Batavia mayor predicts city will reach 30,000 residents in 2025 special count

BATAVIA – Mayor Jeff Schielke is predicting that the city will count 30,000 Batavians when it conducts a special census in 2025.

Schielke made his population forecast before a large crowd of Batavia businesspeople and professionals during his annual breakfast address to the Batavia Chamber of Commerce on Nov. 2 at Covenant Living at the Holmstad senior center, 700 W. Fabyan Parkway.

Currently, the city’s official count from the 2020 Census is 26,092.

The mayor told his Chamber audience that big new residential developments in various stages of completion are adding about 540 new homes to the city.

The Landings Senior Living, 2450 W. Fabyan Parkway, is now complete and nearly all of its 144 upscale apartments have been occupied, Schielke said.

Batavia Commons, on the west side of Kirk Road at Wind Energy Pass, has built and sold 242 townhouses, the mayor said.

West of Randall Road on McKee Street, the Winding Creek single-family home development already has received building permits for 60 of the 163 houses planned for the project, Schielke said.

Another project on the way is a residential medical recovery facility at the northeast corner of Main Street and Deerpath Road. Up to 90 patients would live at the facility while receiving physical therapy.

Plans also are taking shape for a development of perhaps 150 homes on the former Siemens industrial property located along the west side of Van Nortwick Avenue between McKee and Wilson streets, the mayor said.

And, Batavia’s BEI property development and management firm is planning on a mixed use project on the vacant former Shumway Foundry property along the west side of South Shumway Avenue that would include living units, Schielke said.

Municipalities commonly conduct special population counts between the federal decennial Census during periods of residential growth.

Federal and state tax dollars, including income and motor fuel tax revenues, are distributed to units of local government based on their official population counts, so the cost of conducting a special count could more than pay for itself.

A special census will record not only new residents moving into the new developments, but also should pick up residents who the mayor believes were missed in the last federal count.

“We were way undercounted in the 2020 Census,” Schielke said after the breakfast, noting that count recorded an increase of just 84 residents after the city had added more than 300 new homes.