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People In Your Neighborhood
At the One Nature plant nursery, they can trace the genetic lineage of their native and edible plant species down to the watershed, allowing them to protect and promote hyper-local varieties of plants while preserving biodiversity. All the plants are grown at Windfall Farms, using beyond-organic practices—no herbicides or pesticides here.
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| Bryan Quinn, photo courtesy of One Nature. |
One Nature is a vertically integrated business that focuses on regenerating ecological function. Founder Bryan Quinn elucidates, “Vertically integrated means we build it, we grow it, we design it, we do every level of the process.” Aside from their plant nursery, One Nature offers regenerative land design and installation, scientific consulting, and landscape construction services. Their clients vary widely from municipalities and governments, to nonprofits and private entities, to other specialists in the ecological field. They are for profit, but B-Corp certified, which means they’ve undergone a rigorous application and rating process to verify their triple-bottom-line practices.
As a college student, Bryan finished the courses for his philosophy major in just two years and found himself struggling with the applicability of his chosen area of study. “It was a lot of dead German people,” he says with a chuckle. So he got into land ethics and ecology, studying at field stations all over North America and hoping to find a more action-oriented path. The Peace Corps was an obvious choice for doing-centered work, so off he went to Malawi for two years to work with smallholder farmers on co-managed farmland and forests.
Upon his return to the US, Bryan earned a Masters in Landscape Design from RISD, going on to work for New York City as a park designer and planner and later for an international ecological consultancy. “I was wearing a suit every day and getting too far away from design and ecology. So I put the brakes on.”
“I was searching for my dream job and really trying to have the type of impact I wanted to have. And some place where I could have more artistry.” Bryan has built up a true blue (true green?) regenerative ecology business that creates more than pretty landscapes. “I try to vet out any [clients] but environmentalists. Leading, cutting edge environmentalists at heart...I don’t want to spend my time disagreeing with a client over something that is critical to the company mission.”
One Nature was behind the Main Street Pop Up Park in Beacon. This thriving little park/community garden was converted from an empty corner lot on Main Street, with the help of young Green Team volunteers, using municipal compost and woodchips, and maintained using no pesticides or herbicides. One Nature is also doing restorative work in Newburgh on the Urban Green park with Safe Harbors of the Hudson as well. Steph Woman, One Nature Studio Manager, summarizes their work, “We convert underutilized or depleted pieces of land to vibrant, environmentally and socially positive places.”
This environmental and social positivism permeates all aspects of One Nature. They strive to use a bioregional palette of materials for construction—plants, pavement, wood that you would find here in a healthy local bioregion. Bryan says, “On the labor side, we pay a living wage to everyone that works for the company. I generally try to keep a very flexible schedule for employees with sick time or vacation time and try to make a happy place to work...And the vision is to, over time, take a step back and transition to an employee-owned company.”
–Marie Doyon
by Melissa Orozco-McDonough
Though most local towns and municipalities in the Hudson Valley currently have active recycling and solid waste management programs, getting people to want to recycle and to practice proper, responsible waste disposal is still an issue. People are probably not sorting their waste incorrectly on purpose; it’s far more likely that they simply have not been taught how to do it properly. With recycling rules varying from state to state and even county to county, it’s no wonder people are confused. Organizations and businesses like Zero to Go of Beacon, NY are forming throughout the region fix this problem.
Founded by Sarah Womer in 2011, Zero to Go is an education-based waste management company focused on composting and recycling. Among the services offered by the company are zero-waste event services, consulting services for everything related to waste in commercial and residential settings, compost pickup, and the sale of compostable products (cups, plates, etc.). According to Sarah Womer, Zero to Go began in a rather unconventional way. “My friends and I were trying to come up with a way to get styrofoam products out of Beacon’s restaurants and schools. In short, we weren’t able to at the time because prices for styrofoam were (and still are) so much cheaper than paper, plastics, and tin. I gave up and turned my attention to electronics recycling, organizing several drives with a second party recycler to collect unwanted electronics for safe recycling.”
“The electronics recycling industry hit a large road bump and I was no longer able to work with high-quality, responsible recyclers. So I turned my attention to the 20 to 30 public events that happen in the city of Beacon every year, leaving a huge mess of garbage in their wake. Me and my friends started to separate recyclables from the garbage at events, which led us to get donations of recycle bins for events, which then led us to get our own bins and bring them to events. Instead of sorting recyclables during or after the events, we now have a team of educators that stands behind the bins and helps the public understand what goes where.”
Some of the Hudson Valley events that Zero to Go has provided zero waste services for include Beacon Riverfest, the Beacon Jazz Festival, Community Day at Upper Landing Park in Poughkeepsie, the Firefly Feast in Beacon with Common Ground Farm, the Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, the Hudson Hop and Harvest Festival in conjunction with Peekskill Brewery, and many more. “We’ve done 15 events this year already, and have several planned for the fall,” Sarah says. The company is growing every year; they achieved B Corp status in 2013 (a Fair Trade-equivalent certification issued to companies and businesses dedicated to social and environmental issues), and they won the Best for the World award in the environmental category for three years running. They’re currently building out a huge calendar for next year, while carefully keeping track of how many bags of compost, recycling, and garbage they collect, and publishing the metrics after each event.
“Our best event to date was the Hop and Harvest Festival, which brought 4,500 people to a craft beer festival from 11am to 9pm. We had only 8 bags of trash and 120 bags of compost. To achieve such excellent results, we planned well in advance with the organizers, who made sure that every vendor had compostable products. We generally take 2 months to work with organizers on this, and we encourage as much advance planning as possible to make events successful,” Sarah said. “Our team is passionate about recycling and composting, and we know all the rules for recycling in any county where we are hired. The rules are different from county to county, but our job is to empower the public through information.”
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A Zero to Go waste tent at Poughkeepsie's Community Day
Celebration in August 2015. Photo courtesy of Zero to Go.
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Sarah states that people are often very excited to speak with them about their recycling questions, “and they’re also thrilled to tell us about how they’ve been composting. We’re pushing compost culture! I’m from Hyde Park and have lived in Beacon for 10 years. I’m very proud of our work and know that it’s inspiring many people to action in their homes and at work.” The company’s latest endeavor is Beacon Compost, a project for which the company successfully raised $20,000 to launch a food waste pickup service in Beacon, accomplished by bike alone. “We use heavy duty cargo bicycles with electric assist motors to help us carry hundreds of pounds throughout town,” Sarah says proudly.
“Our partner in the program is Empire Zero, a compost hauler based in Albany. We collect material from 34 customers and stage it centrally for Empire Zero to pick up every Monday and bring to a Kingston industrial compost facility. Because it’s being processed by an industrial system, we’re able to collect meat, dairy, and [commercially] compostable products like bioplastic cups made of sugarcane stalks. That means it’s very easy for our 4 restaurants and 30 residents to compost, as we accept so many materials in our program. We’re averaging 800 pounds per month for residents, and 6,000 pounds per month for businesses.”
“It’s been a very successful program. We’re about to enter Phase 2 and expand the program to more residents. We hope to have 100 customers by the end of the year. The cost to be in the program is $50 per month
for residents. The program is not accepting any more businesses at this time. Phase 3 is the creation of a Beacon compost facility, so we can close the loop and produce high quality soil in our community for farmers and growers, as well as reduce the cost of running the program.”
For more information on this wonderful company, what they do and how you can get involved, visit www.Zerotogo.org and www.Beaconcompost.com.
by Anne Pyburn Craig
With its proud mountain and broad sparkling bay, it seems only natural that Beacon has emerged as an epicenter of Hudson River protection and preservation. It was here, in 1966, that Pete Seeger took it into his head to build a boat that would become the flagship of the environmental movement. Today it could be said that Seeger’s dream of convincing people to care about the river has come true beyond his wildest imaginings: his pretty little home city is nurturing a world class center for environmental education.
The location is no accident, nor is it based on sheer sentiment. When former New York State Governor George Pataki sought to establish an education and research center like no other, focused on rivers and estuaries, a panel of over 60 experts chose Beacon from a list of over 20 nominated communities. The Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries (BIRE) hit the ground running and continues to define cutting edge water science, a field that might well be considered a matter of life and death.
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A REON seonsor floating in the Hudson River near Beacon.
Photo courtesy of BIRE.
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The original Riverkeeper John Cronin served as a founding director and first CEO. It was with his help that the Institute reached out to IBM for help in designing a $100 million River and Estuary Observation Network (REON). From its floating sensors along the Hudson and the St. Lawrence, REON provides real-time scientific data, “continuous monitoring of physical, chemical, biological and atmospheric data…via an integrated network of sensors, robotics, mobile monitoring and computational technology,” as per BIRE’s website. Among other goals, the Institute is striving to make REON technology affordable, which will herald a new day for water scientists around the world.
REON data informs the work of researchers, scientists and students, providing arguably the most intimate portrait ever of water in its natural habitat. In 2011, BIRE announced a partnership with Clarkson University of Potsdam (motto: Defy Convention!) an institution that regularly lands on top-college lists. The alliance allowed BIRE to beef up educational offerings for everyone from grad students to tweens, and provides Clarkson students and professors with an incomparable lab.
BIRE and Clarkson also partner with Hudson River Sloop Clearwater to offer RiverU, a six-credit undergrad program that students have described as “inspiring,” “unforgettable,” and “super FUN!”
Midway through the Institute’s birth process, concerns were expressed by the people who love Pier 26 in TriBeCa, where there had been dreams of establishing an Estuarium since the 1990s. Some feared that Pataki’s ambitious plan for Beacon meant that theirs was doomed. But not everything is a win/lose situation among people of good will. Clarkson, BIRE, Clearwater, and the New York Hall of Science have announced plans to refurbish Pier 26 as a world-class estuarium in its own right, beginning in 2017.
Cronin has handed BIRE’s reins over to former Clarkson dean Timothy F. Sugrue, and is now a Beacon Institute Fellow at Clarkson University, leading a collaborative effort between BIRE, Clarkson, and Pace University ( where he is also a senior fellow and is designing an interdisciplinary environmental and policy studies program). As the first-ever Beacon Institute Fellow, he’ll head the Policy and Information Innovation Project, implementing high-tech innovation “to improve and reform water policy, and train the next generation of environmental leaders.”
Besides graduate education, cutting-edge research, and policy advocacy, BIRE offers the public intelligent good times. There’s an evident understanding of the emergent truth that science, technology, engineering and math go better with art involved, and no losing sight of the fact that what started this whole river-saving endeavor was nothing less than passionate love. The Institute maintains a Main Street gallery, bookstore, and gift shop that welcomes the public to river-related exhibits, openings, author events, and lectures.
And down on the waterfront, near DIA and Scenic Hudson’s Long Dock, BIRE has established the Center for Environmental Innovation and Education. The Center welcomes visitors to the waterfront and offers a varied menu of public programs: there are expert-led “Walks and Talks” along riverfront trails and other events that utilize the “surround-sound video-conferencing, broadcasting and simulcasting capabilities, as well as a THX sound system and professional theatrical lighting.” The building, certified LEED Gold standard, is in part a renovated historic brick structure.
Not everyone might recognize the stamp of a slender guitar man with a beautiful smile on the very latest in STEM education, or expect a firebrand like TIME Magazine Hero For The Planet Cronin to work smoothly with major corporations. But what could be more Seeger than super-fun science? Getting everyone working together. It’s amazing what can happen when you let that little light shine.
by Anne Pyburn Craig
It happened to cities and towns throughout industrialized America in the late and middle years of the 20th century. Big employers who’d propped up local economies for decades downsized or left, creating a brutal ripple effect on smaller businesses. In Rosendale, it was the cement industry. Beacon lost factories. Hudson was no longer a bustling port. A type of stability that people had built lives around vanished, and people were left struggling to make sense of a “new normal” of shuttered storefronts and tightened belts.
The big boys were never coming back to play; everyone knew that much. There was no miracle cure about to fall from the top down and save us all. If anyone was going to solve the problem, it would have to be us.
Fifteen years into a new century, while other towns and cities still struggle, a good sized handful have become Destinations. During the day, the west end of Rosendale’s Main Street buzzes with a steady flow of cheese shop regulars and visiting vintage thrifters, glittering and ringing with live music and laughter at night. Beacon has a world class-art museum, microbreweries, and artists’ lofts in its factories; its population grew 30% in the past decade. And Hudson is a hipster-transplant, antiques mecca with a theatre scene and nightlife that are hard to beat.
What happened, and how? The answers aren’t simple. There are a lot of moving parts, and there were more than a few false starts and things tried that almost worked. But common themes emerge that demonstrate just what makes these communities solid success stories.
Responsive Leadership
Ann Citron is currently president of the Rosendale Theatre Collective. “When I moved here thirty years ago,” she recalls, “a movie cost two dollars.” Citron ran an arts space called Canaltown Alley that is now the Creative Co-op; she and her husband ran a bookstore for several years, during which he became a town board member and ultimately served a term as supervisor.
“My husband first got involved with town politics through our having a business on Main Street,” she says. “The people that are involved now, Jen and John and Chris and Jeanne and Bob, had all contributed so much to the community before they ever ran for office that it was a natural outgrowth for them to be the ones sitting at that table making decisions for the public good. We started a Main Street Association to help deal with things like sidewalks and traffic, and they assigned us a very responsive liason. They’re people you can sit down and talk to.”
Sheena Salvino has been executive director of the Hudson Development Corporation for four years. She relocated to the Hudson Valley from the Berkshires. “The community has a loud voice, and we strive to engage them with reciprocal feedback,” she says. “The Hudson Business Coalition operates a listserv with 200 members, including our elected officials, and there’s a constant flow of information about grants and what’s going on at the state and county level. And it helps that everyone around here has a really great attitude. They’re willing to enter into discussion even when they disagree.”
David Eberle relocated to Beacon from Greenwich Village in 2002, and has held various offices (including president) with the Beacon Sloop Club, of which he is now the communications director. He also handles media for Beacon’s Chamber of Commerce. “It matters when people are fundamentally interested in what government does and willing to organize if there’s something they don’t like,” he says. “At the municipal level, politicians have to listen to the people, and it keeps the relationships honest. Beacon has two very active parties and a lot of dialogue. We also have the Southern Dutchess Community Coalition, which was formed in the 1960s to promote dialogue between different races, and an active NAACP chapter. People can voice their concerns and have them addressed, and over time issues get resolved.”
Towns that succeed communicate not just often but intelligently. Elections and single issues, however divisive, are not taken personally or turned into long running grudges. During the 2011 race for Rosendale supervisor, supporters of both Democrat Jen Metzger and Republican Jeanne Walsh insisted that their candidate’s defeat would spell doom for the town, but no such rhetoric came from either of the candidates—an accomplished businesswoman and an environmental scientist who had already been working together for the town for years, as they continue to do.
"I am impressed with [the] council,” Hudson’s newly hired city manager, Jane Howington, told the Hudson Hub-Times in January. “They are willing to move forward and are very supportive, They are one voice with their priorities." It seems logical to assume that this kind of collective will is the kind that solves problems – and magnetizes grant and investment funding.
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| Main Street Rosendale. |
Collaborative Businesses
Cutthroat capitalist competition doesn’t fly in our valley’s small towns, where anyone you’ve stabbed in the back on the way up is pretty certain to end up in line behind you at Stewart’s on the way down. Instead, coming together in and around the kinds of organizations mentioned above, business owners work to ensure that the rising tide lifts every boat in the fleet.
“People are working together,” says Citron.” We started Fourth Friday last year—businesses cooperate with one another, stay open late, offer discounts, have live music that night. Art galleries schedule openings around it. Members of the Theatre Collective get discounts at the restaurants. When you have community-minded people who don’t just think of themselves, it becomes symbiotic—it all works together. And Rosendale is small enough that we can feel the positive impact even from small efforts.”
Comprehensive Vision
Before the Dia Museum opened its doors, Beacon’s leaders were already taking steps to create a more business-friendly environment. “They had a plan, and one piece of it was to get rid of the first-floor residences on Main Street and make room for businesses,” says Eberle. “The Dia Museum was in progress at that point, not open yet. Then when artists came here and found out how much housing and work space their money could buy as opposed to farther south, businesses opened up in those spaces to serve their needs.”
That level of planning doesn’t stop when things begin looking up. Communities that thrive keep looking forward with their eyes wide open. “Several things will influence what comes next,” says Eberle. “One is what happens with the Incline Railway to the top of Mount Beacon. Two is the fate of the women’s prison that just closed. Third is what happens with the Hudson Valley trail system for bicycles and people.”
Attracting and keeping entrepreneurial energy is key, but so is picking and choosing development that’s a good fit. “Metro-North had a proposal for the waterfront that involved a lot of condos, and Beacon didn’t want it. It was too big. We need to come up with something people will like that will connect Main Street and the riverfront, but that wasn’t it.”
Some factors that have played a role in the success of these particular communities are obvious. All three had an anchor of sorts—Beacon’s Dia Museum, Rosendale’s theatre and café, and Hudson’s avant-garde theatre scene coupled with the antiques sector, and now joined by an outpost of Etsy. Beacon and Hudson have train stations, and Rosendale is walkable from a regional bus stop. All three are beautifully located, with water and mountain views at hand. All three could be classified as what Salvino calls “rurban”—dense, walkable places with easy access to woods and open spaces.
A major draw in all three cases has proven to be a blend of relative affordability and the arts. “The environmental groups, music, and art all played a role. The arts did more to transform the community than anything else,” says Eberle. “People come to Dia and fall in love with its surroundings. We have a music store and lessons for all ages, and concerts at the waterfront, and now we have the Towne Crier Café.”
Eberle interviews startup entrepreneurs for the Chamber’s newsletter, and says he’s constantly moved and fascinated. “I just did one on Beacon Vintage. It’s a love story. They got stuck in the train station when it flooded during Hurricane Irene and had to take cab all the way back to the city. But they fell in love with Beacon and they’ve each opened their own business here. It happens over and over.”
In Hudson, the Armory is being renovated on a 99-year lease as a senior center and public library. In Rosendale, the theatre plans to add a flea market to the farmers’ market in its backyard every Sunday. In Beacon, there is talk of finding good housing for the Shakespeare on the Hudson company. And in all three towns, there’s a feeling that with any luck, the good times are back to stay.
“It’s a long process,” says Citron. “Decades. It takes a committed bunch. But things feel rooted now.”
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