At a recent village board meeting, representatives from Vision Long Island updated residents and the administration with a draft of their Master Plan recommendations.

The visioning process is a six-part process. Visioning, building moratorium, master plan update, code changes, project development and ongoing support/feedback is how the process works.

"This is a marathon, not a sprint," Vision Long Island Program Director Eric Alexander said. "Most of these processes take two to five years to complete."

Vision Long Island, a nonprofit group that helps create smart growth communities, led an opening presentation on Feb. 9 and an interactive walking tour, question and answer session and visual preference surveys on Feb. 11. Supplied with a variety of aerial photos and plenty of magic markers, community members were then given the opportunity to put their ideas on paper. Working together, they drew in trees, ways to make safer streets, farmers' markets and day-laborer sites. After a long period of design, the groups presented their ideas to each other. They also shared their hopes and fears for their community.

The Vision Long Island staff then spent three full days creating the basis of a master plan for Farmingdale's future. They showed a PowerPoint presentation and renderings of potential Main Street, the train station area and the Route 109/Main Street crosswalk.

Alexander said that the purpose of the Feb. 15 session was to "record comments, draft a report, answer questions from the vision and create something a bit more specific by late April."

At that time the Village Board was looking to adopt these ideas in May or June.

A six-month moratorium on building in the Village of Farmingdale was approved by the board of trustees at their June 5 monthly meeting. The moratorium, which has halted the issuance of building permits for the construction of new and expanded buildings, demolition permits for buildings, subdivision approvals and variances related to lot area and lot dimensions or setbacks for new buildings in commercial and residential areas, was the first recommendation by the Vision Long Island team after February's week-long visioning process.

While it was initially slated for April, scheduling conflicts pushed this latest update back to July.

Alexander and architect Alex Latham of ADL III Architecture began with the draft goals for Farmingdale.

"The key message from the visioning process is to protect and preserve neighborhoods and protect and preserve the downtown center," Alexander said.

They also pointed out three potential growth areas around the village - the northern part of Main Street, the train station area and areas along Route 109.

Their draft priorities included Main Street revitalization, transportation, housing, open space/parks, community facilities, street design, architectural character and overdevelopment.

For the revitalization of Main Street, Alexander and Latham suggested a Main Street management team, better marketing of the downtown business district, retail analysis of what mix is needed downtown, study the feasibility of a bed and breakfast or small inn as a complementary use to the downtown, develop transition areas with office and house (live/work units), consider improvements to four back parking lots and encourage merchants to improve their back entrances and consider encouraging some building owners to redevelop their one-story structures by expanding to a second story.

Accomplishing the open space and parks priority brought suggestions such as engaging in proactive preservation, landscaping existing open spaces, working with different levels of government and redesigning the village to make it more pedestrian friendly.

The creation of a farmer's market somewhere in the village and a community center were the two suggestions for achieving community facilities priority.

According to Vision Long Island, setting design standards and undergoing an architectural review can be achieved by improving visual appearance of new development and redevelopment, determining the village's approach to design details such as building materials, doors, windows, roofs, awnings, signage, height, color, determining the village's approach to landscaping standards and details such as planting, paving, benches, wastebaskets and lighting. Alexander added that these approaches could include a design code/guidelines through an architectural review board or hiring a village architect.

"Some of the building codes are archaic," Latham said. "Architectural pattern books can be adopted as part of visual codes."

Updating transportation in and out of the village was the next priority discussed. Vision Long Island suggested working with the MTA/LIRR on the new Transit Village program that is in development, working with the MTA/LI Bus to improve bus shelters, determine the feasibility of a downtown trolley that could be used for special events and consider a parking garage as a long-term parking solution in one of the village lots.

Realizing the redesigning streets priority is possible, according to Vision Long Island, by identifying pedestrian safety "hot spots" where traffic calming solutions can be applied, adopting street design guidelines to make areas more pedestrian friendly as part of a roadway redevelopment and maintenance, working with community organizations to improve pedestrian safety through public education campaigns and working with New York State Department of Transportation in the long term to develop a true boulevard style reconstruction of Route 109.

Several suggestions were made for the housing priority. Those included the passage of inclusionary zoning ordinance mandating 20 percent of all new units be set aside for affordable/workforce housing, identifying the feasibility of an owner occupied accessory apartment ordinance, making any new affordable housing development preference to Farmingdale residents, using creative building design and architectural guidelines to create a mix of housing options and styles and consider tapping the existing multi-unit housing complexes, both senior and others, to see if the village can provide a tax benefit to the complex in exchange for an agreed upon number of apartments being designated as affordable.

Addressing over-redevelopment was the last priority listed. Suggestions for making it come to fruition included analyzing the impact of development outside Farmingdale, revising codes and regulations to protect against maximum build out of residential areas, enforcing existing zoning regulations more strictly and consider the creation of a neighborhood conservation district.

A Tudor Road resident said he felt "very comfortable with the vision and really enjoyed the presentation."

Another resident addressed the day laborer situation and said the vision process should embrace the immigrants in Farmingdale.

"Farmingdale is about telling immigrants to live, work and thrive," he said. "It's not about raising the value of our homes.

Joe Diurno, a recent candidate for village trustee, said he wants the plan to be brought before the public.

"We do not have a strategic, definitive plan that we could evaluate," he added.

Trustee Butch Starkie responded by saying this is a process and "there's a lot of time being spent on it."

"All of this required a step by step logical sequence," added Mayor George Graf. "It wouldn't be fair to the board or the residents to rush through this. I don't want a misstep that is going to come back and haunt us."

Alexander commented on the length of time the visioning process thus far by adding, "it took Riverhead three years to get this far."

According to their website, Vision Long Island's mission is to join with others to promote livability and economically sustainable and environmentally responsible growth on Long Island. They encourage comprehensive land-use planning that is consistent with the needs of the local community, adjacent communities, and the region as a whole. Armed with over 10 years of research and relationships in the smart growth community their process is an extensive hands-on experience for all involved. In addition to working with municipalities and developers, their organization is geared to working collaboratively with local environmental, civic, and other not-for-profit groups. Vision Long Island's master plans have been successfully implemented in Lake Ronkonkoma, Mastic, Shirley and Middle Island.

For more information on Vision Long Island visit www.visionlongisland.org.