The Oneida Daily Dispatch (Oneida, NY)
Council approves portion of design
ONEIDA, N.Y.>> For the better part of the past three months, the Oneida Rail Trail Committee, Oneida Common Council, and downtown business owners have deliberated over downtown design plans.
Wednesday night, the parties came to a compromise of sorts, and the City of Oneida Common Council adopted a plan for the downtown.
The result was a near unanimous agreement on a downtown design con- cept for the Rail Trail on Wednesday night.
Simply called C-2 at this point, the council voted 5 to 1 to adopt the design for Oneida Street East and Freight House Alley with Ward 3 Councilor Erwin Smith voting in opposition due to the location of the plaza.
The proposal includes the pedestrian plaza centerpiece that the Rail Trail Committee believes will serve as an eye-catching destination in the city downtown that will draw visitors to surrounding businesses. However, the plaza proposed in the C-2 design has been scaled down in size and parking along both East and West Oneida Street will remain largely the same, with an area designated for an additional 11 to 13 parking spots earmarked for the future to alleviate some of the concerns of nearby businesses as the two sides found compromise.
In total, the adopted plan includes 64 parking spaces along Oneida Street East and Freight House Alley, with the potential to increase the total to 77. Currently, there are 75 spaces available.
“Whenwe do something in Oneida to change for the better...we should move ahead with what the majority says,”
Deputy Mayor Jim Chamberlain said.
A unique aspect of the design for C-2, when compared to other options presented at the Wednesday night meeting, is that the pedestrian plaza will be curbed. Other designs included evenly spaced movable flower pots around the plaza.
The plaza itself remains the same in concept, albeit reduced in size from initial concepts presented to the public, with a design featuring a railroad-like “X” mark overlaying a circular plaza. The approved design focused specifically on parking, the placement of the pedestrian plaza, and traffic patterns. “We’ve created a plaza and decided how parking will be,” said Oneida Rail Trail committee member Joe Magliocca, adding that landscaping designs still need to be finalized. Also a part of the approved design is the transition from two-way to one-way traffic west along Oneida Street. Freight House Alley traffic will retain its one-way pattern. Business owners had objected to original concept designs for the downtown district largely because the initial proposal included a reduction in parking. Those plans included the removal of 37 parking spaces, 15 from Oneida Street (West) and 22 from Oneida Street (East) and Freight house Alley. Downtown business owner Gary Taylor thanked the council and ORT for taking parking concerns into consideration, also suggesting a two-hour park- ing limit for spaces along Freight House Alley to prevent vehicles from remaining in the same spaces for several hours and impeding potential business goers. He added that he liked the idea of a kiosk that shows a map of the Oneida Rail Trail in its entirety.
“I’ve got to give the ORT credit for trying to do something for the business district,” Taylor said, adding that he believed the city was working diligently to improve its perception by increasing codes enforcement. He also cited the number of services and restaurants downtown as a huge positive.
“What the Rail Trail is doing is another step in the right direction,” he said. “I’m very optimistic in where we are heading.”
Questions still remain as more than one resident at the meeting wondered whether the pedestrian plaza would encourage more loitering in the downtown and landscaping details must be finalized. However, the parties involved came to enough of a compromise to move ahead with design concepts.
“We’ve come a long way. It seems like we have a workable solution,” Ward 2 Councilor Mike Bowe said.
In its entirety, the Oneida Rail Trail, once completed, will be 11.3 miles long, but with deadlines dictating the use of $1.6 million in grant funding secured through the New York State Department of Transportation pressing, organizers are focusing efforts on the 3.9 mile section of the trail for which the grant money is designated throughout the downtown.