Dozens of Middletown residents attended the first public meeting at city hall on Jan. 16 for a new state-funded study focused on redeveloping the Middletown Community Campus.
The 200-plus-acre campus off Mohagen Avenue has largely been abandoned, except for a few sites, after a major state psychiatric hospital closed around the turn of the century.
Several years ago, the sleepy campus began to welcome a new wave of private investments, which brought in an academy and college, followed by a medical center and an elementary school—a momentum that could be aided by the state program.
“This is the last largest developable property in the city,” Mayor Joseph DeStefano said at the public meeting. “We are excited about the opportunities it represents, and we need to get community input from all the stakeholders in and around the property.”
Businesses outside the campus along Mohegan Avenue are also included in the study.
Jon Tompson, a senior resident who grew up near the campus and still often takes a walk there, said that he prefers to preserve the beautiful scenery and open land on the property. When it comes to redeveloping vacant buildings, he favors advanced manufacturing.
“We have the quantum corridor running from Albany down to Westchester. We have the chips production corridor running from Syracuse up to Buffalo. And I would like to see Middletown get some of that,” Tompson said at the meeting.
Michael Fitzgerald, principal of Northern Schoolhouse on the campus, told The Epoch Times that he hopes the redevelopment will speed up and bring in more outdoor recreational opportunities for his students, such as an amphitheater or a soccer field.
“You just want to get rid of all the rubble, and you just want a beautiful place,” he said of the campus. “When people see the design, they should be inspired by it, feel more at peace with themselves, and feel that they are part of something incredible.”
While addressing a resident’s question about greater synergy between educational institutions on campus and the broader community, DeStefano shared his education-centric vision for the city.
“Middletown is an old railroad industrial town, and in the 1970s, we took a downturn, like many small cities, with the closing of factories and exodus of retail stores,” he said.
“It took a long time to redefine ourselves, and we started to focus on arts and education.”
DeStefano cited the ongoing student growth at SUNY Orange’s main campus in Middletown, the establishment of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine at the former Horton Hospital, and the Fei Tian College on the Middletown Community Campus.
According to a consultant from Hudson Valley Patten for Progress who attended the meeting, the first phase of the study will run until July, at which point a shared community vision about the campus and a defined list of sites for redevelopment will take shape.
Pattern for Progress, a regional think tank, was a co-applicant with the city of Middletown for the brownfield study grants, which have an estimated combined cost of $300,000.
The second phase, which runs from July to September, will result in a detailed redevelopment plan for the campus.
Then, by the end of the year, a final plan will be submitted so that the campus can be considered a designated “Brownfield Opportunity Area.”
If the campus is granted the state designation, it will be provided more grant opportunities, potential tax credits for desired developments, and state assistance for cleaning up any contaminated sites.
Since 2003, the state has funded more than 120 brownfield studies and designated more than 40 places as Brownfield Opportunity Areas, according to data from the New York Department of State.
However, most such studies were done in municipalities outside of the Hudson Valley, a region that deserves more attention with many of its former industrial cities plagued by urban decay, according to Adam Bosch, president of Pattern for Progress.
New York state Assemblywoman Paula Kay, Orange County Legislator Janet Sutherland, Middletown councilmen Paul Johnson and Gerald Kleiner, and state planner Susan Landfried also attended the meeting.
