HVEDC quietly selects site for focus development

The Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp., in the throes of seeking new leadership, has quietly abandoned its long-sought goal of creating three shovel-ready sites among the nine counties it serves and will focus on developing the Winston Farm in Saugerties.

Meantime, a competing site has positioned itself as a possibly cheaper, greener alternative that could be ready for business much sooner.   

Winston Farm is where HVEDC will focus is efforts to find a shovel ready site, according to Marissa Brett, vice president of HVEDC, who spoke June 19. “We haven”™t gone out to the newspapers with it,” said Brett, but said that HVEDC”™s year-long effort to find a trio of sites spread throughout the Valley would no longer be pursued.

“At this point, the only site that wants to move forward is the Winston Farm,” said Brett.

That assertion came as a surprise to Dan Wieneke, president of Tech City, the former IBM site in the town of Ulster, which was trying to be considered a top shovel-ready site by HVEDC. “We haven”™t heard anything about it; no one told us anything about it until this phone call,” Wieneke said June 30, responding to a reporter”™s question.

He said the 260-acre Tech City is far ahead of the Winston Farm and all other venues in the Hudson Valley in terms of having a shovel-ready site primed and approved for construction under an ongoing redevelopment plan, now being considered on a fast track by the Ulster Town Board.

Wieneke said it would likely cost far less for a company to build a new facility of up to 500,000 square feet at Tech City than at Winston Farm or any other site, since Tech City already has redundant capacity for electricity that manufacturing would need as well as sewer, water and fiber optic. It also has direct access to the state Thruway and a railroad siding. There”™s no rail at Winston Farm.

He said he does not understand why HVEDC made their decision for the Winston Farm, saying that Tech City will soon have approval for its master plan. “Our permitting process is going to be done before their”™s (at Winston Farm) is even started,” Wieneke said   

The 800-acre Winston Farm, running roughly northwest from the corner of State Route 32 and State Route 212 in Saugerties has its main entrance literally across the road from the southbound interchange at Thruway exit 20. The proposal is for a business park on roughly 250 acres of the parcel.

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Besides Thruway access, the site has gas lines running nearby which could be extended to Winston Farm for a relatively modest sum. But creating the electricity needed for high-tech business could prove extremely expensive. Central Hudson has already been consulted and electricity is available but at a hefty price, according to Saugerties town Supervisor Gregory L. Helsmoortel.

Touring the site with a reporter several months ago, Helsmoortel said the electricity would arrive by running towers and wires over a ridge from a nearby substation. “That would be big big bucks,” Helsmoortel said, adding there were hopes the power supply issue could be financed at least in part by federal stimulus package funding. It is uncertain where that funding request now stands.

The site is bordered by water and sewer mains, but those would need to be extended onto the property. Additionally the oft-overlooked complication and expense of stormwater management could prove particularly challenging in the rolling environs of the Winston Farm, which is laced with creeks and small water courses and overlays an extensive aquifer.

Helsmoortel said the development would be extremely protective of the aquifer, and noted having an abundant water supply is a plus for the site.        

The 260-acre Tech City site has 27 buildings and a total of some 2.5 million square feet of industrial, commercial and office space, a powerful electrical supply, abundant water, rail ”¦ and a 40-acre plume of solvents under a central location on the campus. While the plume is no longer considered dangerous to health or the environment, it is a legal red flag, despite insistence by state DEC officials that it is no reason for it to be an impediment to redeveloping the site.

Wieneke said the master plan that would create a new “greenfield” with capacity for half a million square feet of space that would avoid the plume, simplifying matter for companies moving operations to the site.

The HVEDC is closely tied to Central Hudson, which provided some $11 million in economic development money since HVEDC was founded in 2003, according to Central Hudson spokesman John Maserjian. About  $7.5 million of that money came from company benefit funds received as part of Central Hudson”™s profits from sales of their power generation facilities as required by state deregulation of the power industry in the late 1990s. HVEDC has so far used about $6.3 million of the $11.5 million in available funding, said Maserjian.

Anthony S. Campagiorni, who resigned as CEO of HVEDC in February to take a position with Central Hudson is still serving as acting HVEDC president while the search for permanent leadership unfolds. He said there is no firm timetable for replacing him and that Central Hudson is now hiring a national executive recruitment firm to help in the search.

Campagiorni said Winston Farm was selected for “Its sheer size. We don”™t have many parcels of that size in the Hudson Valley, and so it would aid our ability to buffer the site as seen from outside.” He also cited the Thruway access.

He said he could not comment on how much it would cost to develop a site at the Winston Farm, when compiling costs of  bringing in electricity, water, sewer, fiber optic and protecting the sensitive hilly and wet topography from contaminants. “We”™re working on those numbers now,” he said.  

Asked why Tech City was apparently bypassed, Campagiorni said, “There is nothing wrong with Tech City,” but said that developers wanted “a green field” to build in. He also said that “I think most importantly, they (Saugerties) have a willing community.”

But Wieneke noted that Tech City would have a shovel-ready building parcel that could build to order far more quickly and likely at far less expense than developing the Winston Farm. And he said it is obvious that the town of Ulster is also a willing community, from the efforts being put forward by the town board to work with Tech City in creating its updated master plan.