with her private interests as a land owner and developer? Are the machinations of her lawyer intended to lay the groundwork for a lawsuit against the city in the event that major development is finally not permitted under the forthcoming new codes?

Finally, Commissioner McTygue’s appointment to this committee seems highly inappropriate. The committee will be making recommendations to the council to vote on critical issues of land use in the Exit 14 gateway. Since McTygue is a council member, he will in effect be making recommendations to himself.

Design Review Blows Another One

After a harsh winter construction season, the tarps finally came down in front of the new CVS drugstore building on Congress Street, revealing yet another amazing architectural botch.

As now revealed, the drugstore does not have an entrance along Congress Street. It can only be reached at the parking lot level, up an awkward staircase on the side of the building.

Another weird thing: the second floor is actually in the basement.

During the design review process, developer Donald C. Greene was told repeatedly by the Design Review board that the building had to meet the sidewalk in a normative fashion, namely at grade. Greene’s minions in those deliberations pleaded that the slope of the land made this too difficult. This was pure bulls**t, of course, as anyone can tell by walking down Phila and Caroline streets, where steeper slopes do not prevent the shops and bars from meeting the sidewalk.

Various hirelings were eventually brought in by the developer to show renderings of the proposed building. So far as we know, the board never saw any that showed the actual outcome — a building so stupid and awkward that it is a disgrace to the city.

The Design Review Commission has failed consistently to uphold decent standards of architecture and civic design. We think the failure lies mainly in the fact that our downtown design guidelines are not legally enforceable codes.

Local architects have complained that such codes would compromise their “creativity.” But what is so wonderfully creative about buildings that defeat our expectations about urban experience — for instance having entrances to shops where they belong?

Beyond All the War Jitters

A tense nation waits to see whether Zitzkrieg will turn to Blitzkrieg in Iraq, while the moon is still dark and the daytime temperatures remain low enough to permit US Troops to scramble around the desert in awkward bio-hazard suits.

We’re convinced that Mr. Saddam Hussein has meant all along to provoke Jihad-o-rama — a climactic armed clash of cultures — so that history would remember him not as just another feckless despot in a doorman’s uniform but as the Second Coming of Mohammed.

Here in the Civitas Situation Room, we’re especially interested in the possible repercussions of a conflict we regard as unavoidable.

Saddam is well aware that the chief Islamic weapon of mass destruction is. . . oil! If he blows up his wells, the fires will be a lot harder to put out than the fires he set in Kuwait last time. The Kuwaiti wells were next to the Persian Gulf. It takes a lot of water to put out an oil well fire. This time, they may burn for months on end. Chances are afterward any rebuilt wells and pipelines will be subject to constant and intense sabotage indefinitely.

We regard it as likely that Jihadistas will attempt to depose the Saud family in Arabia, which supplies 17 percent of US oil imports.

America’s position vis-à-vis oil has never been so precarious. We possess only 3 percent of the world’s known reserves. Inventories of crude here are at a 30 year low. (Refineries don’t like to be stopped and restarted, either.) Natural gas is also at historic lows after a frigid home heating season.

We expect the Iraq war to usher in an era of permanent oil market instability. Prices will oscillate much more dramatically than in the past — meaning the price of gasoline may go down after the conclusion of the shooting phase of this war, but only temporarily and only to swing way up again.

The bottom line is that suburbia is finished, both as a way of life and as the mainstay of US economic activity. We can either beat ourselves up about it politically, or start right away the necessary task of re-scaling daily life to the post-cheap oil reality. This means much less driving, the end of WalMart style commerce, producing more food closer to home, smaller and more numerous schools, and the rebuilding of local networks of economic interdependence. New Agers take note: the new age is here.