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
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
New Strategy Focuses On Attracting New Adirondack Residents
The Northern Forest Center has released a new strategy outlining how Adirondack communities can arrest demographic and economic decline by attracting new residents. With an aging population, many Adirondack communities are struggling to maintain strong schools, a robust workforce, and vital civic institutions. [Read more…] about New Strategy Focuses On Attracting New Adirondack Residents
State Issues New Plan For Historic Adirondack Rail Line
The New York State Departments of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and Transportation (DOT) have announced the release of a draft Remsen-Lake Placid Travel Corridor Unit Management Plan (UMP) Amendment/Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).
The amended proposal comes after the operators of the Adirondack Scenic Railroad, which ran on the line between Saranac Lake and Lake Placid, successfully sued the state. They successfully argued that the State’s plan to turn the historic railroad line into a rail-trail did not comply with state historic preservation law or the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.
The decision was handed down by State Supreme Court Judge Robert Main Jr. in 2017. In December, 2018 the state Adirondack Park Agency changed the “travel corridor” definition in the State Land Master Plan to allow for the removal of the rails. [Read more…] about State Issues New Plan For Historic Adirondack Rail Line
A Rochester Worker’s Cottage Has Lessons For Today
I grew up in an immigrant neighborhood close to downtown Rochester, New York in the 1950s. People displaced during the Second World War, along with migrants from the American South and Puerto Rico, were the newest arrivals to my part of the city (settled by Europeans in the last decades of the 19th century).
The housing stock was old. Our house was built in 1895 by a German immigrant laborer from a pattern book plan, many of which were available in German language editions. It was a classic one and half story, front gable, wood frame worker’s cottage. It provided inexpensive housing for the rapidly expanding workforce needed for mid to late 19th-century industrial cities. When I grew up, my single-parent mom’s assembly line job at Bausch and Lomb Optical Company allowed her to be a homeowner and to support her mother and three children. [Read more…] about A Rochester Worker’s Cottage Has Lessons For Today
REDC Funding for History Projects and State Parks
For the history community, one of the most important resources for Regional Economic Development Council (REDC) funding has been the New York State Office of Parks and Historic Preservation (State Parks), despite the agency is mostly concerned with parks, not historic sites.
[Read more…] about REDC Funding for History Projects and State Parks
Feinman: 2018 REDC Grants and NYS History
In December the latest round of Regional Economic Development Council (REDC) awards for 2018 were announced. The awards distribute funds to the different regions of the state by category. This week I reviewed the awards from I LOVENY, and listed them in alphabetical order by region and county. [Read more…] about Feinman: 2018 REDC Grants and NYS History