New York State's Mohawk Valley Must Be Preserved Before it Can Be Promoted

The Mohawk Valley's two prime assets are its history and its beauty and both are in jeopardy. Let's start with its beauty. Poorly planned development has created eyesores along the river that detract from it and the surrounding valley. Three buildings, erected within the last decade, will suffice to prove my point.

The most egregious example is the Target Distribution Center on Route 5S in the Town of Florida. While beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, it would be difficult to find someone who finds any aesthetic value in this quarter mile long building squatting above the river and dominating the local landscape, its architecture apparently inspired by Brutalism or some archaic Soviet school of architecture. My son has appropriately dubbed it "the death star." Then there is Billy Fuccillo's "huge" car lot on Route 5 near Nelliston, and not far beyond that is Logan's giant salt storage shed that can be seen for miles in every direction.

The argument in support of this ugliness is that each of these businesses has boosted the local economy. I won't disagree, but can't we have our cake and eat it too. Why can't we boost the local economy while requiring that such ugly structures be built farther away from the river or be better shielded from view.

There was a time when America's rivers, including the Mohawk, were open sewers. No one wanted to live near them. It wasn't uncommon to locate factories, junkyards, and oil storage tanks along them. That time has come and gone, but not everyone's thinking has changed. Many still see rivers as places to dump things, if not in them, alongside them.

Meanwhile many of the Mohawk Valley's historic sites, sites worth conserving for both their beauty and history, have disappeared or struggle to survive. Many Dutch barns have been dismantled and removed from the valley. Other barns, while not necessarily as historical as the 17th and 18th century Dutch barns, have been bought and shipped to Long Island and Connecticut where the timbers from as many as three barns go into the building of one multi-million dollar mansion.