STEWART AIRPORT – A proposal to build a 250,000 square foot brewery
at the Stewart Airport Industrial Park off Route 17K in the Town of Newburgh
may be a dead issue.
The Board of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey last month
was supposed to grant its approval for a 60-year ground lease so the Brooklyn
Brewery company could develop a new facility, but the item was tabled
without discussion.
The project is back on the agenda for Thursday’s Port Authority
Board meeting; however, sources told Mid-Hudson News it will likely be
pulled again, this time at the request of the company. Officials were
upset that their plan was tabled last month over what was an apparent
squabble between board members from New York and New Jersey on another
issue.
Orange County Executive Steven Neuhaus said this is a perfect case of
“if you snooze, you lose.” He is not giving up on convincing
Brooklyn Brewery to stick with Stewart.
“Orange County and all of our economic development resources have
the ability to continue to negotiate to have them change their mind. This
is what is called last minute, strong negotiations and everybody that
is vying for this project is trying to one-up the other, so I say, ‘game
on’ and we will continue to negotiate if it is available,”
he said.
Brooklyn Brewery officials have communicated with the transportation agency
telling it to remove it from the agenda for consideration, the sources
said.
When contacted Wednesday by Mid-Hudson News, a company official would
only point to an early November blog entry, which said it had plans to
build at Stewart.
A Port Authority spokesman had no comment about the situation.
The company had considered another site in Staten Island, and the sources
indicated that may be Brooklyn Brewery’s choice now.
Stewart stood to make over $30 million in ground rental on the site at
the industrial park.
