Seven years after the Dia:Art museum came to Beacon, there is not just optimism in the air, but investment.
Projects for a hotel conference center, a riverside park with an artist gallery and a renovated theater on Main Street are already under way and others are in the planning stage.
“This city definitely has some sort of resiliency, it really has bucked the trend in terms of the recession so there is really something happening here now,” said Brendan McAlpine, general counsel and project manager of the Roundhouse at Beacon Falls. The project is a privately financed project on nine acres that will convert a former dye factory into a boutique hotel with 58 rooms and an 82-seat restaurant, a catering hall, and artist living and working areas, a creek side trail and eventually residential condominiums.
The facility will be operated by the McAlpine family when completed. They are not disclosing the cost of the project.
“We”™re not putting out budget numbers, but it”™s not insignificant, I”™ll tell you that,” McAlpine said.
McAlpine, who hails from Long Island came to the Hudson Valley for projects with the family owned construction business, but having discovered Beacon, his father, Robert, the principal in the firm, bought a house and has gradually moved company operations north. The family closed on a deal in July for the former dye factory property that had been sitting largely abandoned since the 1980s and earlier this month began site work. The hope to open the hotel in 2012.
That pace is a brisk one compared with many projects in the region which languish for years, but McAlpine said that the Roundhouse has several factors helping it meet ambitious construction goals, including the fact that the property is essentially useless now and city residents and officials recognize the benefits Beacon will receive from renovation of the old structures. McAlpine commended Beacon”™s government as a productive partner in helping provide the permits and approvals needed to close on the property and start work.
Additionally he said, the project as a whole will be a green project and is working toward LEED certification. This approach, he said, not only influenced public acceptance and civic approvals, but is a wise business approach.
“It”™s good marketing,” McAlpine said. “There are studies showing building to LEED”™s results in higher occupancy and higher rents.” When the residential component of the project is eventually completed, a timeline he said is being guided by the market, the units will be more attractive to buyers because those units will be about 30 percent more energy efficient than standard buildings.
Building to a LEED”™s certification is also part of the paradigm in Beacon, he said, where a variety of projects trading on eco-sensibility are helping drive the economic revitalization. He cited the Long Dock project sponsored by Scenic Hudson, which is creating a riverfront park on former industrial land.
He said people are already coming to Beacon, not just for the Dia museum but for the once boarded up Main Street district. “Our project is just one of a few that are going on here,” said McAlpine.
Besides the Long Dock renovation, he cited the nonprofit 4th Wall Productions”™ work toward a $3 million renovation of the old Beacon theater on Main Street, as well as the planned restoration of the incline railway taking tourists atop Mount Beacon.
“It seems that Beacon is really starting to hit that critical mass where it is going to get over the hump and really get going,” McAlpine said.
