The mayor of Plattsburgh recently announced plans to seek developers who would partner with the city to redevelop a waterfront lot.

Plattsburgh Mayor Colin Read is seeking developers for an 11-acre tract of land adjacent to the city marina, which also borders a city park and includes a parking lot. Read was at the marina recently to outline the city’s Request for Expressions of Interest – or RFEI – seeking public-private partnerships. “It’s an ongoing effort to see if we can someday attract a hotel or a convention center at this site. But we also want to enhance this area with public performance spaces, have the Saranac River Trail and various walking and arts and culture and history trails all begin or end here and seek out other amenities that can take advantage of the abundant ah 3- or 4-hundred spot lot that we’ve built here. All of the potential in the world would lie dormant though if someone didn’t catalyze investment. This is the people’s waterfront and the investment being made by the city and the Governor’s office outlined in the recent RFEI proposal to develop this area down here will serve as a catalyst for additional private investment.”

The city has studied possible use of the land through New York’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Program and found that lodging, retail, restaurants, entertainment and recreation potential is enhanced by the site’s adjacency to Lake Champlain. Mayor Read believes it’s currently an underutilized area of the city. “People don’t realize they have the quality access to the lake as they do here. You may have been following our plans to move the Municipal Lighting Division off of the lakefront and riverfront into another more commercial area within the city. That’s going to free up a number of acres for development as well. So we believe this is one of the most developal, developable properties for quality of life kinds of enterprises like hotels, convention centers, active living senior housing these sorts of things. So we’re using the 300 just under $300,000 that the governor’s invested in this to further those plans and find developers willing to do so.”

Read says development of the parcel would reinforce projects from the $10 million state Downtown Revitalization Initiative Grant awarded to the city in 2016. “The DRI we proposed about 15 or so different projects and 8 or 10 of those were funded to various degrees. The largest entity obviously was the Durkee Street expansion. One of the largest also is the development of apartments above storefronts and that’s been out for about 3 or 4 months now. Many of those are well underway already. Perhaps one of the smallest is actually this site. We were given just under $300,000 to come up with some proofs of concepts. And part of the reason is the city through past grants has already invested an awful lot in that parking lot and done a number of studies already. So this is more to bring all these together and again to attract developers.”

The deadline to submit Expressions of Interest is Friday, August 3rd.

More information, including a link to drone footage of the property, is here.