Livin’ in Liverpool: Dick Swift takes the high road on Meyer Manor

You’ve got to give Dick Swift credit.

The elder statesman of the Johnson Tract neighborhood, who has lived 52 long years at 10 Donald Place, gave it the old college try at last week’s public hearing about the planned Meyer Manor apartment complex at 1225 Tulip St.

Instead of taking the low road — as many of his neighbors did — by suggesting that apartment dwellers are the scum of the earth, Swift took the high road. He suggested that the Village Board of Trustees simply follow its own written directives for community improvement, directives clearly spelled out in the Comprehensive Plan approved back in 2006.

Swift also appealed to the trustees to follow the village’s own Community Design Handbook, published a few years after the Comp Plan. Those documents advise against introducing housing styles inconsistent with existing neighborhoods and proclaim the need for “calming traffic” to make the village more pedestrian-friendly.

You’d think that Swift had check-mated the trustees, hoisting them on their own petard, so to speak, by insisting that they remain true to the village’s own clearly stated vision of its future.

Drive-thru fiasco

Swift must have been out of town last year when both the village board and the planning board turned their backs on the Comprehensive Plan/Community Design Handbook by bending over backward to allow Dunkin’ Donuts to build and open a drive-thru restaurant on Second Street.

Maybe he missed the move made by the trustees in the spring of 2016 when it tossed out a zoning ordinance prohibiting drive-thrus in the village which had been passed to encourage the traffic calming deemed so crucial by the Comprehensive Plan. When the donut dynamo wanted in, however, the trustees modified the village code, Chapter 380-41, to issue special permits to allow restaurants to provide drive-thru services.

They did that despite the fact that as the Comprehensive Plan was being written in 2005, planners’ surveyed residents, village business owners and their customers, and traffic was repeatedly identified as the village’s worst problem.

Dick Swift may not have realized that on Sept. 8, 2016, the Planning Board conducted a public hearing during which 10 or 16 citizens spoke out against the Dunkin’ Donuts site plan, citing traffic concerns. The planners didn’t care how many people opposed it. They ignored the public hearing speakers and they ignored the advice of the Comp Plan and Community Design Handbook when they approved the drive-thru by a vote of 4-1.

So Dick Swift may hope that this year a new Village Board may feel more predisposed to remain faithful to those plans which were so many years in the making. Three of the four sitting trustees — Matt Devendorf, Jason Recor and Bradley Young — were not on the board when it OKed the drive-thru last year. Maybe they’ll show some respect for the vision of the Comprehensive Plan as they consider the zone change Mayer Manor needs to become a reality.

And maybe the Planning Board — whose membership has not changed since last years’ Dunkin’ fiasco — will reconsider its commitment to the Comp Plan. At least Dick Swift is hoping so.

But judging from what transpired last year, I wouldn’t bet on it.

I suspect that the increased tax dollars the village is cashing in from Dunkin’ Donuts — and potentially from Meyer Manor developer Cosimo Zavaglia — weigh more heavily on village decision-making than any intangible “vision.”

Joyous juice

Freedom of Espresso at 403 First St., is best known for its hearty coffees brewed from locally roasted beans. But this summer, during a heat-induced fit of severe thirst, I found Nantucket Nectars in the cooler there. Sixteen ounces of orange mango juice quenched my parched self and then some. Next day, I swigged the pineapple orange guava, which was just as tasty and refreshing.

Turns out that Nantucket Nectars were created circa 1989 by two Toms, Tom First and Tom Scott, at their floating convenience store named Allserve, which served boaters in Nantucket Harbor. Now their nectars serve the nation!

Freedom of Espresso sells the 16-ounce bottles for $2 each; (315) 461-8151.