In the 1950s, Newburgh’s Water Street was one of the finest shopping thoroughfares north of Manhattan. New York Central Railroad’s West Shore line stopped here on its route from Weehawken to Albany; travelers could hop on an electric trolley up the hill to the city center or board the ferry to Beacon. Posh Day Liner steamers and countless other water craft came and went at several piers. The city was on top of the world, living up to the “All-American City” title bestowed by the National Municipal League in 1952.
A complicated mix of factors would knock the city to its knees in the decade that followed, including but not limited to urban renewal, which bit a chunk out of the city’s East End like a rabid grizzly. Fifty acres and seven entire streets—over 1,100 homes and businesses—were flattened, thousands displaced, and generational wealth decimated at the stroke of a pen and the swing of a wrecking ball.
For decades the waterfront lay largely dormant, cut off from the rest of downtown by a vacant swath of hillside between lower Broadway and the river. Starting in the late ’80s, restaurateurs rediscovered the unparalleled views, and the waterfront district has grown into a dynamic dining destination. (You can get slammin’ tacos at the refurbished West Shore railway terminal, now Hudson Taco.) Ferry service to Beacon, though temporarily closed currently while the MTA repairs the Beacon dock, was revived in 2005.
But the Newburgh Landing, the only deepwater port between New York and Albany, remains an underutilized resource. Kevindaryan Lujan, Newburgh’s representative in the Orange County Legislature, believes it won’t stay that way for long. “Newburgh just completed a major capital project—a big sewer and streetscape upgrade—and the final design phase of our dock, Newburgh Landing Park, is happening this year,” he says. “So within the next two to five years, hopefully, we’ll have a deepwater pier and international cruise lines can add a Hudson Valley stop. And the city is gathering information on what the community wants to do with that vacant stretch of hillside. I’d like to see something there that would bring jobs—we really need tax ratables [revenue-generating businesses] to catapult the city to where it needs to be.”
Building Momentum
Undeniably, things are closer to where they need to be than they’ve been in a long time. In 2024, the city received two budgeting awards from the Government Finance Officers Association of US and Canada, a credit rating upgrade to A1 from influential rater Moody’s, and a top score for municipal fiscal health from the state comptroller’s office.
In the late 20th century, Newburghers striving to rebuild felt that they faced and fought an unresponsive City Hall, but there’s clearly a whole new vibe. “City officials and staff are working really hard to build us up,” says Lujan. “Every department is involved. Those people bleed and breathe Newburgh, and the results are showing. Violent crime is way down; police and fire department staffing is stronger than it’s ever been.” Addressing the city council about the 25 percent year-over-year drop in serious crime from 2023 to 2024, Police Chief Brandon Rola cited a team that’s 52 percent non-white and 22 percent female as a major factor.
“For a long time, Newburgh’s had this narrative told about us, not by us, and it’s never been truly accurate,” says Lujan, who remembers walking to middle school along East Parmenter Street, then a derelict block that’s now been exquisitely refurbished by Habitat for Humanity, on whose board he serves. “We’re taking it back. I hear hammers ringing out all over town, people fixing up historic properties. All kinds of new businesses are opening: bookstores, yoga studios, tailors, tattoo shops, beauty salons. And the food! I can walk to Jamaican, Haitian, Columbian, Peruvian, Ecuadorian, or Honduran restaurants, and that’s just a partial list.”
A Waterfront for Everyone
Newburgh’s actually bounded by water on two sides: the Quassaick Creek, which runs from Snake Hill to the Hudson along the city’s southern border, is getting some serious love from Scenic Hudson and partners as a future 2.5-mile Greenway with a park and trail network. And the city-owned Crystal Lake, part of a 109-acre greenspace on the West End, has a growing coalition working to establish it as public recreational land.
Vanessa Nisperos loved being part of a canoeing club when she lived in Brooklyn and was thrilled to discover that Newburgh had a rowing club. She promptly got her kids involved—but the longtime coach was retiring and the lease on its city-owned boathouse expiring. “So a new group started putting their heads together and formed the Newburgh Waterways Center to support rowing and paddling, add more free kayaking and environmental programs, and do more on other bodies of water besides the Hudson.”
There’s a summer rowing camp this year, and Nisperos says free kayaking on Crystal Lake is a huge hit. “There’s the Sanctuary Healing Farm and Garden there, so we do free kayaking during the Community Farm Days. People love it. And the rowing program is thriving. The response from the city has been really exciting—they’re all in, and their ironclad rule is that anyone who holds a license from the city needs to be open and inclusive, accessible to city residents. They’re really thoughtful around the idea that the waterfront is for everyone.”
Ronald Zorrillo, a South Street resident for the past nine years, brought Outdoor Promise north with him after his social entrepreneurship pitch placed in the top five in a Baruch College competition. “Newburgh faces a lot of environmental issues,” he says. “We’ve got lead in the water pipes, we’ve got brownfields. So we do a free hike for the community every month, with bus transportation to one of the trailheads and hiking gear people can borrow, and we do some environmental education in the process. We usually get around 30 people; we have 70-year-olds and preschoolers, all spending time together without a screen in sight, with a lot of multigenerational bonding going on. We were just out on Snake Hill for February; it was 15 degrees out, but people came and borrowed microspikes and gators, and we all made it up that hill together.”
The Pulse of the City
A three-person team is hard at work readying The Ellis, a community space in a refurbished church on Dubois Street that will open in May with custom-crafted nightlife experiences curated by David Kiss, executive producer at Brooklyn’s iconic House of Yes nightclub and performance venue. He’s been a Newburgher since 2021. “There’s really nothing like this, a nightlife space with the capacity for hundreds,” Kiss says. “And there’s really nothing like being enveloped in the warmth and sound of dance music, everyone dancing together, just present for each other with no thought of politics or any of that, just soaring together. That’s what The Ellis wants to be. Down on the waterfront they have mainstream Top 40, which is fine, but it leaves out so much musical culture.”
Kiss says he watched the House of Yes help transform Bushwick from rough to solid, and believes that The Ellis can help empower Newburgh’s East End. And The Ellis is poised to become much more than a nightclub. “I was looking at this beautiful building and not really sure what to do with it—at one point we thought about apartments,” says developer Michael Mamiye, whose firm Nutopia mainly specializes in ecofriendly co-living for creatives. “But we’re right by the hospital, and the city’s economic development guy, David Kohl, said the employees needed a food court. I went and talked to a bunch of them, and they loved the idea, so we’re getting the licenses to open up a food court next fall.” The liquor license is already in hand.
Besides nightlife and food, The Ellis team (the name is a nod to Ellis Island) has lots of plans in mind—Saturday morning family events, large-group yoga and fitness gatherings, herbal and medicinal gardens in the pretty backyard, workshops, sustainable industries conferences, milestone parties, microweddings and elopements, and whatever else Newburghers dream up. “We want to have the place full of people all the time,” says partner Albert Mizrahi. “We want the doors to never be closed. This city has such stunning, diverse culture—we want to be a venue for it all to come together.”
Sue Sullivan was an administrator at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital for years prior to buying her East End home in 2018. The Ward 1 residents’ alliance she’s revitalizing is part of being the change she’d like to see, and plans include holiday celebrations, bake sales, advocacy, and fun. “I couldn’t tell you the number of new friends I’ve made just walking my dogs all over the city,” she says. “People here will help you if you’re in a bind, we have each other’s backs. I love it. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Sullivan also shares Lujan’s perception that the tax base needs rebuilding to lessen the burden on homeowners. “We need commercial enterprises to come in, and someone in the city government whose top priority is hustling to find those. The city council has done a good job getting our financial house back in order. Now I think it’s time for us to think creatively, inclusively and transparently about bringing in the right tax ratables. We need to get out of the mindset that anything is better than nothing and play the long game.”
The Sound of Resilience
Originally from Australia, Russell Ger has been music director and conductor of the 30-year-old Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra for six years now. Holiday concerts regularly pack Aquinas Hall at Mount Saint Mary College; other shows typically draw about 600, and he’s hoping this 30th anniversary year will be a record-breaker.
“People think classical might be stuffy or elitist, but it’s just not,” Ger says, “and my job is to be the conduit from composer to musician to audience, so I strive to do that from the podium. I’m really hoping we sell out for our April 26 show. We’ll be performing Mahler’s Resurrection: Symphony No. 2, which is unusual because it takes 150 singers and 100 musicians; we’re bringing in the West Point Glee Club and the Cappella Festiva Chamber Choir. It’s this incredible journey that starts with a funeral march, tells a life story with ups and downs in musical symbols that people just intuitively recognize, and then there’s this angelic chorus that calls to all of us. It’s all about struggle and triumph. That with which you have wrestled will give you wings. It’s just so germane to this amazing city. It’s about who humans are at the core, the big questions—and we see our orchestra as an emblem of Newburgh rising.”
“What people who don’t live here miss when they tell our narrative for us is how much success we’re having in the face of all the challenges we’ve dealt with,” says Lujan. “Our grit and determination, and most of all, our community’s solidarity. Diversity is our greatest strength. We embrace it. And if somebody’s struggling, we strive to give them a hand up, empower them. I think that’s a very Newburgh trait.”
This article appears in April 2025.
