PLANNING IN A FREE SOCIETY

SOME CURRENT PROJECTS

RECENT PROJECTS

BACKGROUND

Presentation to Wyoming County, New York
Economic Development Strategy Steering Committee

Shepstone Management Company is a planning and research consulting firm operating primarily in New York State and Pennsylvania. Headed by Thomas J. Shepstone, our company has extensive experience in representing both private and municipal clients throughout the region and as far away as North Carolina and Wisconsin. We have, too, done a wide variety of projects over the years. Environmental assessments, land use planning and zoning, market research and analysis, transportation, housing, economic development and traffic studies are among our areas of expertise.

Shepstone Management Company also frequently partners with a number of other valued associates. These include, but are not limited to the following firms;

• AKRF; an environmental, land use and transportation consulting firm.

• Brian Oram, PG; a professional geologist with B.F. Environmental Consultants.

• Brotter Consulting Services; a community development and land use planning firm.

• Cedar Eden Environmental Services; an environmental planning and GIS firm.

• Community Planning & Management Associates; a land use planning and zoning firm.

• Fairweather Consulting Group; an economic development and strategic planning firm.

• Gerald J. Skoda; an agricultural consulting firm.

• HR&A; an economic development and strategic planning firm.

• John Dunham & Associates;  an economic analysis and public policy consulting firm

• Pocono GIS; a GIS consulting firm.

• Thomas Point Associates; an economic development planning firm.

• Woodland Design Associates, a landscape architectural and environmental planning firm.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

We have, too, assisted with the preparation of agricultural economic development plans for Broome, Fulton, Greene, Sullivan, Schoharie, Schuyler, Steuben, St. Lawrence and Yates Counties, New York. An important element of those projects has been the documentation of the importance of agriculture to the economies of these areas. We've also worked as part of a team of consultants to advise Wyoming County, New York on agricultural economic development matters and worked with the Town of Brant to develop an agricultural viability program. See Agriculture for more information on our agriculture related experience in general.

We regularly work with Industrial Development Agencies in both New York and Pennsylvania. This work has included benefit/cost analyses, environmental assessments, packaging of applications for financial assistance and help with zoning problems. We've been involved in projects in Ulster County, Buffalo (Erie County), Pike County, Sullivan County and numerous other locations. We also assisted the firm of Hamilton, Rabinovitz and Alschuler and the Catskill Watershed Corporation in developing a 5-county strategy for use of $60,000,000 in New York City funds provided for economic development of the region. Our firm acted as consultant on agricultural, forestry and mining issues for this massive study. Recently, we worked with representatives of the Sullivan-Wawarsing Rural Economic Area Partnership to develop a Strategic Plan for economic development

MARKET RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Shepstone Management Company has done extensive market research for a wide variety of both private and public clients.  We have prepared numerous feasibility studies and market analyses for both private and public clients in rural as well as urban settings.  Projects have included the following:

• Housing market studies for some of the Northeast's largest builders as well as regional real estate firms.  These clients include, for example, the Teicher Organization, Kushner Companies, Kalian Companies, Cherokee Investment Partners, The Hudson Companies, Davis R. Chant Realtors, Pulte Homes and Nic Zawarski & Sons.
  

  
  
  Cherokee Investment Partners' Meadowlands Redevelopment Project
  Subject of a Shepstone Management Company Market Study
  

• Various nursing home, assisted living and senior housing studies.
  

• Market feasibility studies for businesses ranging from convenience stores to movie theaters.
  
  

• Branch bank studies for the Dime Bank, the West Milton Bank and others.
  

We are often requested to do special research or appear as expert witnesses on behalf of clients. This has included professional testimony in hearings by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, United States Federal Court, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Maryland State Legislature and the Health Services Agency of Northeastern Pennsylvania as well as the state courts and various local agencies. Testimony is usually requested on subjects related to population trends, economics and development activity. We have also testified in numerous zoning hearings on behalf of both private and public entities.

We've also helped a number of restaurants obtain Pennsylvania Liquor Licenses for resort areas across the Commonwealth. These have included, for example, The Dilworthtown Inn near Philadephia, recognized in the Zagat Survey and many others for its fine cuisine. Our expert testimony is used to document the existence of such areas and prove necessity where it exists. We have appeared before the Liquor Control Board and the courts over 60 times and have an excellent record of success.  We also regularly work with the Ruby Tuesday chain to help evaluate sites in Pennsylvania.

Our research capabilities are enhanced both by a library of demographic information assembled during years of work with municipal clients. We also have access to a national computer data-base that provides planning and market information by municipalities, zip codes, market areas and assorted other geographic units.

LAND USE PLANNING AND ZONING

We've helped numerous communities prepare Comprehensive Plans, Zoning Ordinances, Subdivision Regulations and other planning documents.  Examples have included the recent Zoning Ordinance and the Subdivision and Land Development Ordinance we drafted for Canaan Township as well as the Town of Bethel Comprehensive Plan.  We have municipal clients throughout New York and Pennsylvania for whom we have provided these services.  One of our current clients is the Village of Kiryas Joel, a Chasidic community, in Orange County, New York that was founded in 1974 by Holocaust survivors and now boasts a population of more than 15,000 persons.

The Wayne County Comprehensive Plan was one of our major projects and involved extensive research. It also included two large opinion and information collection surveys - one of resident landowners and the other of second-home owners. This produced a substantial volume of original data on the County that gave the County Plan a unique element of public participation and strong detailed goals and objectives. Such surveys and community involvement processes are a particular strength of our firm and our approach to land use planning.

A major land planning project was preparation of the innovative Land and Water Use Guidelines adopted by the Secretary of the Interior for the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River. These guidelines represented a new flexible approach to federal involvement in protection of valuable natural resources. They afforded local municipalities opportunities to become true partners in the effort to protect the River. We chaired and provided professional leadership to the Federal-State-Local planning team that produced these guidelines. It involved the National Park Service, the States of New York and Pennsylvania and several municipalities from both states.

Our planning experience also includes considerable recreation and open space planning. We prepared the Neversink River 21st Century Plan for the Thompson-Monticello Joint Comprehensive Plan Committee, for example. We helped develop recreation master plans for town parks in Honesdale, Lackawaxen and Delaware Township, Pike County. We also assisted Smithfield Township, Monroe County, with establishment of open space priorities for use of funding available to it under the Monroe County Open Space Initiative and have assisted that Township in updating its Comprehensive Plan. This included a survey of resident opinions and led to the drafting of various recommended changes in Smithfield's land use regulations. We are presently working with the HRG Consultants, Inc. and the Route 97 Scenic Byway Committee to develop a management plan for that spectacular stretch of highway.

TRANSPORTATION

Transportation work has included detailed Traffic Impact Reports for, among others, White Sands Spring, a large residential development in Palmyra Township, Pike County, PA. This project included documentation of existing traffic conditions, projected trip generation after development, an accident inventory, a capacity analysis and recommendations. It involved traffic counts by our firm itself as well as assembly of Department of Transportation data. Similar projects were done for the Woodloch Springs development in Lackawaxen Township, Pike County and various shopping malls and supermarkets in Wayne County as well as others

Our firm has also developed a special expertise in rail transportation and, more particularly, in defining the role of rail users in solving branch line abandonment problems. We staff the Lackawaxen Honesdale Shippers Association, Inc. and were integrally involved in establishing the local shortline railroad as well as guiding the Association in supporting the railroad operation. That effort has been an outstanding success and the lessons learned have been applied to several other branch line abandonments. Clients have included the Snow Hill Shippers Association, Inc., an organization of rail users on the Eastern Shore of Maryland whose members included Perdue Farms, Moore Business Forms, Holly Farms Poultry Industries and and Showell Farms.

We have also been involved in various other rail related projects in New York, North Carolina, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin and have represented companies in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Easton, Lewisburg and elsewhere in negotiating with Consolidated Rail Corporation to buy rail line segments valuable to their businesses.

HOUSING AND LAND DEVELOPMENT

Our experience includes re-organization of a defunct Wayne County Housing Authority. We helped it obtain financing for its first elderly housing project and several others. Subsequently, we assisted the Monroe County Housing Authority in a similar fashion, conducting a Comprehensive Housing Needs Assessment for the County and initiating several new projects, securing additional housing units in the process. The Needs Assessment was a major project used, also, by other County agencies in developing housing initiatives

Privately, Shepstone Management Company has conducted market research for several of the Northeast's largest residential developers.  The firm also prepared the in-depth market study used to secure HUD funding for an expansion at The Fountains, a life-care project located in Pennsauken, New Jersey. Comparable work was done in connection with various nursing home and assisted living projects. The firm has represented developers before municipalities in several instances, including a large subdivision in Palmyra Township, a senior housing project in Westfall Township and a planned residential development in Delaware Township, all in Pike County, Pennsylvania.

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