HYDE PARK, Jun 27, 2012 — Over the years, few towns have seen development plans come and go like Hyde Park. Just getting a big supermarket to move across Route 9 has taken an interminably long time, though thankfully that project is now under way. Efforts continue to connect the vibrant but separate parts of the town center by filling the vacant buildings. So does enhancing the important Route 9 gateways to that center and seeing more businesses come in along the 9G corridor.
Few proposals, though, symbolize the frustration that residents have felt more than ones floated for a sprawling property just south of St. Andrews Road off Route 9. This is the important southern gateway to the town center, and at one time a proposal for mixed use of homes and apartments, a hotel and conference center, and generous green space was being heralded a “model development” by Dutchess County officials. The development was supposed to include a sewer treatment plan that would serve existing businesses along Route 9.
But that project came and went, crushed, in part, by the recession, as did the rather lackluster idea to build a supermarket at the location.
Now a new proposal – called St. Andrew’s at Historic Hyde Park – is being touted, and it is hoped the developers can get traction, can come before the planning board soon with a tangible project that involves a good mix of uses – and strengthens Hyde Park’s all-important tourism industry.
In February, the investment firm T-Rex Capital Group acquired the 340-acre site for $2.88 million, buying the debt on the land from a bank through foreclosure. The developers say they intend to seek planning board approval to do the project in phases, including building a hotel, shops, a village green and a mix of single-family homes, townhouses and rental apartments.
While the plans have not been finalized, they intend is to do something smaller than the earlier mixed-use project proposed for the site, which included 400,000 square feet of commercial space and more than 550 dwellings.
“The things we are going to emphasize are the hotel and the tourism component of it,” Joseph Gaudio, project consultant, told the Journal. “What will be de-emphasized will be the retail.”
Another hotel project in the area is much further along as developer New Ventures at Hyde Park is ready to build a high-end hotel and conference center at the Culinary Institute of America across Route 9 from the St. Andrew’s project.
These initiatives are far better than having gas stations or isolated supermarkets serve as the town’s southern gateway. The St. Andrews project in particular has strong potential to be linked immediately to the town center and its tourist destinations via a walking/biking trail. But, first, the developers have to come forward with the specifics for a parcel that has plenty of potential but so far has been the site of disappointments.
Reprinted from the Poughkeepsie Journal online