‘City’ on a hill

American suburbs are schizo. That’s clear even from the dreary landscape of
academic prose.

            Look at these two diagnoses.

            On one hand, suburbanites think
small is beautiful. Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk put it this way in
The Second Coming of the American Small
Town: “[They] sense what is wrong with the places they inhabit… The classic
suburb is less a community than an agglomeration of houses, shops, and offices
connected to one another by cars, not by the fabric of human life. The only
public space is the shopping mall, which in reality is only quasi-public…” No
wonder, say the authors, that “the signs of a revival of interest in community
on a smaller scale are everywhere“
(emphasis added).

            Well, maybe not everywhere. In many
places, suburbanites are retreating into even more isolationist behemoths of
bedrooms and boredom. Hence Australian urbanist Brendan Gleeson’s diagnosis. He
describes the rise of “privatopias,” that is, “new exclusionary residential
developments both within the older suburban fabric (enclaves) and at the outer
suburban edge (exclaves).” Looking at his home base of Western Sydney, Gleeson
concludes: “A private constellation of health, education, human service, and
recreation facilities is emerging to cater for the needs and desires of the
more affluent and the more anxious.”

            But are these tendencies like oil
and water? Are there places where the traditional, even stereotypical small
town and the new isolationism exist side-by-side — or even in harmony?

For something like an
answer, look at Perinton.

            Perhaps more than any other Monroe
County town, Perinton, population 46,000, blends dual identities. It’s
simultaneously a commuter-packed, road-dependent suburb (out of 24,000 workers,
only 80 use public transportation, according to the census) and an official
“Trail Town USA” (an honor conferred in 1996 by the American Hiking Society and
the National Park Service). Moreover, Perinton is reaching its limits of
physical growth, partly because of wise land-use and preservation policies. But
the town is also expanding services to residents as a means of building
community and cohesiveness.

            And nowhere can you see these tandem
tendencies more easily than at the heart of town, where recent and ongoing
construction is literally bringing the townsfolk together.

            “Heart” doesn’t mean the village of
Fairport, though. With 5,700 of the town’s residents, Fairport still is a major
commercial center for Perintonians, though retail areas like the intersection
of routes 31 and 250 are coming up fast. The village, which once had all the
non-farm action, still draws residents and visitors to offices and restaurants
along the newly refurbished Erie Canal.

            But decades of economic change have
gutted Fairport-Perinton’s old industrial sector. The community that once was
dominated by the former American Can plant, the barge traffic on the canal, a
major rail freight line, and a hinterland of farms, now must bow to the housing
tracts.

            No, the new center of gravity in
Perinton is a bit south of the village limits. It’s the town hall complex on
Turk Hill Road. And the change in this hilly neighborhood is palpable. Only a
few years ago, it was, well, pretty dark in Perinton after dark. Now as you glance out your car window from the high
points along Route 31, you can’t ignore the town hall bathed in its own
candlepower.

            It’s impressive closer up, too. It
contains the usual offices for the supervisor, town clerk, town court, and so
forth. But it also houses a 45,000-square-foot Community Center, finished in
1997, which contains a large gym with an elevated running track, meeting rooms,
a “Fitness/Wellness” area with exercise machines, and a four-season schedule of
programs and classes.

            “No town in Monroe County has a
facility that compares,” says Kenneth Zeller, Perinton’s superintendent of
recreation and parks. “It’s unique to the area, but not to other areas of the
country” like the South and Southwest. “We’re looked at [as an example]
statewide.”

            Zeller points to new construction
underway behind the center: a 23,000 Aquatics Facility. The addition, set to
open in 2004, will house a 75-foot pool, a whirlpool, and other amenities;
aqua-aerobics and other classes will be offered. According to a town
fact-sheet, a reserve fund will pay for the construction — not new taxes.
“For every new home built in the town, there’s a fee that developers pay toward
a special recreation and park fund,” Zeller says. The fee, now $850 per new
home, goes only for capital development and not for program costs, he says.

            Perinton’s park-development
strategy, says Zeller, got a head start decades ago. “As development grew in
the town,” he says, “the town had land set aside for parks.” And the parks
department, he says, grew along with the development.

To the casual
visitor,
recreation seems to have become Perinton’s main industry. (It’s an odd replacement
for entities like American Can. The successor to Cobb Preserving “was one of
the first companies to perfect the use of the open-top sanitary can,” says a
town history.) And this can be gauged from the full range of activities at the
Perinton Community Center.

            The activities aren’t just gym or
fitness classes. There are summer concerts and theater at the lofty,
white-roofed “Center Stage” in Center Park, a 120-acre open space just downhill
from the town hall. Center Stage is the focal point, moreover, for a
semi-natural amphitheater carved into the hillside.

            The town maintains recreational open
spaces, too. Some, like the 157-acre White Brook Nature Area, are large enough
for extensive exploration. And of course Perinton, as a “Trail Town USA,” is
loaded with hiking/biking trails. There’s the Erie Canal Trail, which cuts
through the town east to west. And the Crescent Trail, built on an old trolley
right-of-way and maintained by a volunteer association, connects directly to
Center Park and many other access points.

            There’s also a lot of upscale
recreation on private property — as befits a town whose median household
income in 1999 was almost $70,000.

            You get a sense of this by visiting
Eagle Vale Golf Club on Route 250, just south of the town’s border with
Penfield. Not even two decades old, the course has 18 holes, an immense
clubhouse and pro shop, and a driving range. Eagle Vale staff couldn’t be
reached for comment. But in a recent issue of Rochester Golf Week, commentator Dave Eaton notes the club has
“banquet facilities for 400 people and a full-service sports bar to go along
with the amazingly mature golf course.”

            Eagle Vale is open to the public.
But it’s also the nucleus for several large housing tracts, like the “Carriage
Homes at Eagle Vale,” a string of small, garage-fronted units being built near
the clubhouse.

            The worldwide golfing boom has been
generous to the Rochester area — and the leisurely lifestyle has molded the
local character. It certainly shows in Perinton. Besides Eagle Vale, the town
has the semi-private Lodge at Woodcliff Sports and Golf Club and the Island
Valley Golf Course. Moreover, Shadow Lake Golf and Racquet Club, Midvale
Country Club, and Penfield Country Club are not far beyond the town line.

            Perinton government has a link in
this chain, too. Eagle Vale staffers give basic golf lessons at their course,
in cooperation with the Perinton Recreation and Parks Department.

“That’s a
beautiful course,” says Fairport resident Peter McDonough, speaking of Eagle
Vale. There are plans to do a community pops concert in the banquet hall there,
he says.

            As a former mayor of the village,
McDonough is well situated to reflect on the whole community, past and future.
“They’re a very community-oriented government, both the village and the town,”
he says. But he disputes one matter of geography. “There’s no center for the
town of Perinton but the village of Fairport,” he says.

            “The village is landlocked; there’s
little land left for development,” says McDonough in another mode. Indeed,
Fairport and Perinton stand separately, as well as together — and there’s
some tension between old and new that hasn’t vanished with some shared
development possibilities along the Erie Canal. (Just like cities, incorporated
villages in New York State cannot legally grow by annexation.) But McDonough
isn’t negative. “The town, they had the land and the potential for allocating
resources for development, and they’ve done a tremendous job,” he says. “They
have a broad range of activities that appeal to senior citizens and young
mothers with children… It took a lot of work and foresight.”

            Perinton Supervisor Jim Smith,
responding to our questions by e-mail, says much the same. “We have an
excellent history of good planning” since the 1950s, he says.

            But Smith points out some other
factors — advantages and challenges alike — in the Perinton success story.

            “Perinton’s significant growth is
behind it,” he says. “We were the fastest growing suburb in the ’60s and ’70s.”
But now “the easy development land is gone, and we are experiencing development
in more environmentally sensitive areas. These entail a need for less density
and increased review, all of which results in slower growth.” (The town-village
population stood at 31,500 in 1970; by 1990, it had climbed to 43,000. The
increase from 1990 to 2000 was much less dramatic. But Fairport village
actually dropped by more than three percent during that decade, while the town
overall grew by seven percent.)

            So how will Perinton cope with the
inevitable slowdown? Will it experience what inner-ring suburbs like
Irondequoit have been hit with — population loss, commercial vacancies, and
so forth? Will the town succumb to the lethal contradiction, as given above:
the gulf between isolationism and community?

            It’s probably too early to guess.
But there’s at least one certitude: Perinton’s plan is to avoid spreading
itself too thin.

            In this regard, Jim Smith puts
emphasis on open-space preservation. He touts Perinton’s Conservation Easement
Program, calling it “a first-of-a-kind in New York State.” He points to a town
map that shows numerous parcels covered by farming and conservation easements,
by which the owner cedes development rights to the land in exchange for tax
benefits. A fact sheet on the program admits the arrangement isn’t foolproof;
property owners can end up selling or developing the land and paying back the
tax benefits they’ve accrued. But the town believes the program is “a workable,
effective, short to medium term” solution.

            Most of the parcels are clustered in
the southeastern part of the town, but some are along the northern border with
Penfield. (Three adjacent conservation easements cover the Eagle Vale golf
course, by the way.) All in all, the town has 116 conservation easements in
effect, covering around 16 percent of the town’s land area.

            But again, the program is not
ironclad: A chart shows that the number of acres covered by easements has
declined quite steadily from almost 6,268 in 1976 to 3,675 today.

            “Our open space program is one of
the finest in New York State,” says Smith, regardless. “We currently own over
1,800 acres of open space and parkland. This land serves many functions,
including the preservation of environmental areas, active parkland,
forever-wild areas with scenic vistas, and agricultural lands… We have set
aside funds for these acquisitions… This eliminates the need for bond issues
and increases in taxes.”

The
neighborhood around High Acres Landfill, at the southeastern edge of
town, is firmly under the “challenge” heading on the ledger.

            Operated by Waste Management Inc.,
the landfill appears to be growing (and peppering nearby conservation areas
with some airborne litter). But the town is already planning long-term. The
goal, says Jim Smith, is eventually to integrate the current conservation areas
with a closed landfill. He says an “original landfill” on-site, one that’s
already closed, is now “providing habitat for many species.”

            Apart from land-use policy, Perinton’s
got an ace in the hole, thanks to the foresight of previous generations. The
ace is Fairport Electric, a municipally owned power company with 14,000
customers in the village and town. The village website notes that these
customers pay around one-third of what the customers of “nearby utilities” pay.

            Smith says Fairport Electric serves
“roughly the eastern two-thirds of the town.” The service, he says, “is a plus
for both homeowners and businesses. We have developed/encouraged industrial
development in certain areas of the town with cheaper electric as a major
incentive…”

            So there you have it: Mix high
household incomes with low utility rates, and leaven the mixture with
conservation policies, and you have one recipe for success.

            But the future can’t be pinned down.
You also could have the makings of a town-wide “privatopia,” with local
government playing a crucial role as coordinator. And that would be partial
success, at best.

This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2003.