Byway committee to submit earlier visitors’ center plan; Narrowsburg Union pitch on hold

Posted 8/21/12

NARROWSBURG, NY — Amid a bit of finger-pointing, members of the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway, Inc. (UDSB) voted unanimously on July 25 to seek funding via the New York Department of Transportation …

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Byway committee to submit earlier visitors’ center plan; Narrowsburg Union pitch on hold

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NARROWSBURG, NY — Amid a bit of finger-pointing, members of the Upper Delaware Scenic Byway, Inc. (UDSB) voted unanimously on July 25 to seek funding via the New York Department of Transportation (DOT) to fund a visitors’ center at Fort Delaware. Plans for the center were drawn up in 2011 with a $25,000 grant the UDSB obtained for a feasibility study of the project.

The decision came after a presentation from Brendan Weiden, who with his wife Kathy owns the Narrowsburg Union, a former school building. Weiden proposed placing the visitors’ center in the Narrowsburg Union, and using grant money for lease payments.

Freda Eisenberg, the Sullivan County Planning Commissioner, said the funding organization was not likely to award a grant for lease payments, but there was a possibility that DOT would award money to pay for the construction at the Narrowsburg Union that would be needed to create the visitors’ center.

Eisenberg also stressed several times that she was still not certain that DOT would or could consider visitors’ centers with this particular pool of funding, which was created from federal grants that were more than 10 years old, and no longer available for the original projects for which they were intended. Statewide there is a pool of about $207 million available for refunding.

Eisenberg said she heard about the funding from the New York State Department of Parks and Recreation, which had suggested she submit an existing proposal for a rails-to-trails expansion project. She said she hoped to learn more about the parameters of the grant program the day after the meeting.

She also said that any grant funding awarded must be spent by September 2019, and therefore projects that were further along would have an advantage over projects that were not yet fleshed out.

That fact played a role in the decision of the UDSB board; a couple of members said there was nothing to lose by submitting the existing plans for Fort Delaware, although funding for that project remains a question because the cost was estimated at $1.2 million, and the original grant was for $539,000.

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