This month kicks off with back-to-back festive weekends in Kingston. The O+ Festival, happening October 6-8, will be a tsunami of art, performance and wellness. The return of the Burning of Kingston, October 13-15, takes a deep dive into a Revolutionary War-era trauma with reenactments, walking tours, and discussions. For the first time, alongside the Colonial Ball and the cemetery walks, there will be elements that highlight the experiences of the enslaved, indigenous, and women.
Celebrations of resilience are absolutely on point here in New York’s first capital, which has been steadily regaining cultural and economic momentum after the systemic shock of IBM’s 1994 departure. In 2019, former resident Alexandra Marvar penned a piece in Guardian headlined “The US city preparing for the collapse of capitalism,” citing O+—which pays artists in medical care—as Exhibit A, and concluding that she missed the place.
Not everyone favors the direction of Kingston’s momentum, as evidenced by assorted legal proceedings from landlords opposed to tenants’ rights legislation. Two-term mayor Steve Noble is facing off against Scott Denny a fellow Democrat who’s gained the Republican and Conservative endorsements on a platform he calls “Kingston United.”
“I don’t know if I’d call the change drastic, but when I came here we had a fairly vibrant two-party system. That’s not the case anymore,” observes journalist Hugh Reynolds. “Even then, it was a Democratic town, but I remember witnessing a Republican majority on the Common Council—I think it was 7-6—and in a few short years it was 12-1.”
Reynolds joined the Kingston Daily Freeman as a general assignment reporter in 1966, having taken refuge in the ink-stained life after a brief IBM sojourn in his native Poughkeepsie, and developed a network of contacts second to none; his pithy musings can now be found on the Kingston Wire and on his own eponymous website. “I’m not in favor of one-party systems; I like balance and debate,” he says. “But there’s a lot getting done, streets are getting fixed, and I’d like to think my adopted hometown is on a revival wave thanks to enormous federal investment, which we haven’t really seen since urban renewal.”
An Influx of Capital
In June, a federal grant of nearly $22 million fully funded the city’s “Weaving the Waterfront Transportation Project,” which incorporates rail trail and Complete Streets work along with flood mitigation. At the end of July came word that $17.3 million in American Rescue Plan dollars would fund the city’s Economic Recovery Plan through 2026, including $4,757,500 earmarked for housing action projects, $4,545,000 for vital infrastructure, and $1,200,000 for business development and redevelopment.
The feds aren’t the only ones investing. Peter and Jennifer Buffett’s NoVo Foundation has just launched a NoVo in Kingston branch to manage the grantmaking and capital projects it’s been engaged in with increasing intensity since 2013, supporting over 60 community organizations and nonprofits around the region with $46 million in 2021 alone. Current capital projects include two on Greenkill Avenue: the Metro, a 70,000-square-foot warehouse that will be transformed into space for hands-on education and career training, and the Greenkill House, adjacent to the Boys and Girls Club, which will offer resources and support to young adults. Representatives of NoVo in Kingston declined to be interviewed for this article.
Helping with Housing
Housing affordability was severely challenged even before the pandemic-era boom that briefly crowned Kingston the hottest market in the US in 2021. A 2022 count from CARES-NY found 409 homeless people, 105 of them children, 74 of them “chronically” homeless; nearly 1 in 5 of Kingston’s almost 25,000 residents lives in poverty. Median rent at the end of August, according to Zillow, was $1,850; and median per capita income by the latest census data (2021) was $32,587. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced that market rate rent in the Kingston Metropolitan Statistical Area, a designation that includes all of Ulster County, is expected to increase by almost 14 percent in 2024.
More affordable housing is in the pipeline. The Kingston City Land Bankwill be facilitating the rehab and resale of of seven foreclosed properties in the city.
Plans have just been announced to transform a former boarding house on Washington Avenue into 60 affordable units with support services provided by Family of Woodstock; another 164-unit affordable complex is slated for Golden Hill, on the site of the former Ulster County Jail. The Kingston Housing Authority has announced plans to add a new four-story building at its Rondout Gardens complex, adding 56 affordable units.
Another helpful development is the city’s adoption of a form-based zoning code in August, which will hopefully help to alleviate Kingston’s housing unaffordability through stimulating mixed-use development, and diverse housing types, including accessory dwelling units. The city also passed an Emergency Tenant Protection Act that established a Rent Guidelines Board under the auspices of its new Department of Housing Initiatives, freezing some rents and sparking the above-mentioned litigation.
Arts Lead the Way
“I feel very excited about where we are and where we’re going,” says Anne Bailey, who founded Bailey Pottery Equipment with her husband Jim 45 years ago in a rented garage and pickle factory on Prince Street. Bailey now employs 37 people in a 60,000-square-foot space, supplying ceramicists around the globe. “Our original model for our business wasn’t to get rich, it was to be fair to everyone—we’re both potters, and we wanted to keep our prices as low as we possibly could while paying our employees a living wage. I think we accomplished that goal, and we love being here, always have. And especially for the last 12 years, I’ve been even more involved with the arts scene here. I started by helping with economic development as a volunteer during the Sottile administration in the early 2000s, and I met fascinating people and saw how things work. Coming from an arts background, I really didn’t understand how policy can affect a community’s growth, but I became very interested in getting to know decision makers. I saw the potential for a great future for Kingston through the arts—there were already so many artists here doing incredible work, but back then they were kind of an underserved, unknown quantity.”
Bailey wasn’t alone in sensing stirrings of potential. In 2007, after Kingston made Business Week’s list of the 10 best cities for artists to live in, the energy coalesced. “A group of us—started having conversations and realized that we needed an Arts Commission, to solidify the idea that the arts were important, not just for our well-being as humans but as an important economic driver in the city,” Bailey says. The commission, formally organized in 2016, went on to found the Midtown Arts District. “It’s another platform for creating conversations around art in all neighborhoods, and all of a sudden people who didn’t typically interact were talking to each other. It’s taken hold and taken off,” says Bailey.
Arts Commission members and representatives from community organizations traveled to Pittsburgh in 2017 to meet with Bill Strickland, whose Pittsburgh Foundation focuses on expanding opportunities through the arts.
“We came away knowing this was a model that could work in Kingston,” says Bailey. “That’s always been the goal, bringing all the diverse voices of this community together, advocating for sustainable housing and opportunity for everyone. Artists are one of the first groups to get kicked out of communities, like all low-income people. We don’t want to be that kind of community; we wanted city government to stay ahead of the curve, and I think they’ve been incredibly responsive and responsible.” One of the arts leaders who went along on that trip, Center for Creative Education Executive Director Drew Andrews, has just been appointed by Noble to fill a vacant Common Council seat.
Taking Chances
Frank Waters, founder and CEO of My Kingston Kids, lost to Noble earlier this year in the Democratic mayoral primary. “I hope the mayor will incorporate some of the issues I raised into his next term,” he says. “There are challenges here, particularly with communication platforms. Trust doesn’t happen overnight; it needs to be worked on, but transparency and communication can help people begin to believe in government again. About 30 percent of the citizens aren’t online, which means that communicating through Facebook and email and your website, people just don’t get the word—meaning they don’t get the opportunities, the resources and the information about what you’re doing. You have residents here that have never seen an alderman.”
Moving to Kingston from Harlem a decade ago, Waters brought with him a track record of community organizing. My Kingston Kids is a nonprofit family resource center. Besides organizing festivities—a Halloween parade and festival is happening October 28—MKK publishes a resource guide and offers a kids’ DJ and a well-equipped gaming trailer that goes wherever it’s needed—such as an upcoming financial literacy workshop at the Broadway Bubble, a NoVo-supported laundromat and community hub offering story hours, English classes, and free Wi-Fi.
“A lot of things need to be happening simultaneously,” says Waters. “We desperately need more childcare. We need to create opportunities for young people, more green jobs, digital jobs, tax breaks for young entrepreneurs. NoVo is doing great work—they fund us along with every nonprofit board I’m on. There are always going to be hiccups, but they’re willing to take chances, knowing some things work out and others don’t.” (A NoVo-funded food co-op in Midtown recently closed its doors after trying for four years to make the math work out in a problematic building.)
More Work Ahead
“I grew up here as an IBM kid. Mom was a computer engineer,” says Common Council President Andrea Shaut, a classically trained musician finishing up her law degree with a focus on government. “I came home after college in the early 2000s, and there is much more business here now than there was then, so much great stuff—but I also see too much displacement. There’s more work ahead, but I’m proud of the things the mayor and our council have done so far. The biggest thing is the zoning—it’s not an instant fix, but it starts the ball rolling toward more housing at all levels, affordable included. When that vote passed, it was the first time in six years that my poker face broke—I started laughing with joy. We erased a 1960s code that was specifically designed to segregate people of color. That’s historic. And as long as we keep collaborating and solving problems as they arise, Kingston will stay the fantastic place it is and has always been.”
Kingston’s YWCA is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. A million-dollar grant from Mackenzie Scott in 2020 covered badly needed structural repairs. “I think we were a test case as she assessed how to make giving impactful and joyful, and it turns out that unrestricted gifts to high-functioning nonprofits make a significant impact,” says CEO Athena Fliakos. “We did a full exterior and mechanical overhaul and turned one of our buildings into a healing arts center with gallery space.” Multiple early childhood/childcare programs, including one at [Ulster County] Family Court that suffered in the pandemic have sprung back to vibrant life, with significant wage increases for care workers. NoVo has kicked in $50,000 toward a revamped playground and native pollinator garden.
“Kingston is pregnant with all kinds of economic development potential,” says Fliakos, pointing to the iPark 87 project that’s slated to bring jobs and housing to the IBM complex that’s lain fallow for years. “I also think some things are unresolved—eight generations ago people here were slaves and slave owners, and their descendants are still here, experiencing life in vastly different ways. That conversation needs to come to fruition without guilting anyone, with kindness and acknowledgement and even levity. There are still divisions that make life harder for some than for others—it needs to be a courageous conversation, and I think the YWCA can be part of facilitating that. I’m so excited to be here and have a role to play in optimizing the potential, in resolving these things in light of the new opportunities arising. Kingston gives me enormous hope.”
This article appears in October 2023.
Great Article and great writing as always by Anne Pyburn Craig