Kingston is busy. More than 1,450 new housing units, at least half of them classified as affordable, are in various stages of planning, design and construction in the Hudson Valley city as 2026 winds down, according to a roundup by Hudson Valley One.
The paper mapped 10 significant development sites. Here is what contractors in Ulster County should know about each.
The biggest and the most uncertain
The largest project by possible unit count is the Kingston Business Park off Delaware Avenue, slated for up to 600 mixed-income homes on 107 acres. Hudson Valley One says it is still some distance from shovels in the ground, calling its awkward location "problematic" even though it has city infrastructure. The city picked Douglaston Development, a large New York City firm with affordable and senior housing experience, with RUPCO as a partner.
On Garraghan Drive in the Rondout neighborhood, the city is planning a 5.3-acre site for about 200 homes plus commercial and recreational space. That one is tied up in an eminent-domain process, and the paper reports Kingston doesn't expect to issue a request for proposals for some time.
Projects closer to the finish line
The recently opened 100-unit Barrel Factory on Cornell Street added 20 affordable units to the city's inventory. State Sen. Michelle Hinchey called it "a great model for mixed-income, mixed-use housing."
Baxterbuild of Poughkeepsie recently cleared the old Kings Inn property at 615 Broadway and is putting up a three-story building with ground-floor commercial space on Broadway and a larger structure on the Cedar Street side. The 0.78-acre project will have 70 apartments, 21 of them affordable.
RUPCO plans to open Willow Landing in December, with 82 supportive apartments for homeless families and individuals at the former Quality Inn in the town of Ulster.
New and revived proposals
The Kingstonian, the long-stalled uptown project between North Front Street and Schwenk Drive, is city-approved for 143 units plus a small hotel, retail and considerable parking. Its deadline expires at the end of this year. Brad Jordan, a local member of the ownership team, told the paper a revised plan should surface soon, and to "expect an application with some changes."
This month, a six-story, 135-unit building was proposed for the long-vacant 1.8-acre former Romeo Kia dealership site at 111 Schwenk Drive. New York City planning and construction firm Milestone Development is partnering with RUPCO and others. The affordable share hasn't been set.
At 25 Field Court, a city-owned 0.85-acre former brownfield next to Kingston's linear park, a nonprofit consortium is proposing a five-story building with 60 to 70 units and ground-floor commercial space. A significant portion "will be designated as deeply affordable," the group says.
Public housing and community space
The Kingston Housing Authority is working with Mountco on a total overhaul of 98 apartments at Colonial Gardens on Flatbush Avenue and 60 at Wiltwyck Gardens on Albany Avenue. In the second phase of the $112 million program, funded by state and federal sources, the authority will also replace 32 units at Penn Court with 80 units of senior housing, 30 of them reserved for people experiencing homelessness.
Rounding out the list is The Metro, a $55 million community and educational center off Greenkill Avenue that Novo of Kingston has been building. It adds no housing, but the paper describes it as intended to have a profound effect on the midtown neighborhood.
Why it matters for contractors
This is a deep pipeline for a small city. Between new construction, gut renovations of occupied public housing, a hotel-to-supportive-housing conversion and brownfield redevelopment, Kingston's list touches nearly every kind of building work.
Several of the bigger jobs, including the Kingstonian, 111 Schwenk Drive and 25 Field Court, are at the proposal or redesign stage, which is when general contractors and key subs get brought in for budgeting and constructability. The KHA renovation program, with its phased work in occupied buildings, is the kind of job that rewards contractors experienced with relocation, scheduling and public funding requirements. Several of these projects rely on state and federal money, which can bring prevailing wage, MWBE goals and other public-funding paperwork.
Contractors working the Hudson Valley should get to know the developers named here, including RUPCO, Douglaston, Milestone, Mountco and Baxterbuild, and keep an eye on Kingston's planning board agendas as these plans move forward.