If the green shoots of recovery that Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke sees sprouting indeed materialize, they may sprout first in places like Ellenville along new sidewalks and plazas funded with stimulus money.
The funds have helped spruce up a village hard hit by recession, yet which retains the quality of being a diamond in the rough.
The village is actively burnishing its infrastructure and image, says Glenn Gidaly, senior project manager with Barton & Loguidice P.C., which serves as village engineers. The downtown revival began with a bit of luck, when Provident Bank sold the village its former headquarters building, a modern five-story office building in the center of Ellenville where state routes 52 and 209 intersect.
The office building came with 45 parking spaces and a bargain price, $1 million at a time when the village was trying to figure out where to put a new village hall at an estimated cost of $5 million. Instead, for the million-dollar asking price and about a million more in renovations, the government center was created where a vacant building had stood. “That was a brilliant move,” said Gidaly. “A phenomenal deal.”
He was speaking from company offices leased from the village in the government center, the new Ellenville offices of Barton & Loguidice where an open house was held Oct. 15.
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Gidali said he believes stimulus money is beginning to permeate the economy. He cited the fact that Barton & Laguidice, headquartered in Syracuse with four offices around the state and another in Pennsylvania, is hiring staff to keep up with its growing workload in municipal projects. Since engineering is preparation for construction, Gidaly posits his company”™s workload as a leading indicator of recovery.
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He said Ellenville has been particularly savvy about producing grant proposals that win approval and funding. On a walking tour through Ellenville, he trod concrete sidewalks recently laid along residential streets whose old bluestone sidewalks had long since chipped away. He showed off the historic Shadowland Theater and thriving Aroma Thyme restaurant with organic green cuisine, and Matthew”™s Pharmacy, a family-owned independent pharmacy along a historic street with workmen restoring facades.
“In its diversity, Ellenville is like a microcosm of a city,” Gidaly said, noting the blend of cultures in shops and streets. But it has a big city problem with unemployment that has risen to 17 percent since closure of nearby manufacturing plants in recent years and this summer”™s closure of the nearby Nevele Grande resort.
Ellenville is surrounded by stunning natural beauty, with the Shawangunk Ridge looming eastward, a haven for hikers and launching platform for hang gliders, while west of the village the Catskills rise.
The village is rebuilding key infrastructure with help from federal stimulus money and guidance from a special committee of council members, the village manager and engineers who prioritize projects and identify grants that could pay for projects.
As the economy improves investment will follow infrastructure upgrades, officials believe and meanwhile they feel they are turning lemons into lemonade.
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“The loss of so many jobs in this area recently gives us points on grants for funding projects,” said Village Manager Mary Sheeley. “So my personal goal has been to improve infrastructure. And with the stimulus money that is out there, we have started some projects that will make us more attractive when the recession ends.”
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The Village will be replacing its 40-year-old wastewater treatment plant in 2010 using $1.9 million in stimulus funds and $4.6 million in low-interest loans. The facility will be perhaps the greenest waste facility in the Hudson Valley, using high efficiency blowers, recovering heat to lower energy use, conducting on-site composting and using solar power. The project is out to bid and will be constructed next year.
The archaic Beckley Bridge will be replaced with help from a $1.5 million grant the village won as part from stimulus money for road projects.
Gidaly also showed off Trinity Square. The plan for the plaza space combines a $300,000 project to upgrade the square with an additional $200,000 plan to upgrade the adjacent Hunts Memorial building, a circa 1917 former library that will house the local chamber of commerce. The square also faces an historic post office constructed with Citizen Conservation Corps labor during the Great Depression, a building, as Gidaly put it, “From the last stimulus program.”
Now, he said, the new stimulus is going to spark a downtown revival, where open air concerts and other civic events can be held. “This is going to be turned into a community open space,” Gidaly said. “It is going to be a real draw to the village.”
“Ellenville, if you look at our history, when the chips are down the community comes together and we pull ourselves up by our bootstraps,” said Sheeley. “It”™s very easy to blame the recession and wring our hands and cry, but that doesn”™t accomplish anything. No one on a white horse is going to come riding in and save us. Our destiny is in our own hands.”
