With housing costs in Ulster County skyrocketing beyond the ability of many residents to pay, planners at both the county and municipal level are looking for ways to incentivize new residential developments geared toward providing “workforce housing” rather than milking unaffordable market rates. So it was that a thriving New Paltz-based entrepreneur found a receptive audience in the Gardiner Town Board when he approached them on August 13 with a proposal — still in its preliminary stages — to renovate and expand a former restaurant building to increase the supply of affordable housing units in that town. The catch: The mixed-use project won’t fly financially unless the town is willing to extend its downtown sewer lines half a mile to Ireland Corners, where Route 44/55 crosses Route 208.
The Ireland Corners hamlet contains Gardiner’s only gas station, Chestnut Mobil, which includes the Chestnut Market convenience store. Next door, on the corner at 600 Route 208, is the ten-room 1865 building that was originally a hotel and long operated as the bar and restaurant known as Benson’s. Its most recent iteration, called the Gold Fox, rebranded unsuccessfully as a pizzeria and has been closed since at least 2019. Both buildings are now owned by Mickey Jamal, who since 1981 has expanded his Chestnut Mobil gas station/convenience store in New Paltz into CPD Energy/Chestnut Markets, a mini-empire of some 70 such businesses spanning New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
With hearty endorsement by the local sustainable development group Ulster Strong, Jamal is proposing both to renovate the old Benson’s restaurant building, raising it up to include a full third story, and to build an extension from the western end of the Chestnut Market building. Together, the two structures are envisioned as housing “as many as 40 workforce apartments,” according to a blog post by Jamal on the Ulster Strong website (www.ulsterstrong.com/blog/new-housing-needed-a-proposal-for-gardiner). Under this plan, the ground floor of 600 Route 208 would once more be leased out to a restaurant business.
“In addition to sprucing up a corner that serves as a gateway to the hamlet of Gardiner and creating additional business opportunities, this approach to developing the corner could provide affordable housing opportunities for 15 individuals or families who work in town and want to be able to live among the community they serve,” Jamal writes in his letter published on the blog. Though HV1 has not yet been able to obtain confirmation, these numbers suggest that about one-third of the apartment complex is planned to consist of workforce housing, the remainder presumably to be rented at prevailing market rates.
Mickey Jamal, his son Sharif and Ulster Strong representative Dan Ahouse brought their proposal before the town board in a bid to test the waters; no application for the project has yet been submitted to the planning board. Ahouse spoke about the current crisis in housing affordability and pitched the concept as an approach that would “address that challenge by bringing more residential units on the market.” He said that the developers had already broached their idea to Gardiner’s Climate Smart Committee, the Ulster County Planning Board and representative Pat Ryan’s office, and now needed to know if there is “appetite on the part of the board” to commit to providing wastewater infrastructure, since the lot is not large enough to accommodate both an expanded septic field and a new building extension.
Town board members showed interest, but noted that the existing downtown sewer district is already operating at capacity, with 176 current users. Any costs to improve the system that cannot be financed with grants would need to be absorbed by residents of the district, rather than spread among the entire town’s taxpayers, supervisor Marybeth Majestic explained. “The first thing is to get a better idea from our engineer,” she advised.
However, as board member Warren Wiegand pointed out, Gardiner has already been ordered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to expand the overstressed existing infrastructure. Intermediate steps, including an inflow and infiltration study and construction to plug leaks in the system, have already been undertaken. “When it rains, you guys go over capacity,” he said. “It’s a huge problem, but you’ve got to take that first bite. Start your application — that’ll get people’s attention.”
“We know, whether it’s now or in five years, we’re going to have to expand,” said board member Franco Carucci. He recommended that Jamal “Give us different variants that you’re thinking about.”
In order to gauge the level of community support, Mickey Jamal has asked Gardiner residents to e-mail info@irelandcorners.net with their thoughts on the project.
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