The Reawakening

Downtown Schenectady Is Electric Once More

by Molly Belmont and photographs by Hillary Harvey, July 28, 2008

When General Electric began making cuts to its Schenectady plant, it looked like it was lights out for the once-bustling company town, but these days, there’s a new electricity in the air—and it’s not coming from the old plant on the Mohawk River.

In the last decade, the city has experienced a full-scale renaissance. Thanks to the cooperative efforts of a number of different organizations, Schenectady has transformed itself from a bombed-out industrial shell into an attractive and lively destination for arts and culture.

“Schenectady hit rock bottom about 12 years ago, and since then it’s been pulling itself up by its bootstraps,” says Philip Morris, CEO of Proctor’s Theater in downtown Schenectady.

“Ten years ago, I would [have said that] Schenectady was in a state of shock,” says Joseph Tardi, a member of the 440 Board, a Schenectady organization dedicated to building an arts scene downtown. “After so many years of having GE as a principal, they were now trying to find a direction. Ten years later, even GE is coming back.”

“I don’t think the problem we had was so much different from [that of] other cities. I just think that we worked cooperatively, in a focused manner, and that was the key to making it work,” says Gail Kehn, vice president of visitor services for the Schenectady County Chamber of Commerce. She pauses for a moment before chuckling and adding, “Not that it was easy.”

The trouble all started when the city’s major employers began moving out of the area, says Kehn. General Electric, which employed 40,000 workers, gradually cut its workforce to 4,500, and in 1969 another major employer, the American Locomotive Company, closed its doors for good. People began to drift out of the community and, as a result, surviving businesses lost customers. Soon, the once-vibrant electric city was in a full blackout; storefronts were boarded up, streets were in disrepair, and crime rates soared. And it stayed that way—for a long time.