Redevelopment concepts for the former Clinton Community College campus have been outlined as the college prepares to relocate.
Planning consultants for the Clinton County Industrial Development Agency on Monday outlined redevelopment concepts for the Clinton Community College site. The college is moving and will co-locate on the SUNY Plattsburgh campus. The county owns the land where the community college had been located and its IDA contracted with CPL Architecture, Engineering and Planning to study potential reuse of the site on a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain.
CPL Planning Project Manager Chirag Date described the property that sits south of the City of Plattsburgh.
“It is very close to Lake Champlain. We have an access to the lake at the northeast end and our area is around 104 acres. There are a lot of existing buildings. The Advanced Manufacturing building is something that is in active use and we were told to keep that. The old hotel building which was used by the Community College, it’s a beautiful building but it’s an old building. So it will need to be retrofitted or redeveloped,” Date said.
Date said the former campus is being envisioned for several possible uses.
“We want to maximize the buildable area of the site. We want to maximize jobs and we want to maximize revenue. We were essentially looking for something that is a unique destination.” Date continued, “The lake is right there. There’s ecology. There’s a lot of active uses that can happen, passive uses that can happen, recreation and what-not. Something that encourages multi-day explorations.”
The consultants offered three conceptual redevelopment plans. CPL planner Rebecca Keefer said Concept 1 would create a Lake Champlain Adventure and Discovery campus which would include a museum focused on Lake Champlain history and ecology. An adventure park with zip lines, obstacle courses, a culinary plaza and a festival village is also included.
“It envisions kind of a world class and also a year-round destination that blends adventure, education and also is culturally immersive and rooted in a natural and historical legacy for Lake Champlain.”
Date described Concept 2, the Champlain Nexus which adds an innovation hub.
“We added a manufacturing and research component to it to kind of have that revenue building component helping with the recreation and the destination based components.”
Concept 3 adds to the previous ideas. Keefer called it Eco-Voyage Champlain.
“Smart technology is a really important component of this as well as sustainability. And something that is strengthened in this one are the kind of public amenities, the outdoor public amenities, with kind of a town green that everything is situated off of.”
The study was commissioned in partnership with Clinton County.
Clinton County Legislature Chair Mark Henry, a Republican, expects the final plan to be an aggregation of the three concepts.
“There’s a lot of really good pieces in each one of those. I see a synthesis. It’ll be important however that we hear from everybody to see what they like. So we’re going to kind of wait and see. So I’m excited about all of it.”
While the county owns the land, the town of Plattsburgh provides infrastructure such as water and sewer. Supervisor Michael Cashman, a Democrat, told the IDA that the town intends to continue to partner with the county and developers on the project.
“We’re actually standing in the space of a former summer White House for five U.S. presidents. So that means a lot. This is a once in a generational opportunity.”
Regardless of which plan is chosen, the project is expected to be completed in four phases and take 10 to 12 years to complete.
