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ANOTHER GROWTH SPURT FOR VALATIE
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
08-01-09 - 6:30 p.m. - The only municipality in the county showing significant growth over the past decade may become a lot larger.
The Valatie Planning Board could take action as early as August 5 on a proposed 87-unit development on Route 203 on the village’s northern boundary. Planning Board Chairman Angelo Nero said the review process is nearly complete on the project and the development could be acted on at the board’s next meeting if the developer, Timothy Holk, answers questions posed by Planning Board attorney Patrick Grattan. |
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Little Falls Estates, a recently completed development in Valatie
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Those questions, Nero said, focus largely on the maintenance of the common area, or green area, of the planned development. Who would be responsible for maintaining the common area—the homeowners, the village, or some other entity? There are also questions about the details of extending municipal water and sewer service to the project. “The project itself has been pretty much set. The roads, the lighting, the fire department [review] are all done,” said Nero.
The new housing development, to be called Kinderkill Meadows, includes both town houses and single-family dwellings. According to Mayor Gary Strevell, the project started out as 45 single-family homes, but the original proposal was withdrawn and resubmitted to the Planning Board as a larger project. Nero cautioned that the final size of the development will depend on a rebound in the economy.
The last major development in Valatie, the 81-unit Little Falls Estates, was approved in the mid-1990s and was completed and occupied over a ten-year period.
Strevell said that Little Falls Estates, Kinderkill Meadows, and other developments proposed for the municipality are the result of years of hard work to plan the redevelopment of the once down-on-its-luck village. “We have a lot to offer,” said the mayor, “and it’s paid off.”
A recent report from the U.S. Census Bureau found that Valatie is the only traditional population center in Columbia County to experience growth in the past decade. |
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While the county as a whole had a 1.7 percent population decline from 2000 to 2008 and the villages of Chatham and Philmont and the City of Hudson experienced even greater population losses during that period, the population of Valatie increased 9.4 percent, up to 1,882 residents. During the same period, the population of the Village of Kinderhook, adjacent to Valatie to the south, remained stable—neither decreasing nor increasing.
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