At the Plattsburgh Common Council’s last meeting, city leaders discussed whether a new feasibility study should be conducted before the city approves a development agreement for a waterfront hotel. Opinion was mixed with some councilors voicing concerns about study redundancy and others worried about past development failures at the site. Mayor Chris Rosenquest says another study could stall efforts to develop the so-called Harborside area of the city. Rosenquest sat down with WAMC’s North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley:
I think it would be an unnecessary expense for the city, given that we've done a number of these specific feasibility studies already, or certainly best new studies that say this is the best use for this property. We've got a developer that is willing to spend the money to do the work. Again, a lot of the protections that some councillors are concerned over are built into the development agreement as they should be. And that is the mechanism that does protect the city and the city taxpayers. And again, this isn't a dollar deal. We've never talked about this being a dollar deal. This is a fair market value for prime waterfront property that the best use is geared towards a hotel. And I think at this point, if if the attitude on the council is to move forward because this is something that is the best thing for the city od Plattsburgh, we should move forward with it.
Considering the fact that that property, that area, has not been developed in the past, has run into problems with development in the past, are you surprised that there's some tentativeness about it and some calls for another feasibility study?
I'm not surprised by it and I think it's cautious to go into these. It's appropriately cautious to go into these deals with some maybe a healthy level of skepticism. When it comes down to it, that healthy level of skepticism is addressed and can be addressed effectively, again, through a very comprehensive development agreement that has a number of protections for the city, including financing protections and the project needs to be financed for the development agreement to be effective and needs to be completed before the property is conveyed over. There's a number of other factors that does also protect the city and ensures the development is complete. That development agreement alone combined with the number of best use studies that say this is the best use for this property, regardless of when those were, we could probably do one tomorrow, and it probably would say the same thing. That's why that parking lot was developed in the first place. That's what we've been trying to attract there for decades now. And it's about time and we're very excited to have a project like this in the heart of our downtown right on our waterfront. And, again, this is an opportunity for the city to continue to grow as we've seen in the last couple of years.
During the city council meeting you broke the tie for the revised five year plan. It was revised after the city council rejected the original. What changed?
Well, every, all the council was involved in the revision of the five-year plan. If folks will recall the original plan was presented based on demands and based on concerns expressed by council. At that point when it was produced to council there were some concerns we didn't have enough time to review it. It was withdrawn from the agenda for further review. My office received no comments on the document after it was withdrawn. It was presented again to the public and to council, the full council. Again, no comments were made at that time. No changes were suggested at that time. It was pushed to a regular meeting where it was voted down as you just reminded folks. Again, it went back to another public hearing or another public meeting where members of the council made some suggestions for changes. Those suggestions for changes were incorporated. And then again presented back to them for I think a third or fourth time at the Finance Committee meeting. No comments for changes were made then. The plan that was presented was based on the public meeting that the council called, special meeting that the council called. And so that was the plan that they made changes to and that was presented for approval. I don't know where people's thinking is about the plan itself. Again, it's just a projection. I'm not frustrated. I'm not. Maybe I might be a little bit surprised considering that plans in the past that we've approved with not as much as this debate and consternation has been running the city in double digit millions of negative dollars over the years. But that seemed to be completely fine to accept. Where this one is a little bit more aggressive, maybe a little bit more optimistic in terms of moving the needle to the more positive side of revenues in the city. But again, it's still a projection whichever way you go on it on and we take a look at it as one tool that we use to guide the budget process which we're about to start now.
Well, I think what I was curious about was not so much what changed with the council and its attitude but what changed in the document?
What changed in the document from when it was first proposed was the mill rate. And that was the only thing that changed in the document. Counselor (Elizabeth) Gibbs (Ward 3 Democrat) wanted a $10 mill rate. No problem adding it in. We added it in, presented it back, and there were still a little bit of debate on whether or not it was to be accepted. So that was it.
And yet, you still debated it for 15 - 20 minutes, I think.
Yeah. And again, like this, the document has been in front of the council, the full council, multiple times now. And it's a document that they can change on their own. They do not need my office. They do not need the Chamberlain's office to change it. They are allowed to change this document. It's a council driven document. The mayor's part of the council, but it is a council driven document that can be manipulated and changed by them and presented by them. So there's no real reason why any changes that they wanted to see couldn't be made and presented to the full council. Again, it's a projection. It's one piece to the entire picture of how the budget gets shaped,
The Crete Memorial Civic Center. The building itself is now gone. They're cleaning up the residue that is there. What happens now?
it's returned to green space and we kind of just vision out what we'd like to see there. We already have had a number of organizers come to the city of Plattsburgh asking, hey, can we put on a concert here? Can we put on a festival? We might be a year or two years out from that. But still, you know, when we look at the best use of that property, you know, a lot of people think they could, it would be a nice music venue. And that's music space, some type of event space. I think the Mayor's Cup certainly has planted a seed for many people. The Mayor's Cup has been out there, operating out there for the last three years. You know, the first year I was very skeptical having the Mayor's Cup out there. Just to be honest, you know, we've always had the Mayor's Cup downtown. It's always been successful downtown. When Noon or when Sunrise Rotary came to the city and said, hey, we would like to try using the beach for Mayor's Cup, we kind of like, I don't know, gnashed our teeth a little bit and said I don't know about this. It's you know, it kind of breaks the tradition of having it downtown. But I mean if you've been following my administration, I've been breaking traditions since 2021 and so we kind of went along with it. And it's been a really great success. And I think people have seen the growing nature of that, of using the beach as an event space, especially hosting music. And so we do have a number of people that have been reaching out and asking hey can we use this? Can we use this beach as a music venue? I don't know if that's going to be permanent there. But right now, as we return the property to green space and open recreation space, you know, it's almost like starting with a blank canvas. You start with a blank canvas, you can just start to envision, envision what the potential is for that property for generations to come. And so we'll sit on it for a bit and continue that work to restore that property to green space and maybe attract a couple more concerts out there.
Well, speaking of the beach, which is adjacent to the Crete Civic Center site, it's now reopened but it had closed for the first time this summer due to E coli. Some people kind of looked at that and thought, gee, is that because of the Vermont flooding and the pollution that's running into the lake. Any idea what caused it?
It's really speculative. I know that we heard about a wastewater pipe that was broken in the Winooski River. We heard about you know, we always hear about farm runoff out of Scomotion Creek. We always hear about sewer overflows in the city of Plattsburgh. We hear about birds and birds living and playing on the beach and flying around. Like all of these things do contribute to these environmental factors. It's very challenging to pinpoint one specific instance of why this happened and how this happened. I will say that we the city Plattsburgh we test on a regular basis based on Clinton County Health Department regulations. We submit those tests. We do daily visual inspections of the property for blue green algae and any other environmental changes that happen in the water. And the moment that we do know that the water is not safe we take immediate action and then we continue to test and that's no different than what we did now. We took the test. We saw that there was an issue. We closed the beach for swimming. We test every day subsequent to receiving a test with high, with elevated E coli levels. And we then submit those tests back to the health department for confirmation that we can reopen. No difference here. So people should know that we do follow protocol and that's really critical for us to ensure the safety of our beachgoers, residents and visitors and so we take pride in the park itself. But when swimming is not available, we still say you know there's still biking, there's still walking, there's still you know you can sit on the side and go with Cabana Bar as well if you want to go hang out at the beach. But just don't swim in it when that happens. And but yeah at this point the beach is open, confirmed testing does a lot for the beach to be open and again we do this in partnership with the Health Department.
And the other thing that is going on in the city is the reconstruction of Margaret Street. How have you been interacting with the businesses as this has been continuing?
Yeah, sure. So even just today, we did a door to door to get out to businesses. We've got a survey that we are handing out to businesses right now. Over the last couple of weeks we've sent out emails to businesses, impacted businesses, to submit information that we are using to potentially and hopefully create a program that provides some financial relief as well as some business support through the Small Business Development Center on business marketing, business planning, and any other kinds of business support that they might need to help them through this season and even into next. The financing piece is a little more challenging. I know people have wanted us to get grants. As much as we have tried to get grants and look for grants, there's just no grant opportunities for impacted businesses for infrastructure. That's just the same reason why you can't file an insurance claim because your street's getting dug up and your business is being interrupted. That's part of it. It's kind of the nature of doing business in a municipality, unfortunately, and especially in the heart of our downtown, which is unavoidable. So what we're looking at is leveraging parts of the revitalized revolving loan fund that we've re-re-launched in the last couple of years since I've been here, using that as a tool to provide no or low interest loans, long term payback cycles for those low to no interest loans. But we're still working out what that looks like in partnership with the businesses that have been impacted. I think it'd be hard pressed for the city to create some type of package or to create some type of program without business input. And so that's what we've been doing over the last couple of weeks is we've been out there, either through email, but like I said door to door today to talk to impacted businesses to say, hey look, we're interested in how you been directly impacted, tangibly impacted, and what that looks like in terms of financial loss, in terms of issues with getting people in the door, in terms of just the facade, what your facade is doing and if it's dirty or messy and then just trying to better understand how we can provide financial support and business support to get them through this time.
What are they telling you about whether their business is losing money or losing customers?
Oh, sure, like, yeah, it's understandable and it was expected. I mean you go back to day one when we said, hey, by the way, we're seeing problems with this infrastructure and rather than waiting for a catastrophic failure, like we saw in Lake Country Village, we're gonna get ahead of this and we're going to plan for it. We started that in December in September of 2021. And I will tell you one of the first things I said is that this is going to be a major disruption to how we do business in the city of Plattsburgh for the time of this construction. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go to Lake Placid. Just take a look at what Lake Placid is dealing with. It's a similar concern that what we're dealing with a full depth water sewer replacement project with hard surface replacement in the heart of our downtown. It is not going to be avoidable. There's going to be trouble. There's going to be drama. It's going to be hard for us to get through this. So start preparing now. Unfortunately, some people listened. Some people didn't. When the construction did happen people were saying what is happening here? Why? What's going on? What are you doing to us? And I know it's frustrating. I'm a downtown business owner. Please, please understand, like, I know what it means to make the majority of my business' money during this time of year. But unfortunately, we live in an environment where we cannot dig in the ground in the summer, or in the wintertime, we've got to do in the summertime. And really what we've been trying to do is get this done as quickly as possible. We've run into a couple hiccups here and there, nothing that has stopped the project, maybe delayed it a couple days, a couple of days or so. But still we've been moving very quickly. We've had great feedback. The majority of the feedback has been fantastic from the developer, the engine, the construction manager, as well as the construction company doing the work. And people have just been mostly great about it after getting through that initial shock phase of what's going on here. So we're happy with the progress. And again, we are looking to support businesses. There are, there is and we knew that there was going to be business impact and we're trying to figure out exactly what that is, less anecdotal information, more on the ground information and do something to help.
