By William J. Kemble
Daily Freeman
TOWN OF ULSTER, N.Y. — Housing and jobs proposed for iPark 87 were the optimistic part of 2023, but such economic development may need emergency services discussions aimed at establishing an ambulance district in 2024, town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley said.
Quigley has already begun reviewing the future of health-related care needs after Westchester Medical Center’s Health Alliance hospitals in Kingston stopped admitting new patients and then offloading existing patients for six days due to a cyberattack. He added that the problems, which included having to transport patients long distance, comes on top of services that were already becoming expensive.
“I believe this is going to come to a head in 2024 for the town of Ulster,” he said.
“Mobile Life (now Empress EMS) has asked the city of Kingston for a $1 million subsidy to provide service,” Quigley said. “This is happening all over Mobile Life’s service territories and the topic that has been brewing at the local meeting has been the unavailability of ambulances at the time of need and our fire companies with increasing frequency have been calling Northern Dutchess, Diaz, Esopus, Hurley to backfill these ambulance calls.”
Quigley said the town has taken pre-emptive steps, including reviewing financial, logistical and legal issues to assure high-quality ambulance service in the town.
“There are many complicating factors like other ambulance services getting a certificate of need from the (state) Department of Health to serve the town of Ulster, how do we compensate them, do we get into a contractual arrangement, do we go to bid, do we form an ambulance district, do we put this in the general fund?” Quigley said.
The ambulance concerns are taking place at the same time that iPark 87 developer National Resources was seeking zoning changes. Those revisions for land use regulations include plans for 880 housing units.
“There is the expectation that should the Planning Board grant approval, there will be a groundbreaking (in 2024) for a residential building and that will be the first building to be built on that site since 1980,” Quigley said. “So I do think it’s a landmark event.”
Development of housing at iPark 87 combined with active recruitment efforts for new tenants is considered a sign of confidence for ancillary retail businesses that there is growth occurring in Ulster County’s largest commercial hub.
“The fact that a commitment has been made and construction...is assumed to be starting is communicating to the real estate market that the project has life,” Quigley said. “That should give those customers of commercial space confidence that housing for their workers is being addressed.”
Significant changes in the Ulster Avenue retail corridor are not expected in 2024 after L.L. Bean arrives in the first quarter of the year, but a study is planned on how well traffic flows between the various shopping centers.
The county is going to study traffic that goes from the roundabout near Kingston to U.S. Route 209 to Central Hudson, Quigley said. “It’s going to address pedestrian usage, bicycle usage, turn lanes, the length of time it takes to transit through the corridor, the number of left-hand turns across traffic, and the fact that on a busy weekend like (Christmas weekend) you see traffic backed up all the way up onto to 209, up the ramp when they’re trying to go to Walmart and Sam’s Club .”
Although the expansion of new retailers has slowed going into 2024, there are signs that the local economy is seeing growth, he said.
“Giving our proximity to the city of New York, where we have so many of these people coming up from the city, we’re getting the influx that are sustaining the businesses that would fall off during a recession,” Quigley said.
(c)2023 Daily Freeman, Kingston, N.Y.
Visit Daily Freeman, Kingston, N.Y. at https://www.dailyfreeman.com/
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.