EVANS MILLS — The long-awaited town of LeRay Comprehensive Plan is here and will be voted on by the Town Council on Dec. 11.

The plan has been hailed by town officials as the road map for development and sets a strategy to deal with the continued growth and expansion of Fort Drum. The plan provides suggestions for potential zoning changes the town might consider to keep development consistent.

"The town is going through a lot of change and the plan is based on feedback from the community," said John J. Behan, president of Behan Planning Associates LLC, Saratoga Springs, who wrote the comprehensive plan. "The big idea is ... making sense of change so the town doesn't end up with a hodge-podge of uses."

The plan breaks the town into six areas — the farm core located in the northwest, the southwest neighborhoods, hamlets and villages, the commercial corridors, key rivers and Fort Drum.

In general, the plan recommends more pedestrian walkways to connect residential and commercial areas and calls for development of a community center — both of which are lacking in the town, according to the document. It suggests that open areas be left alone to create space for recreational use and that parklands be concentrated near the Black and Indian rivers.

Creating interconnected residential and commercial areas, using walkways and a private internal road system, would relieve pressure on Route 11 and Route 342, where the commercial corridor is now situated. Internal roads were also a provision in the Commercial Corridor Design Guidelines that were passed by the town in June.

"It's about keeping the more active and people-engaging uses along the frontage," Mr. Behan said. Development that falls under "people-engaging uses" would be restaurants, hotels and retail stores.

Based on feedback from residents, the plan also states that continued commercial development should not extend much farther north or south on Route 11. That holds true for residential development as well, and the plan suggests the town encourage development of both types to take place near one another. This will help protect the integrity of the farm core in the northwest section and condense development into one area, instead of in a scattered pattern across the town, the plan states.

The plan also calls for a more diverse housing market that includes more affordable housing units and units for senior citizens.

The document has a set of recommendations on how to handle and encourage development in hamlets. Hamlets and villages have traditionally been the hub of a town, according to the plan. In recent years, however, more developers have moved away from these centers of activity to build on the outskirts of villages and hamlets.

"Currently, the zoning law does not address hamlets," said Andrew R. Nevin, a consultant for the firm who compiled the plan.

The plan calls for a distinct village-hamlet transition area that would fall under a new zoning law. This new area "would encourage more compatibility between established areas of settlement and new development," states the plan.

A hamlet-specific area would be another preferred zoning law change, according to the plan. This would differentiate a hamlet from a rural area — something that the zoning law currently does not do.

The plan gives the town an idea of how to help revitalize these town centers. It calls for the towns, villages and hamlets to work together to provide continued infrastructure growth and make these areas home for community centers.

The suggestions of the plan could mean that the town will need to rewrite the majority of its zoning laws. The LeRay Planning Board and Community Development Coordinator Jessica L. Jenack, anticipated this in September and asked the Town Council to have the revision done by an outside firm, rather than the Planning Board. This request was based on the board's experience rewriting a law on storage facilities.

"I'm not sure if they need to revamp all the laws, but the plan suggests some upgrades to the zoning and looking at providing more clarity to what is needed to accomplish the goals of the plan," Mr. Behan said.

The public hearing and vote will be held during the town's next board meeting on Dec. 11 at 7:15 p.m. in the town offices. Mr. Nevin presented the plan to the Jefferson County Planning Board last week. The county board recommended that the town of LeRay approve the plan.

Staff writer Nancy Madsen contributed to this report.