RELEASE: Immediate
CONTACTS: Colleen McKenna (914) 431-5779
PALISADES INTERSTATE PARKWAY
SCENIC BYWAY CORRIDOR MANAGEMENT PLAN
( October 28th, 1998 Poughkeepsie, NY)
Do you have any ideas about how to conserve and enhance the New York section of the Palisades Interstate Parkway? Come to a 7:00 PM public workshop on November 12th in Room 311 at the Town of Clarkstown Town Hall, 10 Maple Avenue, New City, Rockland County.
The New York State Department of Transportation and the Palisades Interstate Park Commission are sponsoring the workshop to review plan goals and solicit ideas for how to best conserve and enhance the parkway corridor while improving safety and accommodating increasing traffic. The workshop will focus on parkway safety; maintaining the historic and scenic character of the parkway and corridor; improving roadside buffers and landscaping; enhancing the user experience and services; and using the parkway corridor to encourage tourism in the region. The workshop is part of a Scenic Byway Corridor Management Plan for the New York section of the Palisades Interstate Parkway Corridor that traverses Rockland and Orange Counties.
The Palisades Interstate Parkway is a unique New York State Scenic Byway and Historic Parkway which serves as an important transportation and recreation corridor for non-commercial traffic. More than 6.5 million vehicles enter the southern section of the Parkway every year. Conserving the special qualities of the historic parkway character while improving safety in the face of increasing commuter traffic is an important challenge for the region. The vision for this corridor is to conserve and enhance its intrinsic qualities (scenic, natural, cultural, recreation, historic) and historic parkway qualities while addressing traffic and safety needs for the present and into the future. The goals of the Corridor Management Plan are first, to collect information about the parkway corridor by inventorying the corridor
=s intrinsic qualities and understanding the concerns of the people who live along and use the parkway; and second, to develop a comprehensive multi-agency, community-based plan for managing the scenic byway/parkway corridor into the next century.
The purpose of the Scenic Byway Corridor Management Plan is to develop specific strategies for conserving and enhancing this unique designated State Scenic Byway and historic parkway. The planning effort is being formulated with the assistance of an advisory committee composed of State, County and Local government representatives, various users of the parkway and corridor and other interested agencies and people.
The Palisades Interstate Parkway serves both as an important transportation corridor as well as providing access to many communities and some of the region
=s major recreational areas. Recently nominated for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the Palisades Interstate Parkway is also eligible for National Scenic Byway nomination.
The result of the planning effort will be a set of specific strategies and projects to conserve and enhance the historic parkway character while increasing safety and the intrinsic qualities of the corridor. This will also include strategies for conserving scenic views, enhancing landscaping and buffers, finding ways to improve the user experience and services and improving user and visitor access to the communities and historic and recreational sites in the corridor.
A consultant project team of landscape architects, engineers, preservation and tourism experts has been hired by NYSDOT to coordinate the planning effort. The team is lead by Vollmer Associates of New York, and is assisted by Lardner/Klein Landscape Architects and Mary Means & Associates, both of Alexandria, Virginia
; nationally recognized experts in corridor planning for scenic byways and heritage areas.
The consultant team, working with the advisory committee is in the process of formulating goals and developing a preliminary list of ideas for conserving and enhancing the parkway and scenic byway corridor. Your help is needed now, at the beginning of the project, to make sure that the plan addresses all the issues that are a concern to parkway users and neighbors.
The November 12th workshop will include a discussion of the scope of the project, a slide show focusing on the issues and preliminary goals that have been identified so far with the help of the advisory committee, and a
Abrainstorming@ session to identify additional issues, ideas and concerns for conserving and enhancing the parkway and corridor. This public input will be utilized to develop a draft plan which will be further discussed in a second public workshop planned for the spring of 1999 to make sure that the plan adequately addresses all the issues and concerns.
For further information or to send your ideas and comments, contact:
Russell Robbins, NYSDOT Planning, 4 Burnett Blvd., Poughkeepsie, NY 12603 A TEL 914-431-5978 A FAX 914-431-7923 A E-Mail rrobbins@gw.dot.state.ny.us or Nina Rosen, Vollmer Associates, 50 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010 TEL 212-366-5600 FAX 212-366-5629 E-Mail nrosen@vollmer.com
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