Roundup of Recent Ulster County Business-Related News, Views, Stories and More

January 2023

The New Year in Ulster County business and development news has started off with a bang, with business openings, new development announcements, proposed zoning changes, and much more.

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January Newsletter Topics Include:

ULSTER STRONG EDITORIAL: Why So Negative? Ulster County's Future is Bright

WILDFLOWER FARMS RESORT OPENS IN GARDINER

WINSTON FARM UPDATE

INTRODUCING ARCHTOP FIBER: New Internet and Phone Provider in Hudson Valley

ULSTER COUNTY'S AGRIBUSINESS IS REINVENTING ITSELF

by Bond Brungard

ULSTER HOME SALES REPORT

REPORT BY PATTERN FOR PROGRESS: Overcoming Barriers to Affordable Homeownership

PUBLIC HEARING ON KINGSTON ZONING CHANGES

EVERYONE (STILL) WANTS TO VISIT THE HUDSON VALLEY

MOST EVERYONE AGREES, GARDINER'S ZONING CODE LACKS CLARITY

Whether you were excited for it or bracing for it, Wildflower Farms is now open in Gardiner. Once known as Heartwood, it had been subject to seven full years of consideration between developers and local opposition. Set on 141 acres that were once home to a tree nursery and before that a dairy farm, the luxury brand, Auberge Resorts Collection, wants guests to relax, eat well and embrace the wild as a nature-forward and wellness-focused luxury retreat. “It’s a departure from the traditional sense of luxury,” says General Manager Manolo Sorensen. “Wildflower Farms is really about allowing nature to be wild.”

Being a part of the Auberge collection comes at a price, hitting both the pocketbooks of guests and the heartstrings of locals. Those looking to stay are met with ambitious prices throughout. Back in September when the resort first started taking reservations, rooms were advertised at over $1000/night and have since come down to just over $600 for the winter months. But, according to the friendly front desk staff, the first months were fully booked, exceeding expectations and surprising even Sorensen. “It’s very humbling to say we were undershooting a little bit. There has been tremendous interest.”....



Town of Gardiner Supervisor Marybeth Majestic notes that this type of development, which was very thoroughly reviewed by all interested parties, is not necessarily bad for the town. “They are a great asset for our community, as well as for Ulster County. They provide numerous benefits to the local people they employ, and the property will generate more real estate tax revenue than the previous use did without adding any children to the school district or any new roads for the town to maintain.”

Town Board members have adopted the Winston Farm scoping document that will be used by developers to prepare a draft for a zoning change.

Following the unanimous approval on Wednesday, Supervisor Fred Costello said the document will not reflect projects proposed for the 840-acre property, but will set the stage for development in the future at the site of the Woodstock ’94 music festival.



“This is just a step to get us to a more productive place,” he said.

Imagine a world where kids do homework in a McDonald’s parking lot or there is no option to work from home or even schedule a telehealth visit because access to reliable high speed Internet simply doesn’t exist. That’s the reality for many communities, including those in Ulster County, where high-speed, broadband Internet is unreliable - or simply not available. Archtop Fiber’s new world-class, XGS-PON Broadband Network will provide advanced connectivity, more speed, more jobs and tech-enabled opportunities to Ulster County and throughout the Hudson Valley.

“At long last, the communities of Ulster County will have access to reliable, high-speed, multi-gig fiber Internet. We are truly honored to play a key role in empowering Ulster’s businesses, schools, libraries and hospitals with the connectivity they deserve,” said Jeff DeMond, Chairman and CEO of Archtop Fiber.

Founded by a team of telecommunications veterans, Archtop Fiber is a new provider of multi-gig, 100%-fiber Internet and phone service to customers in historically underserved areas across the Northeast, including communities across New York’s Hudson Valley and Ulster County. The Archtop team has set up shop in the Town of Ulster at iPark 87 development and is leveraging their extensive experience to build a world-class, XGS-PON broadband network, bridging the digital divide and bringing a new world of connectivity to more than 500,000 businesses and households in the area. Spanning from the eastern Pennsylvania border to western Massachusetts, the new fiber-to-home network is being built to support today’s multi-gig standards with the ability to scale for future multi-100-gig and multi-terabit capacity.

“Our team has a deep compassion for communities that have been overlooked, and we are dedicated to investing locally to not only bridge the digital divide, but to bring more jobs, more tech-driven opportunities and more economic growth to this area,” adds DeMond. “As we move forward as an active member of the community and a tech partner of Ulster County, we are looking forward to providing a scalable Internet solution that will benefit the region now and for generations to follow.”

Backed by an investment of up to $350 million by Post Road Group, Archtop’s expansive market rollout plan has begun with the announcements of the acquisitions of GTel in Germantown and Hancock Telephone in Hancock, NY and recently announced Memos of Understanding (MOU) with the Town/Village of Saugerties, City of Kingston, Town of Ulster, among many more. In addition, the fiber expansion project will provide a more environmentally responsible and efficient Internet solution, allowing Hudson Valley communities to work toward meeting their sustainability and efficiency goals.

For more information about Archtop Fiber and its market expansion strategy, visit www.archtopfiber.com.

Ulster County is a leader in agriculture in the state and the nation, ranked third statewide as a producer of apples, berries, sweet corn, nuts and other fruits and ranked 15th nationally with its apple crop in a state that was second in the nation in 2017.

“Agribusiness is one of the County’s largest and most important industries. That said, our farmers have been struggling for decades to compete with large industrial scale farms elsewhere in the country,” said Tim Weidemann, the Ulster County’s director of economic development. “We’ve seen a fairly steady decline in both the number of farms and total farmland.”

 In 2017, Ulster County reportedly had 421 farms with 121 of them, 29 percent of the county total, grossing less than $2,500 in sales annually. Seventy-five farms, 18 percent of the county total, earned $100,000 in annual gross sales.

Such disparity has always existed, yet made more clear during the global viral pandemic that rearranged many economic norms. Now the county has gained national attention for popularity for its progressive ethos and as an attractive tourism destination graced by the Catskill Mountains and its spacious farmlands.

Yet, what seems like a idyllic place for those seeking a piece of that refuge, it also presents challenges for those relying on the land we all need to live and thrive.

Sales of single-family homes in Ulster County fell 20 percent in 2022 from the number sold in 2021.



At the same time, the average selling price rose by 10 percent and homes sold 3.6 percent faster, the Ulster County Board of Realtors reports.

The four key impediments to homeownership identified are:

1: Socioeconomic and Racial Disparities

2: Property Taxation Mechanisms

3. Land Use, Zoning, and Building Codes

4. Local Resistance and Lack of Capacity

The six strategies for policy solutions to help overcome these barriers are:



1: Balance Regional Needs and Local Autonomy

2: Make Property Tax a More Progressive Tax

3: Infuse Sustainability and Affordability into Zoning and Building

4: Legislate Restorative and Equitable Funding and Lending

5: Invest in Education and Communication

6: Evaluate State Funding Allocations

The Common Council’s Laws and Rules Committee will hold the hearing to take place at 6:30 p.m. at City Hall, 420 Broadway, and via Zoom at https://bit.ly/3J7e4F5 (Passcode: Hk678UNu).

In addition to the public hearing, a public comment period is open until Saturday, Feb. 18. Written comments can be sent to City Clerk Elisa Tinti at [email protected] or dropped off at City Hall.

“It is going to be a strong tourism year,” said Amanda Dana, president of Hudson Valley Tourism, a marketing organization that represents 10 counties from Westchester to Albany.



According to the 2021 report of visitor spending by region and county, the most recent on record, travelers spent $3.8 billion in the Hudson Valley. Tourism in Orange County rebounded from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic with a 63.4 percent spike growth in visitor spending, tops among all counties in the region.

The January 3 Gardiner Town Board meeting featured an update from planning consultant Dave Church on the results of his research toward revising Gardiner’s Zoning Code, a top-priority task for (Town Supervisor) Majestic and the Board in 2023. Church said that he had completed interviews with most of the major players in the processes affected by zoning law and planned to attend the Planning Board’s January meeting to discuss that body’s perceptions of changes or clarifications needed in the code.

Among the points on which all the stakeholders seem to agree, according to Church: that there’s a need for clarity on “terms that are undefined or loosely defined” in the Zoning Code; that the Town’s new Natural Resource Inventory maps should be put to use by all boards and commissions; widespread support for expansion of the Town’s central hamlet and for “stronger water resource protection.” The latter concern could spark a revisit to the watershed preservation law that was drafted in Gardiner some years back but never adopted, and perhaps the hiring of a hydrologist as a consultant.

The Town officials and employees whom Church interviewed all seemed to like the practice of holding a joint annual meeting of the Town Board, Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals, and he found “a lot of interest in a flow chart for the approval process” for their mutual use in tracking site plan applications. “The role of the ECC in conservation analysis,” an issue that has prompted controversy in the past – even triggering a mass resignation of ECC members at one point, when they felt that their hard work was being ignored by the Planning Board – remains “up for debate,” Church said.