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ROTTERDAM
Residents act to preserve ‘greenbelt’
West Hill community seeks zone change
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

   Bob Ringlee can step out the back door of his brick split-level ranch and walk into nearly three miles of hiking trails encircling Rotterdam’s West Hill community.
   For the Juniper Drive resident and longtime member of the West Hill Development Corp.’s Board of Directors, the area’s unusual 178-acre “greenbelt” offers the perfect spot for hiking and cross-country skiing. Now, he and other West Hill constituents are asking the Rotterdam Town Board to approve a zoning change that will restrict future building on the undeveloped land.
   Town Board members will consider a resolution Wednesday to change the property from agricultural and residential zoning to the newly designated land conservation overlay district. The zone change would prevent further housing construction on the land, while allowing the residents to maintain the trails and fields they’ve groomed since ground was broken on the West Hill’s first houses in 1948.
   “This is the parcel that has always been vacant land,” Ringlee said Monday on a tour of the property. “We managed it and maintained it as it was.”
   West Hill was built along four roads and is surrounded by a lush hardwood forest. Many of its 84 homes were designed by different builders or by the homeowners themselves, giving the houses of the neighborhood a distinctively individualistic appearance.
   The development was first conceived by General Electric engineers seeking to solve the national housing shortage at the end of World War II. Initially, a group 215 investors chipped in at least $100 apiece to create the corporation in 1947 — a precursor to modern-day homeowners associations.
   The group purchased 271 acres of the former Peyton Farm off Putnam Road, developed a water plant and initially planned to build more than 600 houses. But when the state passed stricter septic system regulations, further development on the land was prohibited in the absence of sewers.
   In 1962, a petition was circulated to establish a sewer line. However, residents decided they enjoyed the buffer of deep woods to the sort of development sewers would bring.
   Ringlee said the move to conserve West Hill’s rural character started when Rotterdam began a review of its comprehensive plan in 1999. He said the creation of the land conservation overlay district last year provided West Hill with an ideal way to protect the land without imposing the restrictions carried by a conservation easement.
   “It will not be subdivided and it will not be built upon,” he said. “But it’s not exactly as forceful as an easement.”
   West Hill’s shareholders approved a change of the corporation’s rules, which subsequently allowed its board of directors to apply for the zone change. The move was unanimously supported by the Rotterdam Planning Commission and appears to have broad support from the Town Board. Board member Robert Godlewski said he fully supports the zoning change. He said the West Hill stockholders produced a vision for the ideal community, which should have served as a pattern for other developers in Rotterdam.
   “It’s unfortunate they didn’t have that same vision,” he said.

Good for the folks in West Hill. And I am happy to hear, for the first time, that Mr. Godlewski was also in favor of it! That is a first!!!!!

It was ironic that this item was on the agenda last night.  They're preserving their greenbelt while we were there to complain about losing ours.  Mr. Godlewski may never have spoken better pearls of wisdom than his comments that conclude the previous article.

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Zoning change
OK’d to preserve
‘green belt’

   ROTTERDAM — Rotterdam officials approved a zoning change Wednesday aimed at protecting 178 acres known as the “green belt” of the West Hill development.
   Board members supported changing the land from agricultural and residential zoning to the newly designated land conservation overlay district by a vote of 4-1. The land includes a lush forest that encircles the 84-home neighborhood and is used by the development’s residents for recreation.
   Board member John Mertz voted against the change after one resident suggested developing the land as the only viable way to bring sanitary sewers and town water to West Hill. Mertz suggested waiting on a vote until the resident’s concerns could be studied.
   Several other West Hill residents argued building on the land would ruin the character of the unique development built in part by former General Electric engineers nearly six decades ago.
   “What we are doing here is preserving open space, something which seems to be getting increasingly difficult to do in Rotterdam,” said West Hill resident William Kornrumpf.

Hey, Michael, wouldn't this serve as precedence to help save some of the area around your neighborhood before this is made so much worse than it already is?

No, unfortunately.  The West Hill gang own that property.  They're seeking to protect it in perpetuity.  It ought to be an example to the rest of us.

Our situation is vastly different.  The land is owned by someone else.  It's their land and we recognize their right to do with it as they wish...WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE LAW.  And that's the point here.  It's not so much about the trees being cut, but that they're being cut outside the process...in defiance of the process actually.

This land has been the subject of numerous determinations preventing further development of the land.  Much of it, in fact, is wetland too.  I've made a case to the people who should be in a position to do something about it but they have chosen to ignore it.

Without laying out all the underlying facts again (they are already part of the public record many times over), I'll put it to you this way.  

What would you think is going on if there are standing decrees in place and every time work takes place it's on a weekend or holiday?

It's only because they have $$ to set up a 'fenced community'.......if it had not been so the Rotterdam Mall and the soon to be built Duck duck goose 'luxury' apartments would not be built, but they have $$ too......

WELCOME TO AMERICA(on the fringe of the dark ages of fear and ignorance)---WHERE ARE THE SEWERS, SIDEWALKS, LIGHTS ON HAMBURG STREET???????

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West Hill’s shareholders approved a change of the corporation’s rules, which subsequently allowed its board of directors to apply for the zone change. The move was unanimously supported by the Rotterdam Planning Commission and appears to have broad support from the Town Board. Board member Robert Godlewski said he fully supports the zoning change. He said the West Hill stockholders produced a vision for the ideal community, which should have served as a pattern for other developers in Rotterdam.    “It’s unfortunate they didn’t have that same vision,” he said.

I guess any door in will do???