Despite the obstacles standing between developers and their vision of turning the former Hudson River Psychiatric Center into a vibrant residential community, town of Poughkeepsie officials are cautiously optimistic the massive undertaking will reach fruition and revive the area with a residential and commercial hub.
“I am hopeful,” Todd Tancredi, Poughkeepsie town supervisor, said. “We have tried to work well with the developer to keep them engaged. It is obviously a big commitment for somebody, and when the economy is not particularly strong, especially in New York state, it takes someone with a strong will and stomach.”
The big commitment to which Tancredi referred is estimated to be about $200 million from developers Diversified Realty Advisors of Summit, N.J., and Colorado-based EnviroFinance Group LLC.
The two companies have joined together to transform the 156-acre parcel and dilapidated psych center buildings ”” of which there are more than 50 ”” into Hudson Heritage. The collection of mixed-use buildings will include 750 residential units comprised of apartments, townhouses and detached single-family homes connected through walking trails, incorporated open spaces and recreation areas.
The proposal also includes 350,000 square feet of commercial space including a 160,000-square-foot building and smaller retail spaces with the potential for an 80,000-square-foot hotel.
The focus on a mix of residential and commercial development alongside a pedestrian friendly layout has been a selling point for the town, Tancredi said.
“We are very happy about that because it is something we wanted to see there all along,” he said.
Diversified and EnviroFinance are not the first developers to pursue the historic site.
Before the psychiatric center began to shut down in 2001, a collection of developers known as Hudson Heritage LLC bought the property for $2.75 million in 1999.
The group was joined in 2005 by CPC Resources, an affiliate of the Community Preservation Corp.
Possibly due to the economic conditions following the 2008 financial crisis, development plans fell apart, Tancredi said.
Diversified and EnviroFinance purchased the property for $4 million in 2013.
As part of the town”™s effort to make the most of this second opportunity and avoid costly delays, officials have brought in outside consultants, paid for by Diversified, to help keep the project moving along, the supervisor said.
“Sometimes these projects drift along without a direction,” he said. “Time is money for anybody in business, so we try to make sure time is spent wisely and continue to try to move the process forward.”
A firm timeline has not been set by the developers as the project could be years in the making, but they said ground could be broken on the project in as soon as two years. The initial commercial phase could be built in three years and the entire project completed possibly in a decade.
The project is still in preliminary phases. At the end of August, the town closed a public comment period seeking feedback on scoping documents, which will be used as an outline for environmental impact studies by the developers to identify issues.
The public comment period produced a number of concerns regarding the proposal”™s impact on traffic, tax revenue and the preservation of the psychiatric center”™s many historic buildings.
“The Town of Poughkeepsie has had a long and influential history in the Hudson Valley. The preservation of the town”™s history is what gives our community an identity and uniqueness, which allows us to stand out from our neighbors,” Town Historian John R. Pinna said in written comments submitted to the board. “The [Town of Poughkeepsie Preservation Commission] recognizes and supports the need for development and the need to maintain a balance between progress and preservation. It also recognizes that once historic landmarks disappear, they are gone forever and future town generations never get the opportunity to learn or experience their town history.”
Built in the late 1860s, the Hudson Psychiatric center was added to the National Historic Landmark registry in 1989 and had the capacity to serve 6,000 patients.
A major hurdle for developers will be the demolition of a majority of the site”™s buildings, many of which have fallen into dangerous condition or contain asbestos and lead contamination.
Tancredi estimates the demolition alone will cost developers at least $14 million.
While the town has offered no incentives to the developers other than being actively engaged in moving the proposal along with its developer funded consultants, the cost of the remediation may be offset by brownfield tax credits, which are provided by the state to developers who remediate polluted properties, Tancredi said.
“It is a large enough project that there is room to work out most of the issues through the review process,” Eric Hollman, planner for the Town of Poughkeepsie, said. “That is part of the purpose of the public comment.”
Tancredi said he is also confident the issues raised by the public will be properly addressed by the developers and sees the proposal as possibly having a significant positive financial impact on the area.
According to representatives for the developers, the commercial component of the project would create approximately 350 jobs and the residential and hotel components would create approximately 67.
There will also be more than 400 jobs created temporarily during the construction process.
The bolstering of the tax base, which is currently burdened by tax-exempt properties such as hospitals, state facilities and colleges, would be a major benefit, Tancredi said.
Representatives for the developers said the $144,000 the site currently generates in taxes could swell to more than $2 million in sales tax revenue after the project is completed.
But with a long road ahead for the project and the heavy lifting of cleaning up contamination from the site still remaining, Tancredi is cautiously optimistic about the project.
“You always see projects of various sizes come and go,” he said. “It takes a special developer to take on a project of this magnitude. If it doesn”™t come about, we don”™t want it to be because the town was dragging its feet.”
