23. make the gateway district mixed use
Make the village Gateway District around Water Street Market and the Gilded Otter into walkable, mixed use, traditional neighborhood development, rather than a commercial-only district.
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100 Ideas for New Paltz 
Fought hard for this when we were designing the gateway zone, but some on the committee hated the idea of people, especially young people. It isn’t too late to change this especially since the evidence in the gateway itself shows that a sterile restrictive isolating zone yields a sterile restrictive isolated place. Good zoning yields gritty, vibrant, complex and interesting relationships between people and their environment.
You’re exactly right, David. The Gateway District currently allows an option for mixed-use, but it should be mandatory to fight the sterility you mention. It’s telling that so much of the foot traffic stops around Rock and Snow and 36 Main. I read a study years ago that said that people won’t walk if there’s a big enough gap in the streetscape. When you combine that with the fact that there’s no foot traffic from residents of the Gateway, it creates an easily-fixable sterile environment