For 135 years, the property was the site a large water-powered paper mill complex. A fire destroyed much of the mill in 1963 and most of the remains were subsequently demolished. The site lay derelict and abandoned for decades until, in 2000, it was donated to the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater organization. Unfortunately, their plans for a Sloop Homeport failed to materialize.
In 2014 Arm-of-the-Sea signed a lease / acquisition agreement with Clearwater and began a long discovery and envisioning process on how to develop this contaminated brownfield property. In 2018 the site was cleared, an access road installed, the large ruins were fenced off, and the shoreline stabilized.
With support from the NYS DEC’s Hudson River Estuary Program and a talented team of pro-bono professionals, we hired ONE NATURE LLC to help draw up a Master Plan and Phase One Site Plan. These plans received Planning Board approval in 2020, the same year we took title to the property. In 2021 we were able to cap the contamination with clean fill and open the site to the public. The Theater Tent went up in 2022 and the Program Support Center in 2024.
