Graduate students in the urban design concentration spent the fall 2007 semester working with the Cooperstown, New York Village Board of Trustees on a master plan for the city’s downtown. The students’ plan suggests guidelines for present and future development in Cooperstown. Although it is in many ways a model of traditional American urbanism, Cooperstown is not immune to the pressures that have caused much of the United States to embrace suburban sprawl development.
Students, under the direction of Prof. Philip Bess, sought to capitalize on Cooperstown's setting on Lake Otsego, the beauty of its main commercial and residential streets, the high quality of buildings on those streets, and the strength of its museums and institutions, including Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital and, most famously, the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Seasonal traffic congestion and parking problems, a declining permanent residential population, and a shortage of affordable housing for hospital and local museum employees threaten the town's historic character.
Throughout the semester, the students studied ways to promote more permanent residential and commercial growth in Cooperstown. The Plan of Cooperstown advocates infill building in the Village's historic center, and new greenfield development at its southern edge. Students designed a new civic plaza in the historic center, spatially defined by new three-story mixed-buildings; and proposed a more beautiful and ceremonial entry into Cooperstown on Route 28 from the south and on Route 80 from the north. They also addressed the issue of parking through proposals for new parking garages, consolidation and enhancement of the Village's existing trolley systems, and changes in the Village's on-street parking regulations.
To learn more about this studio, read John Nagy’s cover article in the Winter 2007-2008 issue of Notre Dame Magazine, and the full report students produced for the Village Board of Trustees.
