Back to the future
There isn”™t any easy way to price history, but with the ribbon cutting of the 109 year old Kirkland Hotel in Kingston, the city may have gotten a $4.2 million bargain.
A thousand people, including a one-time hotel bartender, turned out recently to welcome back the storied hostel.
The mixed-use building, with space for apartments, offices and restaurants, is located in the uptown business district. With its spacious dining area, wrap-around porch and Rathskellar pub, it is easy to picture a century”™s worth of new memories making reservations.
“The Kirkland Hotel has been given back to the public,” said Charles R. Snyder, who directed the reconstruction project on behalf of RUPCO, the Rural Ulster Preservation Company, a nonprofit that coordinated the effort.
“It is a landmark reborn,” said Dennis Doyle, the Ulster County planning director and chairman of the RUPCO board of directors.
And as an added bonus, it is now a “green” building, using geothermal pumps for heating and cooling. It is the first geothermal building in Kingston. It also has entirely modern wiring to support equipment and amenities needed by 21st-century businesses.
The 1899 five-story, Tudor wood-frame hotel was once the centerpiece of Kingston”™s social and political elite. It stood vacant and decaying for a quarter century until a combination of federal, state and private funding received in 2002 financed a historically accurate renovation.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony April 11, officials and citizens marveled at the return of a lost gem, wandering inside the grand main entrance foyer up the spiral staircase to the circular cupola five stories over the street to gaze out over the historic spires and facades of uptown Kingston to the Catskill Mountains. RUPCO officials were delighted and taken aback by the huge turnout, saying they had expected perhaps 500 visitors; nearly double that turned out for the ceremony and tour.
“I’m just so proud we were able to get the Kirkland done and get it back on the tax rolls,” said Mayor James Sottile, who attended the ribbon-cutting with his 89-year-old father Arthur, who once tended bar at the hotel. “We did the right thing with the Kirkland,” the mayor said.
The 19,000-square-foot hotel is listed on the national and state registers of historic places.
Snyder said that the decision to use geothermal to heat and cool was partially a method of keeping the renovation in line with the historic footprint and appearance of the original Kirkland. The equipment needed for modern heating, ventilation and air conditioning would have required exterior additions that would have marred the restoration”™s historical accuracy.
While about 93 percent more expensive initially than a typical HVAC system, Snyder said, the building will have saved enough in heating and cooling costs within seven years to recoup the additional cost. The payback period will be shortened if costs of oil continue their rapid rise, he said.
The facility is now privately owned and paying taxes, Snyder said. The owners are seeking tenants for its apartments and offices and especially restaurateurs seeking to open an airy and spacious indoor-outdoor eatery next to the Ulster County office building and within walking distance of numerous law offices and courts.
“It”™s a beautiful, historic building in a great location,” said attorney Jonathan Sennett, who showed off his “new” offices with high ceilings and large windows with the air of a man who had made a smart decision. “I get the attractiveness of the building plus a chance to place myself closer to the community I”™m interested in serving.”
Snyder said he has particularly high hopes for the restaurant and Rathskellar. That would recreate and burnish a long tradition in the Kirkland, which for years hosted parties and weddings in the main restaurant, and more quietly facilitated discussions and deals in the basement pub, where the Kirkland”™s original stone foundation is visible.