Down the line, the plan mentions dozens of specific projects in each of the four areas addressed by BEAT. Business proposals include using funds from the Kingston Local Development Corporation to help merchants spruce up facades, funding UPAC’s long-desired installation of air conditioning to allow the Broadway theater to offer year-round programming. The plan also calls for the evolution of the former site of the Kings Inn from its current incarnation as a farmers market, to a temporary parking lot for UPAC and eventually a mixed-use development.
Besides the partnership with Bard and the UCCC satellite campus, the BEAT plan’s educational initiatives include the location of medical education programs at the KingstonHospital campus, improvements to the Boys and Girls Club and Everette Hodge community center and early college programs at KingstonHigh School.
The arts component includes the creation of an “art district” east of Broadway centered around Ten Broeck Avenue and Cornell Street. The document also references RUPCO’s plan for artist live/work housing at a vacant factory building in the heart of the proposed art district. West of Broadway, Gallo’s proposal revives the stalled TRANSART plan to create a black cultural center in a dilapidated Victorian on Henry Street.
The technology aspect of the plan is focused on the 721 Media Center on upper Broadway. The proposal calls for a continuing effort to attract boutique tech firms to the space while using media professionals who currently work there to assist with UCCC graphic art programs located at the Sophie Finn campus.
Nina Dawson, running for the Fourth Ward’s council seat at Gallo’s urging, was at Thursday’s event and praised the plan. “Thank you for making Midtown inclusive,” she told the mayor. “It’s been a long time.”
“I look forward to your help,” replied Gallo.
Many more press conferences were promised by the mayor, who acknowledged that he will need a great deal of cooperation to bring the BEAT to life. “I can’t do it unless I have all of you,” said Gallo, looking out at the assemblage of businesspeople, community leaders, politicians and media gathered at City Hall. “You’re all stakeholders.”
With additional reporting by Dan Barton
It is interesting how taking down the midtown motel, following it up with grass, benches, Movies in the Park, the Farmers Market and now capped by San Severia how to focus of Midtown has shifted in a way that 10 years and more of UPAC didin’t begin to change. UPAC, great as it is, was shuttered in the summer and otherwise did not extend it’s presence into the public sphere as this lovely Spiegeltent has in a matter of weeks.
Still displayed in a but weeks old Kingston Times, the “Midtown Make a Difference Day” heralds a different era, when Midtown had no public space on the Corridor, when the main reason for walking about was for drugs, prostitution, or cashing some welfare cards for money at the Sunoco station. And no small thanks to a revitalized Hodge Center, a well tended VanBuren Park, a brilliant active presence of the Kingston LIbrary, the garden spaces for citizens courtesy of the Clinton Avenue Church!
Midtown has already changed. And I think that the people read Gallo’s quality of life commitment and believed it, and this announcement shows how right they all were… great work, Mr Mayor! Midtown no long will be an inglorious stretch of land one passes through to go from Rondout to Uptown and back, not that that happened that often… Midtown, as brilliantly central as it is, will be a place from which Rondout and Uptown will be visited and the two connected. Been a long long time.
Well stated Mr. Burke. The Mayor has stepped up and put forward what he said he was going to initiate. While there may be criticism of the (unknown) costs associated with the relocation of the Police Station, having the courage to put forth such a proposal is noteworthy; the worst case scenario is that it will not be practical, in which case, I believe the city can resell the building without a loss. I disagree with you about what the revitalization of UPAC has (not) done – I was there for the Tony Bennett concert a few weeks ago, and many of the concert goers patronized establishments in the UPAC district and beyond, I saw this with my own eyes. UPAC has a huge economic impact. The Speigletent, while a great addition, will take a bit more time before it has a major impact.
Revenue? You will need Revenue. Have the State Department of Taxation and Finance do a revaluation, gratis (i.e. free, no charge to the customer, on the cuff) of all the parcels in your fair burgh, so that your assessment roll books will be comprehensible and equitable. That will fill your coffers full to over flowing, and that is just the city’s.
A “windshield survey of local properties”? The assessor is by law to go out and do a field audit of land on an annual basis, and a six year report of land and appurtenances combined? You would make more money for the city washing the windshields at traffic stops than getting bankable information without an assessor? Give me a break?
Page 624 of your assessment roll books. See the STAR B exemption for the non-owner occupied commercial lodging service misclassified as an “owner’s immediate family’s dwelling?” That is a violation of new York State Real property tax laws, ya’ honnah, and I didn’t have to take more than 120 seconds to find it? Come on?
Page 1204. Non owner occupied 220? It isn’t a 418, not a 220? Somebody must be on the take, trying to preserve the status quo, or all three?