Chili's changed a lot in the past 30 years, but you wouldn't know that by looking at the town's official inventory of undeveloped land, which hasn't changed since the early 1970's.

Town Supervisor David Dunning says that Chili may be the fastest-growing community in the county outside of Greece: two Walgreens drug stores have opened this year, a Target will open near the corner of Chili Avenue and Paul Road in Chili Center in July, and heading toward the town's southern half, a developer is working on the Vista Villa housing project.

But there is risk with rapid growth. Development without careful planning can lead to conflict or the loss of important community characteristics.

To that end, some town officials have been pushing to revisit and update the town's 1973 Open Space Index. The document cataloged some 24 parcels, amounting to more than 14,000 acres of land. It noted farms, parks, and idled properties - even land that was under consideration for some form of use.

"The need to preserve open space and identify where open space should be preserved is critical to the success of a community," Dunning says. "You certainly want to make sure you leave plenty of open space, plenty of recreational opportunities, and not overwhelm a community completely with build-out."

An update of the document has been overlooked for some years - it wasn't a priority of past administrations, some officials say. And town officials aren't doing an update just yet, but during their May 20 meeting, the Town Board took a first step: they approved $2,000 to create a reserve fund for the project. Before the study can start - sometime after the new Comprehensive Plan is finished, at the earliest - town officials will need to set aside more money. But they aren't sure exactly how much they'll need.

"That will be a definite budget-time discussion," says Ginny Ignatowski, a member of the Town Board.

There's a strong suburban neighborhood feel along Chili Avenue. The road, the town's main drag, is lined by cute, neat homes with equally cute, neat yards. They aren't spaced far apart, but they aren't crammed together, either. Travelling west, drug stores and convenience stores pop up on a couple of corners, and a commercial corridor appears near the intersection of Paul Road. But soon it's back to houses.

Heading toward Union Street, the homes become a little more spaced out, and some of the yards are bigger. But heading south on Union, the setting changes dramatically; wider lawns give way to sprawling, rolling farm fields.

These are the two faces of Chili.

Residential, commercial, and industrial development have increased since the 1970's, Dunning says, and at the moment, there is a lot of interest from retailers. But farming remains a big industry in the town, too.

The update of the Open Space Index, once it begins, should include priorities for preservation, Ignatowski says, as well other details like environmental characteristics and willingness of the land owner to participate in preservation programs.

"A large portion of our town, the southern part, does have a strong agricultural base," Ignatowski says. "We should have some efforts to preserve that. It's a business."

Typically, municipalities don't begin farmland and open space preservation efforts until development leaves few such parcels available. But west-side towns like Ogden and Riga, which still have plenty of available land, have started looking at the issue much sooner.

Other communities have employed a number of tools to preserve open space and farmland: zoning incentives, tax breaks for conservation easements, purchasing development, and even buying land outright.

For Chili, updating the open space inventory - the index will probably be renamed to avoid the impression that it's more of a checklist than a set of preservation guidelines - will be a first step. Town officials aren't certain what the next step will be. That's still a ways off, they say, and a broad, in-depth discussion needs to happen first.

Chili already uses zoning incentives that let developers cluster homes closer together if they set aside a certain amount of land as open space. There are also tax breaks for farmland that is enrolled in agricultural districts. Other lands, like parks, some woodlots, and wetlands already have some protection.

But anything more will be a bigger discussion, and one that would be premature before the town has started the open space index update.

Official caution, however, that any plan the town comes up with will have to have the community's support.

"It would not just be a decision for those who are in elected office," Ignatowski says. "That would have to be something that would also be embraced by the community as a whole, because anything like that would have some kind of tax implications on it."