I'm too young to remember Broad Street and barely old enough to recall life before Interstate-88. But I've lived here all my 33 years, and I've already seen enough "progress" to make me feel like an old-timer.

I grew up on Davis Drive in the town of Oneonta. There were only two other houses on the street, which is part of a circle off Richards Avenue in the West End.

Last week, the town Planning Board gave tentative approval to a plan by James Baldo of Oneonta to subdivide the 17-acre field across the street from my childhood home. Baldo plans to build 53 houses and a road there, as well as extending two existing roads to tie into the new "Winney Hill Commons" development.

About 50 residents of the area — many of them my former neighbors — turned out to express their concerns. Most said they weren't against the development itself — just the changes it would bring: more traffic, lights, noise and the loss of a piece of nature.

I understand how they feel. That field, though privately owned, has always been a part of the community. It never bore "posted: private property" signs, and it has been widely used for dog-walking, snowmobiling and four-wheeling.

As a kid, I walked across the field to Greater Plains School and back, plodding through snow, slogging through mud, plucking buttercups and Queen Anne's Lace — and always thinking about the day's events or dreaming about the future.

In the summer, I'd get pricked by raspberry bushes and tickled by tall weeds as I meandered through the field to the "crick," which often dried up so you could walk across the rocky bed to the woods behind the school.

Each fall, the hillside behind the field would become our own private fall mural.

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I remember Southside, before it was Southside.

When I was a kid, "Southside" meant Old Southside Drive, some houses and farms, lots of open land and a handful of businesses.

I remember going to Drogen's with my dad to get a chandelier light bulb and marveling at the Christopher's sign. It seemed impossibly tall, towering over the two-lane road, its red neon letters glowing like a beacon to the future.

That was before the mall and BJ's and Wal-Mart, before the supermarkets and the Super 8, before Sabatini's Little Italy and both versions of the Neptune Diner. In the days before traffic patterns and lights and jams, you could get to the Holiday Inn faster — but somehow, it seemed much farther away.

Now, the planners are planning two more large stores: a Home Depot and a Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse, which means more shopping opportunities, jobs and tax revenue — and with them, more traffic patterns, lights and jams.

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Downtown has not evolved so much, although the long-awaited hotel has given it a new look and feel.

Whatever it was that made me love Main Street as a kid has remained intact, even as downtown's role has changed. What was once the area's shopping hub has become the place to go to eat, drink or buy specialty items ranging from sporting goods to work by local artisans.

I remember clutching my mother's hand as she shopped for clothes at J.C. Penney Co. I remember sitting on a stool at Sew & Save, flipping through clothing-pattern catalogs.

Best of all, I remember riding the escalator and the toy horse and visiting Santa at Bresee's Department Store, where you could always find anything you wanted — although sometimes you could find the same thing for less down the road at Woolworth's.

Nothing has filled the void left by the 1994 closing of Bresee's Health Bar on the department store's basement floor. I miss the hot turkey sandwiches, the coffee milkshakes and the old-fashioned hustle and bustle of the place, where there was always a waitress walking by with a coffee pot and you could smell the food cooking from wherever you sat.

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In the final analysis, I cannot measure progress in black and white, only shades of gray. Sometimes, even change that makes sense, that benefits a lot of people, can be sad.

There is no real win-win situation. Someone always loses something.

As for me, I cannot truly mourn my field of dreams, knowing that in a few years, it will be full of children laughing and swinging and learning to ride bikes. They'll explore the creek and wander in the woods. Some of them may even walk the same route I traveled to school.

The landscape will change, but there will still be dreamers in my field.

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Lisa Miller is The Daily Star's community editor. She can be reached at (607) 441-7216 or lmiller@thedailystar.com.