Park Point: Scrap this project!
By Rebecca Berlin, third-year anthropology major, Student Senator and organizer with New York Students Rising at SUNY New Paltz.
This statement was read by Rebecca Berlin at the Nov. 25 public hearing on Park Point. The next hearing is scheduled for Dec. 9 at 7 p.m. at the New Paltz Town Hall, 1 Veterans Drive.
Park Point is a proposed 732-bed housing complex that will be located off of Route 32 South as an off-campus apartment option for students and faculty. The complex will be located on land purchased by the non-profit SUNY New Paltz Foundation, a group dedicated to providing students with scholarships. The land will be leased to Wilmorite Inc., of Rochester, a for-profit real-estate developer. The college contends this project is the only way it can provide off-campus housing for transfer students.
It is currently in the final stages of review before the Town of New Paltz Planning Board. The following statement was read by Rebecca Berlin at Monday's public hearing before the board:
Besides a geothermal pump to heat and cool the "clubhouse," it appears that no renewable energy sources will be used on the Park Point project. Besides this pump and the promise to use energy star-certified appliances, the project is entirely reliant upon fossil fuels.
These various attempts at being “green” seem like trivial items on a checklist to be crossed off, so that the bare minimum is done to make the project “green." SUNY New Paltz likes to brand itself a “green campus,” but in reality these efforts are really just a minimal attempt to be seen as a trendy, progressive school.
The project's dependence on fossil fuels will render it useless in 40 years as fossil fuels cease being an abundant resource and the price of those fuels rises, leaving us with a shell of cookie cutter McTownhouses.
I think this project is an archaic design, with little thought put into using renewable energy sources. With the renewable energy technologies that exist today, I think Park Point would be a big mistake. This project is a project of the past, and if we are to call ourselves a “green” school, then we cannot move forward with Park Point.
Who is Wilmorite? Who is this corporation that we are being told to trust? This multi-billion dollar corporation, which owes the city of Rochester 22 million dollars? Also, a trustee of the New Paltz foundation is a regional president of the M&T bank, from which the Foundation took out a $2 million loan to purchase this land. One-hundred-sixteen thousand dollars of interest was paid to the bank, which seems like a conflict of interest.
I question whether SUNY New Paltz will even be able to fill all 732 beds at Park Point. Along with the 224 beds in a new dorm to be built on campus without increasing the number of accepted students, which would essentially increase our already bulging class sizes and put even more strain on our underpaid professors, further decreasing the value of our education.
Wilmorite has not clearly stated what exactly the cost of living in these off campus apartments would be. The average price could be as high as $775 per person every month, according to data provided in Wilmorite's Financial Impact Statement. This is far more expensive than off campus living in town. This would phase out all the students unable to afford this luxury housing, and create an elite area for those who can afford it.
Why is New Paltz Foundation paying $2 million for a project like this, when the average New Paltz student with loans graduates $25,000 in debt? The New Paltz foundation should be finding a way to give even more scholarships out to students, rather than spending $2 million on this project.
I believe that this project should be scrapped. Because transfers are still looking for an on-campus experience, I think that New Paltz needs to go back to the drawing board and actually include students in the discussion of what they would like to see in this project.
Students should be included so that we can see a building put up that the student body actually wants. This means including transfer students in this conversation. And including students studying things like environmental studies, environmental geochemical sciences and engineering. Campus groups like the sustainability committee and others devoted to these issues and community members and their elected representatives, like the town and village board, and the student government should also have a more central role to planning out these types of developments.
This inclusivity is essential so that a project can be created that has actual support behind it and so that people can be proud of what is built. We should come out of the process knowing that it is what we want as an entire community, rather than be told what will be built after the decision has already been made.
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