Andreatta: Pittsford moratorium stings Powers farming family

When he was a hand on his high school sweetheart’s Pittsford farm, before he married her and they came to own the land together, Roger Powers Sr. had been warned by everyone, including his own father, to avoid farming.

It was too tough to make a go of it, they told him.

“Nobody advised me to go into farming at all,” Powers said. “But I just figured there’d be a way to succeed and I didn’t want to be in a job that I thanked God it was Friday every Friday.”

More than 50 years later, Roger and Betsy Powers are still making a go of it on the family farm, where they raised four children who now have their own families and live within a half-mile either way of the homestead on Golf Avenue.

Succeeding in farming takes patience and careful planning. You must rotate fields, lay cover crops to manage the soil, and plant in stages to ensure the harvest extends the length of the growing season. The eye is always on the future.

That’s where the Powerses were looking nearly 20 years ago, when they withheld 2 acres of farmland from a deal that placed the rest of their farm — about 180 acres — into the town of Pittsford’s “Greenprint Plan.”

Under that plan, the town preserved farmland in perpetuity by buying development rights to some 1,200 acres from local farmers. The farmers still own their land, but any future buyer would be obligated to use it for agricultural purposes.

The Powerses made a good buck on the deal — upward of $12,000 an acre — but the restrictions on the land made it much less valuable because most people heed the warnings about farming that Roger ignored.

So those 2 acres set aside were to be a nest egg for the couple separate from the farm — a sliver of land they or their children could develop or sell for development down the road.

"Instead of stocks and bonds, we had property,” Powers, 75, said from the porch of his 1840 house overlooking the land that he and his son, Ned, farm together.

The 2 acres aren’t just any 2 acres. Right now, they’re part of a cornfield, but they abut 2 other acres the Powerses own on the popular commercial strip along the historic Erie Canal in Pittsford village known as Schoen (pronounced “SHANE”) Place.

That parcel houses an assemblage of five decrepit, obsolete agricultural buildings and is considered the last undeveloped portion of the strip. Stand in front of it long enough and some passerby will gripe, “When are they gonna do something with this place?”

For the Powerses, the time to do something came last fall, when they agreed to sell the combined acreage — 4.2 acres — to the development company Wilmorite.

The company has proposed tearing down three of the buildings to make room for a 90-unit boutique hotel and spa with a restaurant, along with offices and retail shops in a New England farm-style design. One building would be relocated and another would be preserved as a history center.

But the sale is contingent upon Wilmorite getting approval for its project from the Village Board, which on Tuesday plans to adopt a moratorium on changes to the zoning code and issuing of special permits that would effectively stop new construction in Schoen Place for at least a year and as long as 18 months.

Village officials insist the moratorium has nothing to do with the project and everything to do with updating the village’s 15-year-old Comprehensive Plan, a document that outlines community aspirations for development.

But it sure feels personal to the Powerses.

The family has been at odds with the board, particularly longtime Mayor Robert Corby, on a variety of land-use issues over several years.

The two sides have sparred over the Powers erecting a chain link fence and utility poles on their property, and over the condition of their buildings on Schoen Place.

The village cited the buildings for various code infractions a couple of years ago and gave the Powerses until 2019 to correct them. When word got out about the Wilmorite project, the village directed the Powerses to quicken the pace of improvements.

Compounding the Powerses’ frustration is the fact that Corby is Betsy’s nephew.

Corby has recused himself from matters related to the project that come before the board. But that hasn’t been much of a factor because the project hasn’t gone before the board.

Wilmorite has been attempting to get in front of the village’s Development Review Committee since June to no avail. A date has now been set for September, according to Corby.

The Powerses fear that will be too late. They share the suspicions of Wilmorite that the moratorium is a means for the board to kill the project by adopting changes to zoning rules — a charge Corby denies.

“If this project gets shot down, where are we going to go?” Powers asked. “What other person with any money and sense would be interested in this land? If Wilmorite can’t get it done, who can?”

And everyone warned him farming was tough.

David Andreatta is a Democrat and Chronicle columnist. He can be reached at dandreatta@gannett.com.