A new master plan has been unveiled for the 260-acre Tech City complex in Ulster County, raising cautious hopes that a once-key piece of the regional economy that has been largely vacant for a decade can reinvent itself as a center for commerce.
The proposal suggests a monolithic giant from an IBM-dominated era can morph into a green, mixed-use job generator worthy of government stimulus funding and private investment. Â
The aim of the master plan is simple: “Creating the only truly green shovel-ready site between New York City and Albany,” said Daniel Wieneke, president of Tech City.
If it succeeds it could serve as a model redevelopment project in numerous ways, including cooperative efforts of a developer and the town where a project is proposed. Â
“Green” in this case denotes more than solar arrays. And “shovel-ready” denotes interests beyond industrial scale. Tech City”™s master plan seeks to fulfill the town of Ulster”™s vision as expressed in its comprehensive plan, seeking to create a “sense of place” in what is now an expanse of vast, mostly unoccupied industrial buildings and parking lots by turning it into a business hamlet, including a “town center” in the midst of the commercial and manufacturing enterprises.
The town center will include “a comprehensive system of sidewalks, landscaped spaces, covered parking and the use of new urbanism principles in the layout of a mixed-use neighborhood retail and residential component of the plan,” according to the summary of the plan submitted to town of Ulster officials by J. Michael Divney, a partner in Divney, Tung and Schwalbe, White Plains-based land use consultants helping Tech City develop the master plan.
The plan says that parking garages and existing and new buildings will be equipped with solar arrays and a solar farm set apart from buildings. Some buildings will have green roofs to enhance storm water retention capacity. Wieneke says that other renewable energy sources such as wind and geo-thermal are being assessed and will be utilized it site conditions allow for their inclusion.Â
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Underlying all the proposed development is the heavy-duty infrastructure IBM installed over decades of building and testing computers there. The campus has powerful redundant electrical supply, abundant water, a rail siding and easy access to major highways. These features will buttress the manufacturing capacity of the campus, which will be clustered in the northeastern section of the site.
Tech City”™s balancing act is to keep the industrial strength attractions intact while demolishing the obsolete structures among the 27 huge buildings on site, 20 of which are involved in the master plan. The plan calls for reworking the internal roads and reshaping acres of blacktop parking lots into a coherent network of streets lined with businesses within the campus and then re-connecting it all back to the surrounding community. Rather than one IBM-era identity, each business would have its own street address under the new plans. Â
Artists renderings show a mixture of commercial, office and light industrial businesses sharing tree-lined streets around a landscaped “town center.” Educational and wellness-related businesses, retail, entertainment and multi-family residential uses are also envisioned.
The master plan means that site owners would abandon the long-held paradigm of many economic development professionals at Tech City and elsewhere, whose focus has been on somehow revitalizing the manufacturing activity that once made the campus the economic engine of Ulster County.  Â
“For a long time everyone was swinging for home runs,” said Wieneke, “But I plan to hit enough singles to win the World Series.” He explained that a mix of dozens of small and medium-sized businesses employing 50 or 100 or more workers would provide a stronger local economy than a single huge employer who might abruptly close the site, as IBM did when it closed and laid off some 7,000 workers in 1994. IBM eventually sold the facility to its current owners in 1998. Â
The Tech City facility is roughly bisected by Enterprise Drive between the 120-acre “west campus” west of that roadway and the 140 acre “east campus” on the other side of the road. It is the east campus that is currently involved in the new master plan vision of a business hamlet. Redevelopment of the west campus is conceptualized, but not yet planned.
Twenty of the sites 27 buildings currently on the Tech City property are in the east campus and seven of those would be demolished. The total amount of space available would be reduced from 2.16 million square feet to 1.96 million square feet. Two existing buildings would be reworked into about 550,000 square feet of indoor parking and about 645,000 square feet would be created with new building construction.  Â
A 40-acre plume of groundwater contamination of volatile organic solvents remaining from IBM”™s use of the site is officially part of a hazardous waste permit that both IBM and Tech City management are bound by. There is ongoing discussion among those parties and state environmental officials on reworking the red tape and perhaps speeding up the cleanup of the site. Wieneke said the state Department of Environmental Conservation supports the master plan and that work on it can proceed even as discussion about cleanup continues.
“They have been involved with it and in fact, want a master plan so they know what the next uses of the property will be,” said Wieneke, regarding the DEC.
Business leaders around the region have been warning that New York state”™s balkanized approval process governed by an array of town-level planning and zoning boards could threaten the area”™s chances for receipt and expenditure of federal stimulus funding, which is explicitly designed to be spent rapidly to spark economic activity. The issue is germane to Tech City, which is seeking some $8 million in stimulus funding as seed money to implement its master plan.
Tech City”™s planning consultants have attempted to ease the town”™s task by providing draft language for regulations to fast track their proposal, and the Ulster Town Board has responded positively by declaring itself “lead agency” under state environmental law to oversee the master plan approval process.Â
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“The town of Ulster has been amazingly supportive,” said Paul Waddington, Tech City”™s operations director, noting the town and the property have not always had cordial relations since IBM left. “But there was a sea change overnight,” said Waddington, pegging the change to the presentation of the master plan. “Before hearing the master plan presentation and after hearing the presentation was a huge shift. They saw it and they were bowled over.”
Other funding is being sought, Wieneke said, on an as-needed basis. “We will pay for it by pacing ourselves, negotiating good deals and shooting for support wherever we can,” he said. Tech City officials are meeting this week with Gov. Paterson”™s stimulus priority cabinet. Wieneke said the local political establishment has been strongly supportive of the master plan. “They have all taken a new interest a revitalized interest in what can get done here,” he said.
