ccSCOOP - NEWS - A Giant Step for a Sidewalk Project

A GIANT STEP FOR A SIDEWALK PROJECT

Mike McCagg

ccSCOOP News

03-24-09 - Being a pedestrian in the two most populous sections of the Town of Kinderhook will soon get a lot easier.

A plan to connect the sidewalks of the villages of Kinderhook and Valatie, with approximately 1,275 and 1,700 residents respectively, took a giant step forward on March 19 when officials declared there would be no significant environmental impact from the project, Kinderhook Village Clerk Nicole Heeder reported. As a result of the negative declaration, the project moves on to a second environmental impact review and a review of the design by the New York State Department of Transportation.

“The intent is to get the design approval by June 1,” said James Dunham, who is overseeing the project. Dunham, a former Kinderhook mayor and trustee, said the design approval from the Department of Transportation would allow the municipalities to begin making the right-of-way land purchases needed to clear the way for the sidewalks. The second environmental review–a National Environmental Policy Act review–is not expected to interrupt the process.

The $660,000 project, which extends from the Stewart's Shop in the Village of Kinderhook to St. Luke’s Drive in the Village of Valatie, could begin in the spring of 2010, Dunham said. When this missing link of sidewalk to completed, residents will be able to walk—on sidewalks—along Route 9 from the Stuyvesant–Kinderhook border to the Ichabod Crane school campus on the traffic circle.

Bridging the three-quarter-mile divide between the villages has long been a topic of discussion among town and village residents. In the mid-1990s, it was identified as a need by a town panel reviewing the trail system and was part of a formal proposal by the town-wide trails committee in 1999.

Dunham said funding was secured for the project in 2006 with an intermodal grant that provides 80 percent federal funding and 15 percent state funding for the project, with the two villages providing the remaining 5 percent of the costs. Dunham said the local share will be divided equally between the two villages.

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