Newburgh: Rising Tide on the Hudson
In the 1950s, Newburgh’s Water Street was one of the finest shopping thoroughfares north of Manhattan. New York Central Railroad’s West Shore line stopped here on its route from Weehawken to Albany; travelers could hop on an electric trolley up the hill to the city center or board the ferry to Beacon. Posh Day Liner steamers and countless other water craft came and went at several piers. The city was on top of the world, living up to the “All-American City” title bestowed by the National Municipal League in 1952.
A complicated mix of factors would knock the city to its knees in the decade that followed, including but not limited to urban renewal, which bit a chunk out of the city’s East End like a rabid grizzly. Fifty acres and seven entire streets—over 1,100 homes and businesses—were flattened, thousands displaced, and generational wealth decimated at the stroke of a pen and the swing of a wrecking ball.
For decades the waterfront lay largely dormant, cut off from the rest of downtown by a vacant swath of hillside between lower Broadway and the river. Starting in the late ’80s, restaurateurs rediscovered the unparalleled views, and the waterfront district has grown into a dynamic dining destination. (You can get slammin’ tacos at the refurbished West Shore railway terminal, now Hudson Taco.) Ferry service to Beacon, though temporarily closed currently while the MTA repairs the Beacon dock, was revived in 2005.
But the Newburgh Landing, the only deepwater port between New York and Albany, remains an underutilized resource. Kevindaryan Lujan, Newburgh’s representative in the Orange County Legislature, believes it won’t stay that way for long. “Newburgh just completed a major capital project—a big sewer and streetscape upgrade—and the final design phase of our dock, Newburgh Landing Park, is happening this year,” he says. “So within the next two to five years, hopefully, we’ll have a deepwater pier and international cruise lines can add a Hudson Valley stop. And the city is gathering information on what the community wants to do with that vacant stretch of hillside. I’d like to see something there that would bring jobs—we really need tax ratables [revenue-generating businesses] to catapult the city to where it needs to be.”
The Pulse of the City
A three-person team is hard at work readying The Ellis, a community space in a refurbished church on Dubois Street that will open in May with custom-crafted nightlife experiences curated by David Kiss, executive producer at Brooklyn’s iconic House of Yes nightclub and performance venue. He’s been a Newburgher since 2021. “There’s really nothing like this, a nightlife space with the capacity for hundreds,” Kiss says. “And there’s really nothing like being enveloped in the warmth and sound of dance music, everyone dancing together, just present for each other with no thought of politics or any of that, just soaring together. That’s what The Ellis wants to be. Down on the waterfront they have mainstream Top 40, which is fine, but it leaves out so much musical culture.”
Kiss says he watched the House of Yes help transform Bushwick from rough to solid, and believes that The Ellis can help empower Newburgh’s East End. And The Ellis is poised to become much more than a nightclub. “I was looking at this beautiful building and not really sure what to do with it—at one point we thought about apartments,” says developer Michael Mamiye, whose firm Nutopia mainly specializes in ecofriendly co-living for creatives. “But we’re right by the hospital, and the city’s economic development guy, David Kohl, said the employees needed a food court. I went and talked to a bunch of them, and they loved the idea, so we’re getting the licenses to open up a food court next fall.” The liquor license is already in hand.
Besides nightlife and food, The Ellis team (the name is a nod to Ellis Island) has lots of plans in mind—Saturday morning family events, large-group yoga and fitness gatherings, herbal and medicinal gardens in the pretty backyard, workshops, sustainable industries conferences, milestone parties, microweddings and elopements, and whatever else Newburghers dream up. “We want to have the place full of people all the time,” says partner Albert Mizrahi. “We want the doors to never be closed. This city has such stunning, diverse culture—we want to be a venue for it all to come together.”