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A few miles from the Hudson River, where north-south corridors for rail and truck commerce run through, resides Supervisor Jim Quigley’s office in Ulster town hall, just a few minutes drive from concentrated pockets of business activity in the Ulster County.
“We are a specific geographic location,” said Quigley, a Republican in his final term in his 15th year as supervisor. “Businesses either want to locate here because we have resources and attributes that will make it profitable, or they want to locate here because their customer base is here.”
The county and Town of Ulster benefit being about 100 miles north from New York City, and both the county and the Big Apple have strong ties to each other with trade over the centuries. Pennsylvania coal once flowed through the D&H canal terminus on the Rondout Creek to heat New York City, and natural cement, once mined locally, helped build NYC infrastructure. County villages and hamlets vanished, so reservoirs could be built over them to send fresh water to New York City. In-turn city residents fled north to Ulster County to enjoy the space, clean air, fresh water, food and drink.
This connected relationship still happens today, with remote work, vastly expanded during COVID pandemic, sent streams of New York City metro residents north, pushing rents and home prices has high as ever as more goods are manufactured locally to serve the Big Apple.
It’s in this business environment that Quigley, as the town’s top elected official, and a Republican within an ever-expanding Democratic-leaning county, is especially connected - to market forces and the regulations governing development.
“It’s doesn’t matter (what I think,),” said Quigley, who has a background in commercial real estate, “it’s whether the proposals fit within the confines of the regulatory body of law. And more importantly, can the town’s infrastructure absorb it.”
Examples of Quigley working with businesses to find solutions are extensive. When Bread Alone wanted to build a bakery to serve customers on the I-95 corridor from Boston to Washington D.C. and its base here, Quigley said a 1,500-ft sewer extension was built and the capacity created to make that happen.
The Romeo car dealerships needed expansion approval to fit a financing deadline it was facing, and the planning board worked with them and Quigley to ensure that could happen.
When a McDonald’s contractor needed approval for renovations, the planning board helped with efficient processing. The Hudson Valley Mall, decimated by e-commerce and changes in retail, became an attractive space for the Nuvance Health Medical Practice. Quigley said he worked with them to ensure they understood how the planning process works in the town.
“The planning board has now taken on my attitude of being proactive and supportive within the rules,” he said. “Mostly everything gets relayed to the county planning board, which is another level of review. So we’re now conscious of what comments are [likely] going to come back from county, and we know how we are going to handle it.”
Now, redevelopment is underway at the former IBM campus, less than a mile from Quigley’s town hall office. After Big Blue vacated the plant in the mid-90s, a developer bought it and did little but leave large mounds of asbestos on the property.
The carcinogenic minerals have been removed, and the 200-acre complex has been re-named iPark 87 by a new owner with future plans for hundreds of units of workforce housing, film, media, food and beverage production and other forms of manufacturing.
“iPark is a very complex situation that will take time to sort itself out,” said Quigley.
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