Affordable housing, water works, Smarth Growth in Town of Plattsburgh
Feb. 28—PLATTSBURGH — The Town of Plattsburgh's busyness defies COVID-19.
Behavioral Health Services North and ETC Housing Corp. received $10.7 million from the New York State Office of Home and Community Renewal to build 80 units of affordable housing.
NEW NEIGHBORHOOD
"The Northwoods Housing project is going to be located behind Lenny's Shoe and Apparel," Town of Plattsburgh Supervisor Michael Cashman said.
"We are waiting for them to fully activate. We imagine that there are phases of construction that could start as early as this spring.
"That was a competitive award. The build out will be constructed on approximately 13 acres and that is situated off the Tom Miller Road."
The project is a unique, collaborative multi-agency effort between BHSN and ETC Housing Corp.
"What makes it special is 40 of the 80 units will be identified for homeless individuals and families that need support services," Cashman said.
"What is powerful about it, too, is the location of this project. It fits within the Town's effort to activate our Smart Growth Plan in the uptown corridor because it is ideally situated as a live-work-play environment that abuts up to the access of things like employment, healthcare, retail and recreation."
The Town of Plattsburgh anticipates and remains hopeful about the project.
"Obviously, COVID-19 and many other things continue to play an impact on that, but we anticipate late spring," he said.
WELL DONE
Progress continues on the Town of Plattsburgh's Water Capital Plan.
"We had been working on redoing critical infrastructure out on the old Air Force Base (New Base)," Cashman said.
"That project made great gains and will continue once the construction season starts ramping back up in the spring of 2021 as well."
Another infrastructure related project is off of the Quarry Road.
"All of these are interconnected to the master Water Capital Plan, which represents the efforts of our $24 million Water Capital Plan," he said.
MORE SMART GROWTH
The Town of Plattsburgh is also working on another Smart Growth project with the Clinton County Board of Realtors.
"In mid-November, we were able to secure two grants due to a public-private partnership with them where we are going to be launching a new layer of Smart Growth planning that is directly connected to the old Clinton County Airport," Cashman said.
"What we're doing is not only are we going to be doing some Smart Growth plannng, but we are also going to be hosting a webinar for local developers and stakeholders about Smart Growth planning and zoning in the near future."
As the Town of Plattsburgh wrapped up 2020, it saw hundreds of thousands of new square feet of business.
"Largely because we were able to maintain an continuance of governance by keeping our Zoning Board of Appeals and our Planning Board projects moving forward," he said.
"What is interesting is we saw approximately $25 million of investment in the Town of Plattsburgh last year. That becomes critical."
Approximately 500 building permits last year were among the flurry of activity and local investment that occurred even during the pandemic.
"That's because we look at government at the local level of trying to be solution-focused that adopts creativity to meet the challenges of the times that we're facing," Cashman said.
"Some of that was using adaptive methodologies like having Zoom meetings, right? No one was having Zoom meetings the year before that.
"But we found a way and we were able to work with developers to make sure projects could stay on the path that they needed to be on."
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Twitter:@RobinCaudell
