With unemployment unchecked and vacant properties deteriorating, communities are struggling to find funding to revitalize their neighborhoods. Most have turned to federal grants, but the government has grown more hesitant to open its purse strings.
To help overcome this hurdle, the Mid-Hudson Regional Economic Development Council under Gov. Andrew Cuomo designated Peekskill and the village of Brewster as opportunity areas, which prioritizes their needs over other communities that apply for state grants.
Cuomo”™s Opportunity Area program, which launched this year, allows villages and cities to receive a special designation based on their poverty and unemployment rates and potential for change. Several areas within Peekskill and Brewster were targeted as opportunity areas.
When Peekskill Mayor Mary F. Foster heard about the chance to tell the governor about her city”™s potential as an opportunity area, she said “we raised our hand and wildly said, ”˜Hey, we want to be one!”™”
Through state funding, Peekskill is looking to conduct a study on a former White Plains Linen site that would include business incubator space, housing for young professionals and workforce training.
“We have populations that are significantly underserved with job and workforce opportunities existing in our community with our business districts,” Foster said. “If job training programs are not local, the impoverished and unemployed can”™t get to them. Part of the grant money allows job training programs to get here very quickly.”
An attractive quality of Peekskill that sold the council was its Metro North station. Not only does the city have quick and easy access to transportation, but the mayor said Peekskill has been thinking about creative ways to save money and reduce its carbon footprint.
One idea was to build a single steam pipe underground, which allows neighboring businesses to share its energy and resources. Wheelabrator Westchester L.P., a waste-to-energy plant in Peekskill, partnered with White Plains Linen to develop a plan for powering its facilities by using the steam produced from burning garbage.
“Two years ago, we started having discussions with industrial businesses on innovative projects that push for energy efficiency and alternative energy use and bring value to businesses,” Foster said. “The upshot was that Wheelabrator developed a strategy for the steam that goes into White Plains Linen. They said they could reduce the carbon footprint by 74 percent and reduce its reliance on gas to power up its facilities by 90 percent.”
Foster added that Peekskill joined the Northern Westchester Energy Action Consortium in 2009, which became the springboard for the city to seriously think about how to reduce carbon footprints of municipal operations and see what innovative ideas work for business districts and homeowners.
“In 2010, we started talking with Con Edison about developing a microgrid,” Foster said. “In 2011, Peekskill hosted a meeting with the businesses in our industrial complex to talk to them about whether they were interested in being part of a demonstration project. We found that businesses had a strong interest because they understood reducing carbon footprint saves them money.”
Wheelabrator and White Plains Linen were at the meeting, and in a separate discussion, they agreed to participate, Foster said.
In Brewster, the community has been waiting 15 years for an economic redevelopment opportunity, Peter Brewster Hansen, village clerk and treasurer, said. The village”™s designation as an opportunity area was timely because the community plans to renew its comprehensive plan, zoning codes and urban renewal plan this October, November and next April, respectively.
“We”™re partnering with Peekskill and Westchester Community College to set up a feasibility study that examines the economic activity that can be supported in this area and the types of job training that can take place,” Hansen said.
He said the designation better positions the village to receive funding that will help redevelop its Main Street corridor, which is filled with vacant storefronts and homes.
The idea of communities partnering together to address similar needs and share their grant money is a recent phenomenon, said Jonathan Drapkin, president and CEO of the Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. Drapkin is a member of the regional council.
“Given the limited resources that exist in the government, the notion of working together and finding ways to collaborate is increasingly going to be the way municipal governments are going to look at improving economic development,” Drapkin said. “It”™s just getting difficult for a community to go at it alone.”
UPDATED 9/3/2013: This article was corrected from an earlier version which stated the grant was a federal grant, when it is administered by the state.
