Washington County

In the not too distant future, the Luther Forest Technology Park will become a reality. The dawning of that day will mark the beginning of the end of Southern Washington County as we know it.

For almost three centuries, this area has been known for agricultural and scenic beauty. That heritage is still alive and proudly spoken of by residents. Working family farms still grace the land. Cows are almost as plentiful as people. Dirt roads abound. Traffic jams are most often caused by Volunteer Fire Department coin drops. There are no four lane roads, to say nothing of divided highways. One can stop at any hilltop in this part of the county and still gaze over forests and farmlands, with only the occasional house visible.

I have lived on Main Street in Greenwich for almost 14 years. During that time I have grown to love this area, for it's scenic beauty and it's people. While I was not married here, nor my children born here, this has become my home.

A majority of my life however, has been spent in New Jersey. A state that is rapidly seeing it's open land disappear, swallowed up by vast acres of cookie cutter housing developments, McMansions that start at half a million dollars, office malls and strip malls, industrial warehouses disguised as office parks, office parks whose emptying parking lots clog every nearby road during evening rush hours and quite possibly as many red lights and stop signs as people.

If the Luther Forest Technology Park, situated just across the Hudson River in Stillwater, is successful in achieving it's developers goal of 10,000 jobs, there is simply no way that all the attendant growth will not spill over into Washington County. How much growth and when it's starts to become a public issue is a question no one can answer. But growth and congestion there will be, is a fact that no rational person can deny.

This is an issue that I feel very torn about. The lack of good paying jobs, especially for our children is a worry. The continual loss of good paying manufacturing jobs has been a drag on the economy of the entire Upstate region for at least a decade. Luther Forest will address those issues in a very positive way. But the attendant growth may very well eliminate the reasons why I moved my family here.

David Doonan October 2004

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