When Doug Plummer didn’t get an invite to Wednesday’s $755 million REDC ceremony in Albany, he had two thoughts.
The first was that his Village of Sharon Springs had been forgotten again.
The second was that his performance at the 2016 event, when a grant to Sharon Springs Inc. was wrongly announced as having been awarded to the village and Mayor Plummer stood up to make his displeasure clear, hadn’t been forgotten in Albany.
But no, the invitation had been lost in the mail, or likely, the internet, and when Mayor Plummer got a call the Friday before asking him why he hadn’t RSVPed, he started to think that maybe Christmas was coming early.
It was.
As one of the top Regional Economic Development Council winners in the Mohawk Valley, the Village of Sharon Springs is getting $2 million to rehabilitate and upgrade its sewer system.
“The folks at DEC had urged us to apply again and we had a pretty good idea it would pay off, but still, it was touch and go until we actually heard the news,” Mayor Plummer said Thursday.
At last Wednesday’s ceremony, applicants in each of the state’s 10 economic development regions were called up as a group as their regions were highlighted in brief videos.
Mayor Plummer was surprised—and thrilled—to see that the Mohawk Valley’s focused also entirely on Sharon Springs and the efforts of Beekman 1802 founders and Fabulous Beekman Boys Brent Ridge and Josh Kilmer-Purcell.
The video, which can viewed on YouTube, shows overhead drone views of Main Street, Sharon, as well as footage from within Beekman 1802 and the Beekman Farm.
Friday, Mr. Kilmer-Purcell spoke to the can-do attitude of Sharon Springs businesses and the importance of infrastructure to the ever-growing Beekman 1802.
“It’s great that both our thriving business community and proactive local governments are now being recognized by the state,” he said.
“This is just the kind of infrastructure we need to keep growing. As we look to expand again in 2018, we’ll need more and larger state-of-the-art facilities for warehousing and commerce…we need a solid infrastructure and business-friendly local, county, and regional government. We can stay local if local stays with us.”
That infrastructure is also crucial to businesses like SSI, Mayor Plummer said, and he had high praise for Governor Andrew Cuomo’s remarks at the event—especially their focus on revitalizing small communities from the ground up.
Upgrading Sharon Springs’ infrastructure is essential if the village is going to move forward, he said, especially in light of SSI’s revitalization of the Imperial Baths—and eventually the Columbia and Adler Hotels.
“We’ve made the argument all along that those projects are wonderful—but if we can’t provide them with water and sewer, they’re not going to work,” he said.
“This changes everything.”