Business parks in transition

Over the past couple of weeks, we noticed an interesting juxtaposition of stories. The first was the story of business developer John M. Herman, who is seeking to swap the land of the existing Pike County Business Park located on Route 434 for some Pennsylvania Game Commission land closer to I-84—after the park has failed to attract any tenants, though ground was broken years ago. The other was the story about the Transition Towns movement, which contends that global problems can be tackled by individual localities taking on more responsibility for sustaining themselves and providing for their own needs.

The two ideas are related because they are embedded in two opposite visions of how human beings can live, work and prosper. On the one hand, we have the concept of large areas devoted just to business, located near major roads—part of the sprawl mentality, the idea of separating out the places where we live, work, shop and raise food and then driving or shipping goods between the separate locations, even if they’re half a globe apart. On the other hand, we have the concept of integrating these places and activities so we are more self-sufficient, less energy dependent and living in equilibrium with the environment.

Simple observation suggests that the business park model may be on the way out. The Pike County Business Park is not the only one that has failed to take off in recent years; the Emerald Corporate Center in Rock Hill, NY, for instance, after six years, still only has one tenant: Crystal Run Health Care. Altogether, there seems to be a dearth of business park success stories in our area.

How much of the trouble these projects have had getting off the ground is due to chronic local economic problems, how much to the national economic slump and how much to long-term structural changes is not clear. But whatever the cause, one can’t help wondering whether some of the ideas brought up by the Transition Towns movement might not present some interesting alternatives.

One of them we already know. It’s called “downtown:” an area within a town that has a concentration of retail and commercial space but is intermixed with apartments and within easy walking distance of wholly residential districts. Of course, it could be argued that “downtown” has been a much more spectacular failure than the business park model. But that’s largely the product of our long romance with the automobile—a romance whose days are now clearly numbered. Walkability will become more and more appealing as gas prices trend up, and downtowns may just be on the comeback. Maybe, we could use some of those stimulus dollars to help rebuild our downtowns into “business parks” that are already integrated with the places that people live. In fact, the $330,000 in stimulus dollars just snagged by Monticello to rebuild its sidewalks, facilitating foot traffic between business districts, residential districts and the school, represents a move in the right direction.

But that’s only one possible approach, and the Transition Towns idea seems broader than that. It includes, for instance, the idea of keeping food production close to those who eat it, as well. In the Town of Totnes in England, that has meant planting nut trees within the boundaries of the town. Instead of putting businesses in a park, the park is being brought in among the businesses.

We must admit to an inconsistency in our hypothesis that the day of the business park may be on the way out. After all, we’ve been fast enough to praise and support the ones with themes that we like, like the green technology park at Sullivan County Community College, or the agriculture park in Liberty. And indeed, we still think that those are good enough ideas that they should be pushed along, because those themes are particularly timely for the needs of the 21st century.

But wouldn’t it be interesting to try to combine the idea of a green or agricultural park with the idea of transition communities? How about specifically designing a green business park that had a residential and retail district integrated into it? Or better yet, an integrated park with business, residential and retail sectors surrounded by an area of productive farms and facilities to process food? There are probably people all over the country trying to attract green businesses to their business parks; one that not only used green technologies but embodied a holistic green vision like this would certainly stand out above the others.

It would be a big project. But big ideas can sometimes attract big funding. And they are what is needed when, like the 21st-century human race, you’ve dug yourself into a big hole.

Dr. Punnybone

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