LAKE PLACID — The North Elba/Lake Placid Comprehensive Plan, a detailed document intended to guide the growth and development of the community, is nearing completion. The draft plan was presented to the town and village boards Tuesday by the landscape architecture and planning consultant firm SE Group, and the draft can be viewed and commented upon until July 3.

More information about the comprehensive plan can be viewed at tinyurl.com/2swmazw7. Under the “Provide Input” tab, there is a place for community members to leave comments on the draft, which can also be viewed under that tab, or at tinyurl.com/3mykmzy2.

The comprehensive plan is an advisory document intended to form a detailed picture of the priorities and needs of a community. Julia Randall, an associate community and recreation planner at SE Group, said the plan primarily guides land use and enables a community to enact zoning laws.

The plan also allows the town and village to apply for more state grants. Town council member Emily Kilburn Politi said the vast majority of grants ask for proof that a given project is supported by the comprehensive plan.

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Priorities and projects

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The SE Group has been hard at work on this plan for about a year and a half, Randall said. Part of the cost of their work was paid for by a state Smart Growth grant.

The comprehensive plan was shaped by numerous rounds of feedback. It began with an initial survey in the first two months of 2024, which resulted in more than 700 responses. Then there were discussions with focus groups, multiple open house events and a scenario planning workshop. Most recently, in January, there was a public open house for the showgrounds and athletic fields master plan, which is functionally separate but has been developed and researched alongside the Comprehensive Plan.

Through all of these avenues, the group identified five key values for the community of Lake Placid and North Elba: scenic beauty, recreation and winter sports, open space and wildlife, quaint feel and schools and families. On the flip side, the top stressors were identified as: cost of living, affordability challenges and lack of housing; not enough industries and good paying jobs; loss of sense of community and impacts of climate change, namely warmer winters.

These values and stressors, which are fleshed out significantly in the draft document, are then used to shape a section on recommendations for the future. These recommendations come in a number of formats, such as a map of both the village and the town that identifies priorities for different areas that could be used to guide zoning decisions in the future.

“They are abstract, but hopefully they are helpful as an index for what the community’s vision is, and then how that translates, in a broad way, to land use,” Randall said.

This section of the plan is divided into themes that each have numerous recommended actions that the town and village can consider taking on in the future, whether led by the town leadership or even by citizen volunteers. A chart starting on page 158 lays out each recommendation, estimates a timeframe for each and even rates them by how expensive they would be.

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Response from leadership

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Much of the discussion following Randall’s presentation focused on how the town and village would go about implementing the suggested actions in the plan. Currently, much of this plan falls into the territory of the town’s community development department, which is headed by Haley Breen. However, the many potential projects are far beyond the scope of one small department.

The community development department currently has a Development Commission, a volunteer group that includes community members and town/village leaders. The commission is currently broken into subcommittees that address different areas of concern, like child care or recreation. Supervisor Derek Doty said he would like to see the implementation of the Comprehensive Plan take on a more goal- or project-oriented approach.

Village Trustee Jackie Kelly seconded this, saying that committees for the 2014 Comprehensive Plan became stagnant after achieving their initial goals and not having a clear project to move on to.

“I think the volunteers or the people who were on the committee were frustrated,” she said. “They sat there and we discussed the same things multiple times without real action.”

Town Councilman Rick Preston chimed in, saying that because funding is often hard to come by for the town and village, the committees would get discouraged after getting shot down because of a lack of money. Ultimately, the approach to implementation of the comprehensive plan will be shaped by both the town and village leaders, but how that will work exactly is yet to be determined.

In speaking about the usefulness of the plan, village Trustee Katie Brennan said a key strength is that it takes a holistic look at the community structure, instead of just focusing on one problem at a time, like housing.

“If you think only about one of the components, then other aspects of living become more challenging or the resources that are existing get overloaded,” she said. “I think that we are in a good place to avoid that if we’re careful now.

“I’m excited about some of the findings here and the opportunity to leverage some of the energy and organizations and volunteer energy in the community to try to drive some of this forward,” Brennan added.