ZBA Denies Short-term Rental Application

By CASPAR EWIG COOPERSTOWN

Last Tuesday, March 7, 2023—in front of an overflow, standingroom-only crowd—the Village of Cooperstown Zoning Board of Appeals considered and ultimately denied an application by Mark and Margaret Curley, the owners of 40 Lake Street, to permit four of the residence’s five bedrooms to be used for short-term rentals.

Prior to the hearing, the ZBA had received 24 letters and/or e-mails, all of which expressed the writers’ objection to the application. The same was true of comments made at the hearing: the residents who spoke all opposed the application. The owners, who had purchased the house also known as Averill Cottage four months earlier, were not present. Although a family member did attend and was given the opportunity to be heard, he declined.

The emotional tone of the opposition was best summarized by the impassioned plea of Hillary LaDuke who, as an Averill descendant, said, “Averill Cottage was our homestead that was built by our family…and I can’t imagine that my ancestors, or anybody in my family, envisions this someday being a chop shop.”

At the outset of the meeting, ZBA Chairperson Susan Snell summarized the written opposition into various categories. Many opponents referred to the land-use descriptions of the Zoning Law as well as to the Village of Cooperstown’s Comprehensive Plan, which generally holds short-term rentals to be undesirable.

On a practical level, some writers pointed out that it would be inappropriate to convert an historic dwelling into a boarding house, and that the narrowness of Lake Street made it incompatible with any additional traffic. Others contended that the ambience of the neighborhood’s privacy and peace and quiet would be disturbed by the proposed additional parking area and were equally concerned by the

By CASPAR EWIG

COOPERSTOWN

Most people have procedures performed to remove an appendix, but the Village of Cooperstown is in the final stages of seeking to acquire one.

On march 22, a special public informational joint session of the Board of Trustees of Cooperstown and the Otsego Town Board will be held to discuss the transfer of just over 9-1/2 acres of land from the Town of Otsego to the Village of Cooperstown. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. and will be held in the auditorium of the Cooperstown Central School. At the meeting, members of both boards will explain the scope and purpose of the project and receive and consider public comments

The thin sliver of land in question, measuring approximately 350’ x 1,200’, is bordered on the east by Linden Avenue south of Walnut Street and on the west by the Leatherstocking Railroad tracks stretching from Bocca

Osteria to Ace Hardware to Community Bank. It consists of three parcels, two of which are owned by the Village of Cooperstown. The other belongs to Otsego County. These parcels presently contain a series of municipal buildings, including those housing Cooperstown’s Department of Public Works, finally ending at the Blue Parking Lot.

“The annexation will only result in formalizing the actual realities of the present situation,” mayor Ellen Tillapaugh stated. “The Village of Cooperstown not only incurred all the engineering and construction costs for the Linden Avenue improvements, but also maintains that property.

“This includes the sidewalk to the school. We clear the snow from the road and sidewalk, repaint the sidewalks each year to ensure pedestrian safety, repave when necessary, mow the grass, and operate the Blue Lot and the public trolley serving that lot.”

As to the latter, the mayor