Eddie Einhorn's Cooperstown Baseball World struck out with the Otsego County planning board Monday night.

County planning director Diane Carlton said the major reason the board failed to approve the project was their concern over the accuracy of the traffic study.

A scaled-back version of the project, originally designed as a clone of the highly successful Cooperstown Dreams Park, is working its way through the site plan review process with the Hartwick town planning board and was sent for the mandatory county review.

The county board focused its attention on the estimates of vehicle trips the new facility would generate on an already congested State Route 28.

According to Carlton, it was the board's belief that the East Syracuse firm of Dunn and Sgromo based its study on flawed assumptions.

"If the figures are not right, everything that flows from them is not right," she said.

Carlton explained that the board questioned estimates of how many vehicles baseball teams would arrive in, the level of carpooling for employees and visitors, and the number of spectators and family members who would attend to watch games.

"There were a number of different areas where we felt the estimates were low," Carlton said.

Bill Specht of Dunn and Sgromo Engineers in East Syracuse, presented the results of the traffic study to the Hartwick planning board in January and said it indicated that the traffic impact on Route 28 would be "pretty minimal" even when looking at the worst case numbers.

Specht admitted at that time that there are no established traffic standards for this type of land use and that many of the figures were based on information Einhorn had provided about the facility and its operation.

The numbers were questioned in January by planning board member Orrin Higgins, who said he believed they were low, based on the Dreams Park's experience right next door.

"When we approved the Dreams Park in 1996 we had no idea they'd be dealing with the mass of spectators," he said.

Jim Carpenito, the president and chief operating officer of Cooperstown Baseball World, explained to the board that it is not the same as the Dreams Park and they don't anticipate the same following from family members for the older players.

On Wednesday, Greg Sgromo, the owner of the engineering firm, said the difficulty with estimating the number of vehicle trips is the type of land use. "There's no available data for a place like that, but the numbers were not just given to us by the developer," he said.

Sgromo said his firm talked with Baseball World representatives about the operation of the complex and their projections for teams, spectators and staff. They have done similar studies in the past when data was not available for specific land uses and it has worked well, he said.

The study predicts a level of service for the entrance onto Route 28 that is high enough to accommodate many more cars without creating a problem.

"But you're not going to get the real numbers until you build it and measure it," he said.

Sgromo said he was interested to seen the county planning board's specific concerns and have an opportunity to address them.

Dunn and Sgromo also prepared traffic studies for two other Route 28 projects - the Holiday Inn Express and Cooperstown Drams Park which have both been approved by the county and Hartwick planning boards.

Joe Durand, of Plumly Engineering in Baldwinsville, is the project engineer for Cooperstown Baseball World and said Tuesday afternoon that he was not surprised to hear of the county board's failure to approve the project. "It's news to me that the traffic study didn't fly, but the process has to run its course. We thought we had covered everything sufficiently and thought we had addressed everyone's concerns," he said.

Durand said he could not comment further until he learned more about the reason for the board's decision.

"The planning process requires study and it is our intention to demonstrate our study was correct," said Baseball World CEO Carpenito Wednesday.

Dunn and Sgromo have done studies for other businesses in the area that rely on some of the same numbers and have been approved by the planning board, he said, adding that there is an inconsistency there that should be examined. "I'm sure it is a misunderstanding that can be reconciled quickly," he said.

The next move will be up to the Hartwick planning board which can override the county planning board by a majority plus one vote, or it can ask the developer to revisit the traffic issue. If a new traffic study is undertaken, it will require that the plan go back to the county for another review, Carlton said.

Hartwick planning board co-chairman Dick Kelly simply said, "That's interesting" when told of the county board's decision.

Kelly would not speculate whether his board will override the county, but said they will address the issues as they come along. The Hartwick board meets again on July 10.

While traffic was the primary reason the board failed to approve the project, Carlton said there were also concerns about making certain archeological sites were well-protected. Worries were also expressed about the impact on the Hartwick Seminary church and cemetery, but Carlton said the church is a private issue and the county board can only act on those things with a county-wide impact.