Marcy's vision for growth: clean and green

MARCY-Don Buttenschon’s family Christmas tree farm is on top of a ridge.

To the distant north and east are the western Adirondack foothills rising like islands on the horizon of a rolling green sea.

As much as Buttenschon appreciates the northern view, it’s clear that his heart is to the south with the rest of Marcy, where he grew up, relatives still live, and where he has fond memories of hunting deer where the gleaming SUNY Polytechnic campus now stands.

"As a kid growing up, it was a great place to live, a great place to hunt," Buttenschon said. "Farms all over the place. Now, it still has a tremendous amount of wildlife in there and they really molded that college into that large area. You’ve got huge ravines, beautiful creeks back in there. It’s really a gorgeous place."

It’s fitting that on this ridge, Buttenschon is drawing prosperity from the land and Marcy’s growth. He figures that since

buying the part-time farm in 1986, he’s employed 100 people through the years, some of them now in middle age with families of their own.

The tree business started in 1989, and he’s since branched out into wines from various farm produce and is planning a wedding venue to capitalize on the million-dollar view.

It’s been a good run in Marcy.

To help hold onto what a lot of people such as Buttenschon like about Marcy while pursuing prosperity, too, the town is updating its master plan for the first time in six years.

The 2009 plan was long overdue, and came after the town spent a year determining a community vision and seeking input from every household, said Bob Lambe, head of planning and economic development. Town officials believe the direction of 2009 still is valid, but a lot has happened since then, Lambe noted.

SUNY’s Institute of Technology campus became SUNY Polytechnic Institute, the town landed the Computer Chip Commercialization Center, the nearby former Griffiss Air Force Base site was designated a federal drone test site, and Rome and Utica have had positive developments with their waterfronts and downtowns.

While welcome, the activity could, if not properly managed, lead to suburban sprawl, undesirable land-use patterns and strains on the infrastructure.

Marcy got a matching grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s Cleaner, Greener Communities Program to encourage using smart growth principles in the update.

In Marcy terms, as Supervisor Brian Scala sees it, "smart growth" means preparation. The town decides where it wants certain kinds of development scaled-up gradually to preserve what people like about the town’s present. He described the update’s focus as on the town’s east and southeast quadrant where nanotechnology is present and coming.

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