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CITY PLANNERS: ENOUGH SAID
KINGSTON FREEMAN August 14,2001 Paul Kirby, Freeman staff

KINGSTON - Members of the city Planning Board agreed Monday night that no public hearing is needed on an emerging plan for a second building at the city's business park off Delaware Avenue.

The Planning Board's consensus was part of a discussion on the possibility that a city agency, using grant funding, build a second 50,000-square-foot-structure at the Kingston Business Park for light manufacturing or office use.
The meeting's keynote speaker was Steve Finkle, director of the city's Office of Economic and Community Development.
Despite a plea by Alderman Robert Senor, R-Ward 8, that a public hearing be held, members of the Planning Board and City Planner Suzanne Cahill said there is no need for one.
Planners said a series of public hearings were held during the original approval process in 1995 and 1996 for the Kingston Business Park, some of it focused on the building the city is now considering constructing.
"(During) all the scrutiny we came under when this was being developed everybody at the public hearings knew the full potential of the site," said Planning Board Chairman Lee Molyneaux. "This is not new news for this site."
Board member Bruce McLean agreed a public hearing was not necessary. The Planning Board chairman said the original public hearings "covered everything from turnkeys to water"
"You are going to get people who are afraid of change that will come out here and just say, 'Well, we don't want anything up there ...," McLean said. "That is why we are going ahead with the building to begin with and putting it up so we can alleviate that, get a tenant in there, and get some jobs in this community."
The park, built in 1996, has one tenant, Huck International.
Board member Wayne Platte said a public hearing would be repetitive. "I don't want to sit through something rehashing all the old issues again," Platte said. "We heard them once."
Senor thinks people of his ward, some of them living around the Kingston Business Park, ought to be heard no matter what government officials think they might or might not say. "The people in this city have a right to air their concerns whether they are old concerns or not," Senor said after Monday's meeting. "I think (the planners) are totally wrong. I will work within their parameters, but I know there are going to be a lot of upset people."
"This was done in complete public and all we are doing is following through with what we said we were going to do," Finkle said. "There are no changes." Finkle said some funding has been secured for clearing of land, but not construction. He said he hopes to submit a final plan to the Planning Board in time for its Sept. 10 session.

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