If you've never been there, or haven't been lately, you owe yourself a ramble around the northeastern part of Orange County. On the banks of the Newburgh Bay, framed by the majesty of the Hudson Highlands, Newburgh and Cornwall are a study in contrasts—New York's Other City and her pastoral gem of a neighbor, two natural beauties packed with history and boiling over with culture and innovation.
Cornwall is a delightful place. Take the kids to the Hudson Highlands Nature Museum: The newest attraction, interactive playspace Grasshopper Grove, opens for the season on April 16. Spend a few hours soaking up the Storm King Art Center, or climb the mountain that gave it its name. Take a kayak tour of this superlative stretch of river. Eat farm-to-table, continental, or cafe style—Cornwall restaurants impress New York Times critics—or grab some pizza or Chinese, shop for fiber art supplies, unique gifts, metaphysical books and crystals. There are things you'll find in Cornwall that you won't find anywhere else.
Meanwhile, up in Newburgh, the Hudson Valley's Sleeping Beauty has shaken off the evil spell and is ready to rock. The second half of the 20th century was a rough ride for Newburgh, for reasons that would fill a book. Suffice to say that in 1952, Look magazine dubbed Newburgh—with its booming economy, unparalleled architecture, stunning location, and bodaciously wide Broadway—an All-American City. By 2004, it had a spot on New York State's shortlist of most stressed communities, having endured a lurid notoriety as a murder capital along the way.
A Brighter Future
But the seeds of a brighter future were planted even then, and the blooms are opening at last. Habitat for Humanity Newburgh was founded at a kitchen table in 1999; this year, they'll dedicate their 100th house. Housing and arts organization Safe Harbors of the Hudson began in 2000, turned a blighted hotel into a showplace, and has been running full steam ever since; this spring, they're running acting workshops with Shakespeare on the Hudson and planning a new park. Plans were laid for a branch of SUNY Orange; today it's a state-of-the-art urban campus. The ferry to Beacon began running again in 2005, connecting folks to the train while offering a brief but breathtaking and wonderfully inexpensive river cruise. Hunter College urban planning student Cher Vick started a lively blog, Newburgh Restoration, in 2008, highlighting positive news and available historic properties. New people were showing up, with guts and plans: a cafe, a brewery, an art supply store, a museum, another gallery.
"We are especially lucky in that we attract all the eccentrics, the disruptors, the mad-as-hell-and-we're-not-gonna-take-it-anymore crowd," muses Hannah Brooks, vice chair of Safe Harbors' board and president of the Newburgh Heights Association. "We are just newcomers. but I knew we were starting to do some good when the people who felt ignored and badmouthed over the past decades began to come out and speak up and attend meetings."
NoBro
"In 2013 we were able to apply for funds from the National Mortgage Settlement," says Newburgh Community Land Bank Executive Director Madeline Fletcher. "We saw the opportunity to capture the moment, not with full rehabs but by making strategic investments: structural stabilization, asbestos remediation, measures that make the historic properties feasible. The cost of renovating is higher than the projected value, so we try to absorb that as much as we're able. We've brought a lot of different groups to the table, which is great; we work with Habitat for Humanity and RUPCO."
The land bank owns 40 properties in a section of the East End north of Broadway and is preparing to transfer them for redevelopment over the course of 2016, creating affordable rehabbed rentals, Habitat ownership opportunities, and some great deals for private buyers, ultimately adding 70 units of quality housing to a devastated neighborhood now being reinvented as NoBro (North of Broadway), and fanning the flames of revitalization along the Liberty Street corridor, where some of the earliest stirrings of new life were felt.
A River of Opportunities
Zoning's been completely revamped. A new website dedicated to commercial real estate, A River of Opportunities, aims to attract light manufacturing to join furniture makers Atlas Industries, which relocated here from Brooklyn in 2013 and shares its elegantly renovated factory with a growing maker's hive housing nearly three dozen small businesses.
"A lot of new businesses opened in the last year," says Shay Sellars, founder and managing director of SASRE Properties, a revitalization-focused commercial acquisition and redevelopment firm born in Brooklyn and now based in Newburgh. "Web designers, architects, interior designers, makers of lifestyle products—there's a lot of entrepreneurial energy coming in. A lot of us are disruptive; we have our own ideas of what community is, we're comfortable navigating red tape—and the community has responded by making things easier. 'We need you guys; tell us what you need.' Friends of mine started a studio in Atlas; now they're employing four part-time interns."
The Last Shall Be First
SpaceCreate, the Ann Street Gallery, Teran Studio, Thornwillow Press, and SUNY Orange's gallery anchor an arts scene that snaps, crackles and pops like Rice Krispies, but far more nutritiously. Atlas Studios has a major new gallery planned. Phanatix Entertainment produces Phan Media, a Web-based variety-TV showcase for local indie artists and venues. Excitement is already building for the annual Newburgh Illuminated Festival, happening June 18 with over 20 bands, pop-up and performance art, historic trolley tours, hoop dancing, and a showcase of local ethnic foods.
Last Saturdays, spearheaded by Healing Arts Studio owner Lisa Gervais, will mark two years this April; she's receiving a Placemaking Award from the Orange County Citizens Foundation. "It's grassroots, volunteer-run, and driven by social media," she says of the monthly cultural explosion. "Different venues join in each month, but there are anchors that nearly always get involved. New people are jumping in all the time." Saturday April 30 will include a reception at SpaceCreate for artist Elisa Pritzker's solo exhibit "Spirit of the Selknams," which has already been the subject of a short film aired on PBS; the launch party for a new Calling All Poets anthology featuring local work; and an exhibit at Thornwillow Press focused on the role of the artist in urban regeneration. Newburgh Art Supply owner Gerald Castro coordinates the public-art Light Bulb Project and the OPEN Studios program with Last Saturdays celebrations.
The restaurant scene is, well, cooking on high. The beloved Caffe Macchiato is thriving under the new ownership of a born-and-raised Newburgher, and now has a chef/owner French bistro as a neighbor. 2 Alices Coffee Lounge–Newburgh hosts lively open mikes, live music, art, and great food are staples at the Newburgh Brewery and the Wherehouse. Four-year resident Ann Stratton blogs about her effort to eat at every restaurant in town at Newburgh Food Journal, and she's playing catch up at this point. "My next one is going to be a soul food place on South Street," she says. "There's great Caribbean, Mexican, Peruvian, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Italian, American. The city is about 50 percent Latin American now, and their food is fabulous. I've fallen in love with this city; I lived in the city for 35 years and never felt like part of a community as I do here, and a lot of us are fighting desperately to make it a great place for everyone—not to gentrify, but to revitalize."
The Newburgh Heights Association has secured a Green Streets grant to add trees to a budding Liberty Street. The Land Bank folks are building hoop houses as the beginning of a community urban agriculture center in Downing Park, and an Urban Farming Fair is being held on April 30. On the waterfront, which has long been a thriving nightlife zone with multiple restaurants, the seven-acre Consolidated Ironworks Superfund site was opened to the community for the first time ever on Last Saturday in March. Plans for its future are embryonic, but the site includes an idea board on which visitors can offer suggestions to fill them out. On the west side, the five-year-old Newburgh Armory Unity Center is adding a new family literacy program developed with Mount Saint Mary College to its array of wellness and educational programming, helped out by a $10,000 grant from the Ulster Savings Charitable Foundation last fall. Plans for a state-of-the-art skateboard plaza are moving forward.
"It's palpable how grand it once was," says Sellars. "You feel the energy of what it used to be. I know it will get there, and it is our responsibility to do our little bit, one parcel at a time. If we show that it can be done, it's going to draw waves. But it will be impossible for us to move forward without empowering the most disadvantaged."
"People here were so beaten down," says Brooks, "and feeling the finger-pointing and shaming that was coming from the rest of the county and state. Now, there's a growing pride and hope. I think we're back on the map."
