Hearings April 8 on Brewster Comprehensive Plan and Environmental Impact

The Brewster village trustees have scheduled public hearings Wednesday evening on the village’s Comprehensive Plan Update and an accompanying Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement.

Read both the draft update and the draft impact statement on the village’s website.

Village officials and interested residents and business owners have been working to update the village’s Comprehensive Plan with urban renewal actions and associated zoning amendments.

SEE: Work Begins on Brewster Comprehensive Plan

The idea is to strengthen and rebuild the community in a manner that will reflect its diversity, history and culture, primarily focusing on methods to revitalize and stimulate the downtown economy.

The core downtown area includes Main Street to Marvin Avenue, and extends from the MTA commuter rail station to the East Branch of the Croton River.

Some of the priorities of the planning process included:

• Encourage Transit Oriented Development (TOD) and revitalize the Village, focusing on the existing downtown core and redeveloping substandard sites and buildings
• Create jobs and career opportunities for Village and area residents
• Provide new positive tax revenue to the Village, Town, County and School district
• Provide a vibrant downtown and create a diversity of uses (live, work, shop, learn, and play)
• Restore and subsequently maintain the Village as a preeminent regional destination
• Provide a mixed-use downtown setting to include residential, commercial, retail, hospitality, parks, open space, cultural, civic and other uses
• Create and enhance Village gateways
• Improve streetscapes and create a pedestrian friendly, “walkable” environment
• Achieve the adaptive reuse of vacant buildings or rebuild where appropriate
• Create sustainable development by implementing smart growth and green building design elements in an economically viable plan

The potential impacts resulting from this action are analyzed in the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement— a type of EIS that is, according to the state handbook, more general than a site-specific EIS, and typically is used to consider broad-based actions or related groups of actions that agencies are likely to approve, fund, or directly undertake.

The village’s Comprehensive Plan Committee oversaw the preparation of both the update and the DGEIS.

The hearings will start at 7:31 p.m. at the Village Hall of the Village of Brewster, 50 Main Street, Brewster, NY 10509.