Beacon: The Fight to Shape A City’s Future

When Mayor Lee Kyriacou was first elected to the Beacon City Council in 1993, just a year after moving to Beacon, he found a comprehensive plan that assumed that the answer for its struggling Main Street involved high-rise buildings up to 13 stories tall, feeder roads, and a pedestrian mall. “But the city was such an unattractive investment that the high rises never got built,” he says. “So we were able to preserve the historic buildings that were there and say ‘Nope, we’re changing how we’re doing this.’ We changed some pretty dramatic components, got rid of the high rises, got rid of the concept of cutting Main Street down.”

Working with Beacon’s first woman mayor, Clara Lou Gould, the council decided to restore Main Street instead. By the time Gould retired in 2007, having shepherded in a new water filtration plant, new municipal building, and Dia:Beacon, it was time for a fully revamped plan. “We encourage density on and just off our Main Street, along our creek, and along the train station parking lots, and we did reconstruction in those areas of factory-style, residential construction with density,” says Kyriacou, a self-described “zoning geek” who won the mayor’s seat in 2020 after nine terms on the council. “Most of the construction of the last 10 years has been our fallow urban renewal land. I live right in that area, and our home was originally supposed to be torn down for urban renewal, which didn’t happen. But all around it were large empty spaces that didn’t get built out for 40 years.”

Those empty lots are no more, and Kyriacou says that the city’s current desirability allows it to be choosier about design. “Now we can require brick facades, and the kind of bits and bobs that historic structures have, and give people form-based examples of what to do. We’re still seeing proposals. We’ve got a planning board that says, ‘You know what, we want it done better than it’s been done in the past.’ And we can ask for better, because we’re a popular place to be, and we tend to get it.”

Comprehensive plan revisions in 2017 included establishing an arterial workaround using Beekman and West Main to encourage a bustling streetscape all the way down to the waterfront. In May of 2024, Beacon was designated a pro-housing community; last November, Governor Hochul announced that the MTA was seeking proposals for new transit-oriented development near the train station, and the city is working with Hudson River Housing to kick off Plus One grants that will help residents build accessory dwelling units, which have been allowed since the ’90s but were prohibitively expensive to construct.

Not everyone, of course, is enthralled with every proposal. On High Street, a coalition has arisen to object to a proposal on the corner of High and Beekman Streets that would merge three lots to create two mixed-use four-story buildings with 64 apartments. The project is currently in the public hearing phase of its environmental review, and some believe it to be out of character, out of scale, and an overall “monstrosity.”

“I feel like we’re making our voices heard at the planning board,” says High Street resident Edwin Chong, “and I think they’re sympathetic. They kept letting us go over the three-minute limit, and they’re hearing the same concerns from a number of different perspectives, as well as new ones from new voices.”

A full-scale campaign to stop the development, known as 45 Beekman, or at least make it smaller, is underway and has drawn in residents of other neighborhoods who feel at risk of being overrun by “large, sterile, ship-like buildings,” as it’s put in a Change.org petition which at this writing has 85 signatures.

“The city just seems to be glossing over a lot,” says High Street resident Maryellen Case. “They say the soil test was fine, but it’s hard to believe it would have passed—there’s sewer runoff on that lot and it was a contractor’s yard for a number of years. So how did it pass? Who’s behind this? Who’s letting certain things slide?”

Residents have T-shirts and posters, and will be out in force at the May 13 planning board meeting, when the public hearing continues. The attorney for developers Beekman Arts Center and Bay Ridge Studios contends that the issues raised have largely been addressed during the process, but residents beg to differ.

Beacon Portrait Pop-Up 2025

A Delicate Balance

Other Beacon residents have their own issues with the city’s boom. Kara Marie Dean-Assael, a cofounder of food justice nonprofit Fareground, and kk naimool, founder of Collective Justice Consulting and chief executive steward of Queer Family Network, share concerns that city government isn’t mindful of the needs of poorer residents. “There are organizations forming and community groups supporting their neighbors, but there seems to be zero support from the city of Beacon to recognize the people who’ve lived here for a very long time who are getting displaced,” says naimool. “What this city looks like now is not something they can afford or even understand, because it’s growing so fast. The city is not supporting its existing community, it seems to be promoting and escalating this growth. I love that new people come and that we get new food, new neighbors, and shops, but it shouldn’t become unlivable for anyone who’s not rich.”

“We’re hearing from local teens who can’t afford to enjoy Main Street with their friends—everything is a special-occasion restaurant, there’s nowhere they can just grab a slice and hang out,” says Dean-Assael. “There’s really nowhere to just sit, indoors or out. Most of the new stores now cater to tourists and are closed Monday through Wednesday. One thing that would really help everyone is a well-run, well-organized community center, a place that everybody—youth, seniors—could come and hang out, relax, do some volunteer work, and help each other. It would be so good for all of us.”

Both naimool and Dean-Assael believe that city government is preoccupied, rather than hostile, and say that a few businesses have been absolutely outstanding. “Happy Valley Arcade Bar always helps us, and Hudson Valley Brewery helped us throw a community dinner for 80 on their beautiful rooftop last fall,” says Dean-Assael. “And the VFW is hosting a Pride bash on June 1.”

Yvette Valdes Smith represents part of Beacon in the Dutchess County Legislature, where she serves as minority leader. “I sat on the Dutchess County Housing Trust Fund committee, and during that time we were able to fund 2 Cross Street, which will provide affordable housing units and housing for senior citizens,” she says. “I’m proud of that, and of keeping county property taxes low. City government always has my back with whatever I try to do with the county, and that really has made a huge difference. So for instance, we were able to keep the Beacon free loop bus, and we’re looking to make the Beacon-Hopewell Junction Rail Trail a reality.”

Smith is mindful of the delicate balance required to provide enough housing while fighting overdevelopment. “Density is tricky in Beacon at this point,” she says. “But I believe we have an incredible planning board. They’ve stopped things that needed to be stopped, and greenlit other things that needed to happen but were challenging. I have a lot of faith in them—the people there are in it for the right reasons.”

A Bank Is Reborn

Chris Meyer is the founder of Savage Wonder, a nonprofit arts organization producing works by veterans and first responders. The organization is in the process of restoring the imposing Mechanic Savings Bank on Main Street. Set to open on May 9, the first production at the art center will be Eugene Ionesco’s “The Bald Soprano.” Audiences, he says, should expect boundary-busting content by talented creators from the outer limits of the human experience. “We produce shows that are intimate, absurd, whimsical and/or jarring,” he says. “Our jam is, we want you to get a huge ‘hell yeah!’, we want you to leave thinking, ‘Thank God I’m alive in 2025 and got to be part of that experience.'”

When fully built out, Savage Wonder will feature three venues and two bars; 6,000 square feet will host an art gallery. And in finding an iconic building in Beacon, Meyer says, he’s “landed in the briar patch. Every week we stumble into some other world class artist that’s up here, where we’re like, boy, that would be a cool collaboration. Let’s figure out what that might look like down the road. It’s just an amazingly lush ecosystem for us to end up in.”

“I Want Things to Be Better”

Kyriacou says that the city is creating affordable housing, citing Dutchess County’s Fair Share plan that set Beacon a goal of five affordable units a year. “We’re doing far more than that in any given project,” he says. “We’ve redone the water and sewer, so we’re set for that; we got the central fire station built that we’ve been talking about for 20 years. We’ve gone from being a place where nobody wanted to invest to the hottest place in the county, a remarkable—maybe unique—progression over 30 years, and I find that something to celebrate.”

Meyer agrees that Beacon, for all its growing pains, isn’t close to losing its soul. “Our landlord couldn’t have been more magnanimous, gracious, and accommodating in ways that allowed us to get the launch we needed, and it’s indicative of how Beacon has been overall. We have the warm fuzzies for this area and for what people have done for us, the grace they’ve shown us, and we just can’t wait to do stuff for them.”

Justice McCray, lifelong resident and founder of food justice organization Beacon’s Backyard, says the needs in Beacon are very real, as are the grass-roots responses. “We began serving free breakfast after another kitchen closed, and went from serving 13 meals the first week to 200 the second,” says McCray. “All the volunteers eat, and everybody who comes to eat wants to join in and help. Everybody’s sitting down together and making new friends, connecting with each other. It brings me so much joy. People here are really building something magical, and I feel so hopeful when I look around at my community and see the ways that people are constantly stepping up, supporting each other. There are so many doers, so many people that are willing to step up and say, ‘I want things to be better’ and then do something about it. It’s hard to find a lot of that in one place, but Beacon’s got it.”

This article appears in May 2025.