It's a familiar subject by now, but with each passing week, there seems to be something else to say: what kind of community do we want to have?

Walmart's proposed project for Napanoch moves ever-forward, and while some residents are champing at the bit to take advantage of what the retailer has to offer, others are urging more caution and care, saying that bringing a big box to the Napanoch Valley Mall may have a greater — and potentially more negative — impact than many may think. The spot on Route 209 that Walmart would inhabit sits across from a field of farmland. To many who wish to slow Walmart's development progress, this patch of land represents the kind of scenic asset that the entire town ought to focus on preserving and protecting.

Efforts to do so, however, will be made that much more difficult after this week's town board meeting. Wawarsing's Town Council will almost undoubtedly vote to adopt updated zoning guidelines which will vastly loosen the restrictions concerning what kinds of development can take place on Route 209, identifying it as a Business/Highway District.

Is this a good thing? The change could potentially give businesses more opportunities for development in the town, thereby making Wawarsing more attractive to development, providing jobs and taxes. But is it so simple? The question of how we want to develop our community and our town is a serious one that we must work together to answer.

What do we want Route 209 to look like? It's entirely possible, given the amount of support shown for Walmart's proposed store, that many members of the community would be happy to have the main road which runs throughout town to look more like Ulster Avenue (Route 9W) in Kingston, a strip so full of the bright lights of businesses and spaces to park our cars that you could easily confuse it with any other similar strip in the United States. Taco Bell? Check. Barnes and Noble? Check. Marshalls, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, Panera Bread, Toys R Us? Check! The fact that the road is in the City of Kingston seems entirely lost amid a sea of stores and parking lots.

Parking one's car on Route 209 is considerably more difficult. To do so now would require the use of someone's driveway…and they may have a dog. Dangerous, indeed. And once you park, there's not really anywhere to shop…and what's the point of parking if you can't buy anything?

By opening up the possibilities of development in the way the updated zoning allows, we run the risk of losing the identity we have. Many may argue the identity is not worth preserving, but if that's the case, why not try and forge a new one that fits in with what is unique in our community, instead of allowing us to become just another strip of chain-stores and fluorescent lights? We risk the very real possibility of losing an asset that makes our area truly exceptional: its natural beauty. Many people have moved here precisely because there is no overdeveloped strip of stores destroying the view and causing traffic, stores that can be found all over the Hudson Valley anyway. We would be fools to allow one of our greatest assets to be lost with such short-sightedness.

By accepting this kind of development, the town board has capitulated — they have no vision, no guidelines, and no inspiration for the place they were elected to lead, other than to help create yet another failure of the imagination.

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