New Castle Residents: What's Important in Town?

Starting Sept. 18 a research firm will be polling some 300 New Castle residents about what they think is important to address in the master planning process the town has undertaken.

It’s all part of the process the town started early this year to update the existing 25-year-old master plan.

“Much has changed from 1989 to the present. The Updated Master Plan will reflect this change and speak to the future of development in New Castle,” town officials say on their website.

What’s being looked at:

• Commercial development and the hamlets of Chappaqua and Millwood
• Housing—everything from, accessory apartments to subdivision and building regulations and oversized lots
• Public Works Infrastructure—sidewalks, government services, transportation, utilities etc
• Environment, habitat and scenic resources
• Public Services—recreation, parks, libraries, education, etc.

The upcoming telephone survey is a follow-up to the public engagement process the town undertook this spring, when the Land Use Law Center at Pace Law School was retained to run public and stakeholder meetings and document residents’ goals, objectives, and vision for the Town.

As the center summarized its findings:

A few overall themes emerged from the public engagement process. Participants expressed a clear wish to maintain and protect the Town of New Castle’s unique character with regard to new commercial and housing development, as well as public works and services.

Additionally, participants repeatedly focused their attention on downtown Chappaqua Hamlet improvements throughout the process. This includes locating commercial development downtown and near the train station, improving downtown walkability, expanding parking in downtown and at the train station, building a downtown park and enhancing landscaping there, and building affordable and higher density housing downtown and near the train station.

You can read the Center’s complete final report here.

Now the outside survey research firm is to gather more input from local residents about what they think is important to address in the master plan.

Three hundred phone interviews will be conducted during the last two weeks in September and should take around 20 minutes to complete.