The village planning board told Bassett Hospital that it will have to include a parking structure as one of the alternatives to its parking proposal in the draft environmental impact statement the healthcare institution is about to begin.

Bassett vice-president Joe Middleton, who has commented in the past that a parking structure would be cost prohibitive and that they do not intend to build one, said it will be explored as an alternative.

The parking proposal currently under review by the planning board is for lots to be located at Harrison House and Bassett Hall.

Friday afternoon, the planning board and members of the board of trustees and zoning board of appeals met with Bassett representatives to finalize the draft scoping document which will establish what will be included in the draft environmental impact statement.

Planning board chairman Paul Kuhn said that in addition to the parking structure, he wanted Bassett to look at remote parking with intermodal transportation; the relocation of some staff to off-campus sites; riding sharing, or carpooling; and a plan involving busing employees to the hospital campus.

The last three alternatives, Kuhn said, were designed to reduce the need for parking on-campus.

"I believe there are many people located on Bassett's Cooperstown campus that do not necessarily have to be there," Kuhn said. "The planning board owes it to the residents of Cooperstown to have these things evaluated."

During the meeting, Middleton cast doubt on whether there would ever be a solution to the problem of employees parking on village streets.

"There isn't any solution short of building huge parking lots in the neighborhood," he said, adding that there is not a sufficient number of spaces at Bassett Hall for all the employees who work there.

Employees will park wherever parking is allowed, Middleton said, adding that the hospital cannot stop employees from parking on the street.

"I don't have that authority with employees," he said.

The draft environmental impact statement for the parking plan will include an updated traffic study. The original study was used to help determine the number of parking spaces the hospital needs to serve its patients, visitors, and employees.

The hospital currently meets the parking requirements set in the village's zoning law, Kuhn said, but Bassett agreed early on that the law is outdated when it comes to parking needs. Those needs will be reviewed after the parking study update is completed.

The scoping document discusses what potentially significant adverse impacts the parking proposal may have that will be addressed in the draft environmental impact statement.

The impacts include: transportation and parking, water resources, air resources, ecology, community services, visual resources, historic and archeological resources, noise, and land use and zoning.

Bassett will make changes in the draft scoping document and submit it to the planning board. Once approved by the planning board, the hospital will begin work on the draft environmental impact statement.

Middleton said he expects the statement will take a few months and that they should be back in front of the planning board early next year.