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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Warming center opens at 104 Lander Street
By KATELYN CORDERO
[email protected]
The warming center on 104 South
Lander Street is open early this year to
accommodate the homeless population of
Newburgh. The center opened on Friday,
November 9, thanks to the hard work of
The Newburgh Ministry. The center will
remain open until April 30, 2019, when the
weather gets warmer.
The center is open from 4 p.m. to 8:15
a.m. each day. To request a bed you must
arrive to the facility at 4 p.m.
Discussions over the opening of the
warming center were tense with The
Newburgh Ministry and uncertain until
days before opening if they would have
the building ready in time. In council
meetings the building is described by
Councilwoman Hillary Rayford as an
unfit property.
“We know the building is not up for
shelter right now,” said Rayford, at a
city council meeting on October 22. “128
Broadway is more permissible, so maybe
we won’t have to trouble the heights area
because we know there’s a playground
where kids go right next door. It wouldn’t
help the taxpayers who are already
complaining about the activities going on
in the heights.”
A walk through at the shelter after its
opening on Friday with Sally McAndrews,
Supervisor of the Warming Station,
will show an empty building with no
surrounding activity during the day.
The building has no clear deficiencies
aside from plumbing issues, that are being
remediated. According to Colin Jarvis,
Anyone in need of a warm bed can find one at 104 South Lander Street.
Director of The Newburgh Ministry, the
building will need work done to the roof,
This situation is being remediated in the
coming week. He has not experienced any
significant leaks or running water into
the building due to issues with the roof.
During operating hours, upon entering
the building you will go through the
proper security check. A client or guest
will show their ID or give their name.
Staff will ask them to empty all pockets, to
then get patted down. Any illegal drugs or
drug paraphernalia discovered is turned
over to the police.
Each time a guest leaves the building
they must empty out all their pockets and
get checked again.
“We have to operate our facility with
the highest regard for safety, for our staff
and our clients.” said Jarvis. “At the end
of the day we are saving 31 people from
freezing their butts in conditions that are
not too shabby. Nobody is shooting up
drugs, not in the facilities we operate.”
In the three nights since opening the
facility, the warming center has served
between 25 to 31 people each night. The
center has a low turnover rate, with many
people coming back to the same bed each
night.
The center serves men and women
with separate sleeping quarters, men
in the upstairs and women in a large
room on the lower level. They offer
limited services, such as an Alcoholics
Anonymous group that will meet at the
shelter each week with staff members
leading the discussions.
“There is a significant level of difficulty
with running this facility,” said Jarvis.
“We are barely covering all the costs.
For many of these people this is the first
time they will sleep indoors since May.
These are the people you would see on the
news freezing to death in an abandoned
building, sleeping under bridges. This is
where we are right now.”
Expansion planned for Purple Heart Hall of Honor
By WAYNE A. HALL
Gov. Andrew Cuomo kicked off a $10-million-dollar”
expansion of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor in
New Windsor last Monday.
That’s a potentially tremendous boost to the museum
that now sees an average of 26,000 visitors a year who
come to experience the New Windsor-based museum’s
unique display of memorabilia and riveting first-person
accounts by combat veterans whose wounds earned
them purple hearts.
Museum backers had urged state lawmakers to expand
the over overwhelmingly popular museum that sees
26,000 visitors a year.
“We expect those visitor numbers to increase at the
Cantonment,” once site upgrades kick in, said James F.
Hall, executive director of the Palisades Interstate Park
Commission which oversees the planned Purple Heart
museum upgrades.
The upgrades include enhanced and interactive
exhibits and galleries, improved pedestrian circulation
throughout the museum, parking upgrades and walkway
improvements.
The museum plans to expand exhibits, said Hall, to
make them more accessible where necessary.
On the to-do list are also improving museum guest
movement circulation to the various displays.
“The building will also be expanded with a new wing,”
Hall added.
“Finding ways to improve visitor’s experiences is the
goal of the project,” said Hall.
“This place is small but very tastefully put together,”
wrote one visitor on the museum’s comment diary.
An advisory committee that includes museum goers
and veterans has been working on display upgrade
proposals.
The overwhelming positive response from museum
goers is also about the unique audio and visual records
of Purple Heart recipients.
By its very nature the Purple Heart Hall of Honor
museum is a repository for combat histories, which
makes it unique. It is designed to connect museum goers
with those who earned the Purple Heart in the soldiers’
own words and actions of bravery.
The expansion includes a new wing with “enhanced
and interactive exhibits and galleries, a redesigned
entrance, public gathering space, improved pedestrian
circulation and increased programming.”
As for the money to upgrade the National Purple
Heart Hall of Honor it came in a Nov. 10 deal between
Democratic state lawmakers and Republicans to name
the Tapan Zee Bridge after past governor Mario Cuomo
in return for the $10-million-dollar New Windsor Purple
Heart Hall of Honor.