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Mid Hudson Times, Wednesday, October 7, 2015
How to create a thriving Main Street?
Continued from page 1
in Nyack, urging customers and residents to use fewer
plastic bags. These works have helped build her brand in
the community, she said.
The panel agreed, giving back and participating in
the community can pay big dividends, especially when
the going gets tough.
“In 2008, we lost 40 to 50 percent of our wholesale
business,” said John Gilvey, co-owner of Hudson Beach
Glass in Beacon. “It went away and it didn’t come back.
People we had been selling to went out of business.”
Some of these buyers had been in business for 20
years or more, he said. “But, the retail business kept
going,” Gilvey said. “If it hadn’t been for the retail business we would have been (toast).”
Gilvey credited the business’ survival, in part, to the
value it had in the community. “We support every major
medical charity in the Hudson Valley,” he said. Other
company charitable works include donating glass for
silent charity auctions and making glass ornaments with
kids at Christmas time. “When we do that, people get to
know us,” Gilvey said.
As painful as it was, the recession provided valuable
lessons, said former City of Newburgh Mayor Nick
Valentine, owner of Broadway Tailors. “The recession
was the busiest time in my store,” the tailor said. “People
hold on to the clothes they have during tough times.”
Valentine recalled when he was mayor, the city made
an effort to sell off some of its distressed properties. “We
invited every real estate developer to come and look at
these properties and said, ‘Can you do something with
them?’”
Some buildings were sold and some were not, he said.
“It was a start,” said Valentine
Now that the city is on the rebound, with distressed
properties slowly being redeveloped, reducing blight is a
priority. “We need to keep it clean,” he said, describing a
new initiative to designate “block captains” to help keep
streets tidy. “Someone who owns a business that will
take on the block and introduce themselves to people and
say, ‘Here’s when you take out the garbage … and then
monitor it.’”
Regarding development along Broadway, he said,
“Broadway is so big, so long and so wide, it hurts us in
trying to develop it … we’re looking at shrinking parts of
it.”
He continued, “You’ve got to squeeze it from both
ends until all of it is developed. I think we’re headed in
the right direction.”
It’s the new, younger wave of businesses and entrepreneurs that will bring the change needed to the city,
Valentine asserted. “It’s not going to be my business that
changes the landscape in Newburgh,” said Valentine.
“It’s that new business from Brooklyn that decided to
open on Liberty Street … they bring new energy.”
He praised the City of Newburgh Police Department,
which stepped up community policing this year. “All of
a sudden, police started getting out of their cars,” said
Gilvey, expressing gratitude for more community policing in Beacon and “a city council and a mayor that really
want to make things happen.”
Town of Newburgh stays within tax cap
Continued from page 1
highway spending. The 2016 tentative budget that is to
be presented to the public during a public hearing at 7
p.m. on Nov. 2 comes in at $18,133,648 -- $2