Instead, the committee will focus on designs in which Linden Avenue dead-ends into the parking lots and visitor center planned south of the village.

Officials said they feared if Linden Avenue was a through street it may entice people to use it as a short cut into the village and create more traffic and congestion.

``The last thing we want to do is create an inviting thoroughfare into the village,’’ said Peter Loyola, of CLA Site, the company hired to do the site analysis and design work for the project.

``With the elimination of design concept number one, I think you guys have made great progress,’’ said Linden Avenue resident Margaret Buchanan. ``You are moving forward.’’

Buchanan, who has lived on the street for 10 years, said she has been worried about the impact of the Gateway Project on her neighborhood and many elderly people who live there.

``I remain optimistic. We are such a small voice, but will be the ones affected,’’ she said.

While Linden Avenue residents are happier, officials from Cooperstown Youth Baseball are concerned they may come out on the short end of the stick.

The organization leases land from the village and has worked to create a youth baseball complex that they would rather not move.

Youth Baseball president Dr. David Borgstrom, sent a letter to the committee in which he laid out a list of expectations they have if the facility is to be relocated.

Those expectations include: two complete regulation field with lights, dugouts, fencing, scoreboard and sound system; a clubhouse, storage facility, parking, outdoor practice space, a location for an indoor batting facility in the future and more.

``Thus far the options available to us are not even comparable to what we have now. We recognize the needs of the village of Cooperstown, but we must hold steady for the benefit of our children and the history of CYB,’’ Borgstrom wrote in his letter.

Brad Feik, a former president of CYB, attended the Friday morning meeting and said that he had safety concerns with the designs he had seen. He told committee members that the group of people in the community who were interested in and supportive of CYB was much larger than they think.

``There’s going to be some real difficulty moving forward,’’ he said.

Otsego Town Supervisor Tom Breiten, a member of the committee, said he wanted to clarify there had been no promises made to the baseball group.

``I don’t want it misconstrued that there had been an agreement,’’ he said.

Bassett Hospital Vice-President Joe Middleton, a member of the technical committee, said the discussion was starting to get ``nonsensical.’’

``We are not at the point we can discuss details,’’ he said.

The group must first decide on higher level concepts before it can begin to work out all the details, he said.

Middleton told the committee that they were getting out of sequence and wasting time and money by continually revisiting the same details over and over when broader conceptual decisions have not been made.

``We’re just not there yet,’’ he said.

The refined design concepts presented by Loyola did not include the parcel owned by NYSEG, but Trolley Committee chairman Giles Russell said he believes it should be.

``We do not have enough room to do what we want to do. The NYSEG property has to be part of the concept otherwise we don’t get what we want,’’ he said.

Loyola said he can add the NYSEG property to the mix, but without wetland delineation it looks like they couldn’t put the ballfields down there. He said the parcel may yield an additional 150 parking spaces.

He said he will have new design concepts ready for the next meeting planned for August 17 and hopes to have the next public participation meeting in late September or October.