Sugar Loaf Semester

Sugar Loaf-The Hamlet of Sugar Loaf and the State University of New York at Albany have teamed up for an innovative series of community planning sessions. Students from Albany's Department of Geography and Planning will spend three weekends in Sugar Loaf as part of the work for their graduate degree in Urban and Regional Planning. They will create a "Healthy Infrastructure Plan" for the community, with ideas to improve facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists, ease traffic on Main Street, and support long-term economic growth. The students will be in Sugar Loaf from Sept. 10 to 12, Oct. 22 to 24, and Nov. 19 to 21. Public presentations and workshops will be held during each session. The community is urged to participate in these sessions. "People will be actively engaged and asked how to make a better Sugar Loaf," said Jill Gasero-Fone, spokesperson for the Vision Committee. The first will be held at the pavilion of the Lycian Centre for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 11. The second session is scheduled for Saturday, Oct. 16. In the final session, on Saturday, Nov. 20, the SUNY team will reveal the results of its study. The students' faculty advisor for the course is Jeff Olson, a consultant who creates green infrastructure solutions for public, private, and non-profit clients. He is a registered architect whose career has included work for grassroots organizations and big businesses alike, including IBM and several consulting firms. In 12 years of private practice he has worked on a range of local, state, national, and international projects. At SUNY Albany, Olson teaches a course called "Bicycling, Walking and Trails: Innovations in portation," the first university program of its kind in the United States. He is director of the university's new Initiative for Healthy Infrastructure. Recent projects of the Geography and Planning Department include "Vision Van Vranken," for an economically challenged neighborhood in Schenectady; The West Side Master Plan for Saratoga Springs; and the innovative Traffic Calming/Context Sensitive Design for Old Bennington, Vermont. These projects can be viewed online at the department's website, www.albany.edu/gp/projects. Sugar Loaf's Vision Committee, which is spearheading the project, has raised over $5,000 so far toward the $15,000 the planning project will cost, Gasero-Fone said. She hopes a county matching grant of $5,000 will also be forthcoming. The matching sum is actually the project itself, which she said would cost from $45,000 to $55,000 without help from the state university system. Town Councilwoman Cindy Smith, who has been working closely with the Vision Committee since it started, told The Chronicle that the town will apply for the grant on behalf of the Vision Committee but is first looking into whether or not the project is eligible. If not, the town will apply on behalf of the town's parks and recreation department. For more information about the students' visits to Sugar Loaf, call Gasero-Fone at 469-9382.