Awarded a $10 million grant in January, 2023 to revitalize its downtown, Ticonderoga in Essex County, NY, has launched the public planning process that will determine how best – and most strategically – to use the new funds. Ticonderoga is a historic community which lies between Lake George and Lake Champlain and is home to Fort Ticonderoga. [Read more…] about New York State Invests $10 Million in Ticonderoga Downtown Revitalization
Economic Development
Adirondack Rural Revitalization Program Launched
The Adirondack Rural Revitalization Program (ARRP) is supported in part by a Paul Bruhn Historic Revitalization Grant from the Historic Preservation Fund administered by the National Park Service, Department of the Interior. This program funds capital rehabilitation projects that foster community vibrancy and enhance sense of place within our region’s community and agricultural centers, with a focus on historic main street and agricultural buildings. [Read more…] about Adirondack Rural Revitalization Program Launched
Common Ground Alliance Offers Adirondack Recommendations
The Adirondack Common Ground Alliance (CGA) is a network of stakeholders focused on addressing issues that affect the Adirondack Park – specifically, though not exclusively, environmental protection, economic development, and community vitality.
Their goal is to facilitate dialogue and identify collaborative solutions that improve the Park and its communities for generations to come. Since 2007, CGA has organized an annual forum, yielding an agreed upon set of recommendations for state action referred to as the “Blueprint for the Blue Line.” [Read more…] about Common Ground Alliance Offers Adirondack Recommendations
The Adirondack Park Agency At 50: State Leaders Are Missing The Point
Well, it’s happened again. Another state budget is proposed by the Executive, wherein the Adirondack Park Agency’s legislated job is mischaracterized by this Governor’s (and former governors’) budget divisions as working “to achieve a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development opportunities for the residents of the Adirondack Park” (2023 Executive Budget Briefing Book).
Balance is an important goal to strive for in our individual lives. However, nothing in the Adirondack Park Agency law, now reaching 50 years old in May, calls for “a balance between strong environmental protection and sustainable economic development.” [Read more…] about The Adirondack Park Agency At 50: State Leaders Are Missing The Point
NYS Public Authorities Debt Has Ballooned to $329 Billion
State and local public authorities reported debt outstanding totaling more than $329 billion in their most recently reported fiscal years, an increase of 23% ($61.5 billion) since 2017, according to a report released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. [Read more…] about NYS Public Authorities Debt Has Ballooned to $329 Billion
Upstate Cities Turn To Canal Heritage For Economic Development
Upstate New York’s largest urban centers are pursuing economic development strategies that include a major focus on their canal heritage. [Read more…] about Upstate Cities Turn To Canal Heritage For Economic Development
Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)
Rural gentrification has appeared in almost every region, from Big Sky territory to the Rockies to Prairie Country to New England to the American South. Outside the United States, it has been documented in Spain, Turkey, Sweden, New Zealand, France, Canada, Ireland, Japan, Taiwan, and especially Britain.
While the details vary from place to place, most gentrifying rural communities suffer the same consequences: the displacement of the rural working class, the decline of available space for social reproduction, and the aging of the vestigial population. Yet if rural America is united in its symptoms, it is divided by its disease. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Resortification & Urbanization (Part 6)
Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)
In the spring of 1989, the Adirondack working class received an alarming wake-up call in the unlikely form of Robin Leach. The Adirondacks, according to the garrulous host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, were a hidden jewel just waiting to be discovered by travelers with a taste for wilderness and the purchasing power to claim a slice of nature-at-its-moneyed-best for their very own. The show had even gone so far as to list the remote and rugged mountains as an “upcoming hot spot for jet-setters” in its “Guide to the World’s Best Places.”
Leach’s prediction had been well borne out by the mid-1990s. “Rough It Like A Rockefeller,” proclaimed one strapline in the travel section of the Wall Street Journal, while an article in Vanity Fair encouraged readers to go “camp hopping in the haute Adirondacks” and Travel and Leisure billed it as a place where “the notion of escape endures.” Such articles, liberally sprinkled with posh photographic layouts depicting the rich at play in tastefully rustic lodges nestled on the shores of gleaming silver lakes, recommended such accommodations as The Point in Lake Placid, where guests could take in the clean mountain air for a mere $1300 a night.
Beemers had been traded for sport utility vehicles, and the Adirondacks, it appeared, had become an exclusive retreat for well-heeled consumers seeking respite from their taxing cosmopolitan lives in the newly fashionable wilderness. [Read more…] about Adirondack Gentrification: Seasonal Development & The Rent Sink (Part 5)
The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)
“Just close the fucking thing.”
These words of quiet despair were uttered twenty years ago in the aftermath of a meeting at the Raquette Lake School, whose imminent demise was increasingly apparent to the people of the village. The atmosphere at the Tap Room, the unofficial community center where attendees had decamped to face the inevitable over a beer, was raw.
The man who issued the fatal prognosis relished it neither as a parent nor an alumnus. But the writing was on the wall. Pupils had dwindled to single digits, too few for a play or a baseball team, never mind the district budget for utilities, maintenance, transportation and salaries. With no babies on the horizon, the current crop of children would age out, and there would soon be none left to educate. [Read more…] about The Devil’s Due: Adirondack Gentrification & Environmental Justice (Part 1: Displacement)
Survey: Many Say They Plan To Become Adirondack Residents
New research conducted by Camoin 310 of Saratoga Springs for the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) in Lake Placid and the Economic Development Corporation of Warren County (EDC) shows there is a strong interest for relocation to the Adirondacks across all income brackets in the Regional Market Area. This area includes New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire, and New Jersey. [Read more…] about Survey: Many Say They Plan To Become Adirondack Residents