The ‘downtown’ grant would target the historic Uptown Stockade area, including Wall Street
KINGSTON – Big bucks have arrived in Kingston, with a $10 million first-prize competitive grant awarded by Governor Andrew Cuomo last week. “I have the check in my office, I haven’t been able to take my eyes off of it,” joked Kingston Mayor Steven Noble.
Noble gave his 25-minute grant synopsis at the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce breakfast Wednesday.
The cash will be used to transform the city’s Uptown Stockade Business District into a thriving 21st Century metropolis, with funding from the state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative (DRI). Mayor Noble outlined his vision for the city, which earned Kingston the windfall.
“When you follow the rules, and write a really good application, you’re able to go ahead and be successful,” Noble explained, describing how Kingston was an ideal match for strict program requirements.
The team members, including both city and county experts, partnered with private sector stakeholders, last year prepared an in-person presentation for Albany officials, with just 48 hours notice. Their optimistic pitch carried the weight of recent setbacks, coupled with decades of hard times.
“We haven’t always been successful,” the mayor said. “We for many years, put all of our eggs in one basket. We remember, back in the heyday, when one major employer decided to leave Ulster County, it had a tremendous impact,” Noble said, speaking of Spring 1993, when IBM suddenly cut over 7,000 local jobs.
The mayor said it took “an extremely long time to try and recover. One of the things that makes Kingston so particularly perfect, to exemplify across New York State, is that as soon as this happened, Kingston looked inside, we looked at each other, and said, how are we going to fix this?”
Kingston embellished its application effort with narrative business videos, and community participation through quasi-public equitable development seminars.
The “downtown” neighborhood delineated in the winning proposal, for Kingston is known as the Stockade Business District, considered by locals as historically-rich Uptown, also county governmental seat, and regional transportation hub.
Officials expanded the original Dutch Colonial Stockade, in drawing the Stockade Business District boundaries, to include nearby Kingston Plaza shopping mall; Washington Avenue up to the sinkhole; Chandler interchange at St. James Street; and of course Dietz Stadium with Forsyth Park.
Central to the Kingston DRI vision is a new parking garage, to be built at the intersection of North Front and Wall Street. The private project plans to piggyback hotel rooms and residential units.
Part of the $10 million will also benefit other private developers, with an unspecified additional portion spent towards improving neighborhood parks, and restoring an historic site at Frog Alley.
Kingston Plaza is earmarked for an overhaul of the supermarket building, with additional mapping and consulting to allow commercialization of the berm area behind Col. Chandler Drive.
Other projects mentioned in the application include a Kingston Food Exchange at the old Woolworth’s store on Wall Street; and several more boutique style hotels developed for Uptown.
Noble spoke of emerging industries for the region, including a nascent film production kick-start sparked by the expanded tax incentive; a new soccer team at Dietz Stadium; and the re-birth of local manufacturing.
More info: www.ny.gov/sites/ny.gov/files/atoms/files/DRIKingtsonApplication.pdf
