esident Gallery ssistant
80 Railroad Great Barrington
The Boathouse american bistro & sushi restaurant in lakeville, ct open 7 days a week! for lunch and dinner 11:00 am to 9:00 pm
dine-in or take out online ordering available with private rooms for corporate events, rehearsal dinners, baby showers and more
860-435-2111
349 main street theboathouseatlakeville.com
and Cannon Street in the downtown corridor. Seemingly overnight, the city skyline had lost one of its tallest buildings. The effect wasn’t unlike being forced to fly a flag at half-mast. “I think that’s really the case,” says Evan Menist, Poughkeepsie Second Ward Councilmember. “Which is why it’s critical to get rid of underutilized space and maximize its use for a more efficient and productive city center.” To atone for the sins of long-since-failed urban renewal plans implemented in the late 20th century, city leaders like Menist are rezoning neighborhoods to boost population density and dangling tax breaks for developers. Encouragingly, the early signs show promise, though it’s hard to blame incredulous residents who’ve seen their fair share of false starts. Progress, while slow, is appearing in pockets. Apartment buildings and brick-and-mortar businesses have started to pop up here and there. But the most surprising development is IBM expanding its manufacturing footprint, with roughly 3,000 workers at its Poughkeepsie campus building mainframes and computer chips. With the help of a world-class oncology department at Vassar Brothers Medical Center (Dyson Center) and two highly rated liberal arts schools in Marist and Vassar College, this surging town has a lot to offer professionals of all ages. Tired of watching other towns around them find their way, the people of Poughkeepsie are ready for a rebound. There’s a vibrant energy here, not to mention a lot of pride as a municipality filled with familiar, neighborly faces. But don’t let its small-town charm fool you. At twice the size of Kingston and Beacon and slightly larger than Newburgh, Poughkeepsie is a regional economic powerhouse. It also doesn’t hurt that it’s the geographic heart of the Hudson Valley and the last stop on the Metro-North’s Hudson Line. You can see its potential when walking down buzzy Academy Street, with its assortment of neighborhood bars, bakeries, pizza parlors and barbecue joints. It’s at these watering holes where locals rub shoulders with visitors, and where the idea of revitalization without gentrification is taking root. “From an outsider’s perspective, they might look at the city and think revitalization here is happening slower or it’s not really taking off,” says Menist, who has a background as an urban planner with the nonprofit Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress. “But I would say that’s
a very uninformed view. We’ve worked hard to ensure the policies we’ve put in place allow development without displacement, so at the end of the day, we don’t have a brand-new city with brand-new people.” Downtown revitalization always starts someplace exactly like 40 Cannon, a mixed-use retail and residential building a block away from Main Street. When developers Jim and Gina Sullivan purchased the property from its previous owner in 2013, the brick building had been sitting vacant for a couple years after being gutted by fire. The scope of the project rivaled anything the husband-and-wife duo had previously undertaken. Jim, a licensed plumber and electrician, was used to building things with his hands, so he took a calculated risk. Before breaking ground, they reached out to workforce development programs in the area to employ about 60 local workers. These able bodied individuals came from all different kinds of backgrounds. Some had zero construction experience and came right out of jail or rehab. “And we put them through this program where they’d work with journeymen as apprentices,” says Jim. Upskilling these workers took time, delaying the project by about eight months. But the results were worth it. While a few didn’t stick around to see it through completion, “others went on to hold steady jobs in the trades that they learned, which was really rewarding.”
