New City Planning Director for Ithaca, hope she helps with more density & height (though I wish she would support the taller buildings in C-town).
New planning director Cornish ready to advise
By Krisy Gashler •
kgashler@gannett.com • March 17, 2009
ITHACA - Public comment at meetings in Ithaca often begins with a speaker's recitation of how long he or she has been a part of the community. In this transient, student-heavy city, stability means credibility.
In such a town, JoAnn Cornish, the newly named director of planning and development, brings to the table as much street cred as you could ask for.
"My grandparents came to Ithaca as immigrants to work on the railroad and Ithaca Gun and Morse Chain. My grandma worked on the factory line in Morse Chain," Cornish said. "So the roots go back pretty far."
Cornish's uncle, Raymond Bordoni, served as Ithaca's mayor from 1980-81.
"Even when I was in high school I was very involved in the city because he was so proud of the fact that he was mayor," Cornish said. "We just had a connection, and he instilled in me (that) public service, community service."
With an educational background in environmental science and landscape architecture, Cornish said the balance she hopes to strike as Ithaca's newest planning director is between environmental protection and economic development.
With those priorities in mind, Cornish said some of her goals for the next five years include developing Inlet Island and the West End; strengthening the connections between the Southwest, The Commons and the waterfront; completing the trail between the downtown Six Mile Creek walkway and the Mulholland Wildflower Preserve; and updating the city's comprehensive plan.
Professional opinion
Like Thys Van Cort, who retired more than a year ago after almost 35 years as the city's planning director, Cornish believes part of her job is providing her opinion about issues facing the city.
"I think people should speak their mind, give their professional opinion," Cornish said. "Thys, I think, was always very forceful in his opinion, but you always knew where he stood, and he wasn't so steadfast in his opinion that it couldn't be changed. And I think that's a good civil servant, really. You've got to know the balance between the professional opinion and the elected officials, what their visions are, what the constituents say."
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Finding that balance is especially important for the Planning Department, which oversees many of the most controversial issues that come before Common Council. These include the surprise decision to kill Boatyard Grill developer Steve Flash's hotel proposal on Inlet Island, the decision to go forward with planning on an overhaul of The Commons, and the current hot topic - the Collegetown urban plan.
Cornish said she also thinks the downtown density program, which provides tax abatements for developers, should go back to its original requirement of strictly density.
The tax abatement program through Tompkins County's Industrial Development Agency allows developers to gradually phase in payment of property tax on new development, though they're required to continue paying the property tax based on what existed before their development.
Cornish credits the program with spurring development such as Island Health and Fitness, the Hilton Garden hotel and the Cayuga Green development.
After a few years though, because of political and community pressure, the program expanded to include criteria on things like whether the building will be energy efficient, whether it will employ union workers and whether it will create living wage jobs.
"It became so difficult that developers decided they just didn't want to deal with it," Cornish said. "They would find money any other way than have to go through the IDA to get the tax abatement."
Or they would develop outside the downtown core, meaning less eventual property tax revenue for the city and more sprawl.
"This is the center of Tompkins County. And this is where we should be building housing, where we should be densifying the core so we can, again, get people out of their cars, get people on public transit, try and do the things that Ithaca sees itself and prides itself on, in sustainability and its vision and its innovation and its edginess," Cornish said. "A way to do that is to be able to give developers some incentives, and the tax incentives are a really good way to do that. We need to get back to the program and be able to look at it again."(3 of 4)
Development zones
Cornish said she was saddened by Common Council's decision in summer 2007 to halt development on Flash's Inlet Island hotel, and she hopes a similar proposal will come forward again.
"I felt as though they maybe acted a little bit too hastily," she said. "I do think it would have been a good use and that the sales tax and property tax would have been significant."
In meetings after the decision, Council members said what they'd rather see is a variety of small shops with many owners developed like an outdoor boardwalk.
"The cost of construction on Inlet Island is really, really high ... and the vision to have all these kinds of boutiques and little shops and things, I think it's a great vision, I just don't think it's economically feasible," Cornish said. "Plus, with the weather being what it is in Ithaca, you really are not talking a 365-day-a-year audience for those types of things. So a hotel with some retail in it that was supported by the hotel, not so much by visitors, would have been, I think, a very good solution down there."
On Collegetown, Cornish said she's always felt the proposed 90-foot buildings would be too high, but that the existing 60-foot buildings are too low.
"I think that the 90 feet height really threw people," she said. "I think that the plan itself is good. ... We've been talking a lot about the incentive zoning, which means that between 60-70 would be allowed by zoning, but if you do certain things like offer mixed-use so you're not just catering to students but you do a hotel or you do retail on the first floor and apartments on the second floor, not necessarily undergrad apartments but more worker housing or something, then you could go a little bit higher like another story," to a maximum of 75 feet.
On the plan's sustainable transportation component, the other highly controversial section of the plan, Cornish said she thinks the city needs a dedicated parking study before implementing any of the costly recommendations.
The plan calls for allowing developers to increase density while reducing or eliminating parking requirements. Developers would have to pay instead into a fund that would be used for things like improving bike, pedestrian and mass transit facilities, or maintaining a remote parking lot or garage.
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"The concepts are good. And I think we can work with the concepts," Cornish said. "(But) if it's so complicated that you can't really get the bulk of the population to understand it, then there's something wrong."
Cornish said she thinks the controversies around projects such as the Collegetown plan and the Commons Upgrade project could have been avoided if the city had an updated comprehensive plan.
Cornish strongly advocated continuing with the planning phase of the estimated $5 million Commons upgrade project when, last fall, several Council members considered tabling the project because of the souring economy.
"In my opinion, many of the controversies, both past and present, could have been avoided if we had a comp plan to use as a tool. A plan that was based on public input and sound planning principles and where the plan had buy in from both the public and the Common Council," she said. "Looking ahead it will help guide land use, capital projects, neighborhood preservation, parks, trails and so on."
Common Council has authorized $200,000 toward updating the 1970s-era comprehensive plan.
Volunteer work
Alderwoman Mary Tomlan, D-3rd, served for five years as chair of Common Council's planning committee, working extensively with Cornish.
Tomlan said Cornish's commitment to the city is evidenced through her professional work but also through her volunteerism - Cornish serves as a Big Sister at the Ithaca Youth Bureau, and for at least the past five years, she has headed up the yearly United Way campaign among city staff, Tomlan said.
Before working for the city, Cornish worked for the Town of Ithaca planning department, something Tomlan said will be very useful in keeping open lines of intermunicipal cooperation.
Mayor Carolyn Peterson noted that in her time at the city, Cornish has received both the annual Diversity and Inclusion award and employee of the year award.
Peterson said one of Cornish's most valuable qualities is her ability to foster relationships, within city hall, among developers and within the community.
Cornish laughed loudly about the idea of sticking around in city hall for 35 years, as her predecessor did.
"I think maybe five years is a good stint," she said, adding that she hasn't ruled out the possibility of running for elected office after she retires. Cornish now lives in the Town of Ithaca.
"My son really wants to open a restaurant here, and so that might be my next career," she said.