Serving the Towns of Wawarsing, Crawford, Mamakating, Rochester and Shawangunk, and everything in between
(none)   
SJ FB page   
Gutter Gutter
'Those People?'
Duane Roe Addresses The Mamakating Blues

BLOOMINGBURG – Duane Roe is proud to be about as local as you can get in Bloomingburg. The longstanding local contractor who started developing homes and business sites himself in the past two decades is quick to note he has "no plans to go anywhere." His dad, also raised in Mamakating, worked as a contractor for others... something Duane Roe did as well, until he was able to start his own businesses and eventually hire his father.

"I've built anywhere between 200 and 250 homes throughout the greater area," Roe says, explaining the ins and outs of real estate markets, and building start-ups in particular, in Ulster, Orange and Sullivan counties.

In the 1990s Duane Roe spent time on the local planning board, and eventually became one of the town of Mamakating's youngest supervisors. He's a lifelong Republican and proud of the success he's built through hard work. But equally proud, and concerned, about all matters involving his home town. And respectful for the way Mamakating politics, along with that in the villages of Bloomingburg and Wurtsboro, have had a tendency to move fluidly from the GOP to Democrats and back over the years.

A few weeks back, Roe's name came up — completely erroneously — in one of the heated discussions involving land ownership around the town. We corrected the statement, involving an historic old cemetery, and in the process decided the key player in local business and politics needed to be heard. Why? Because his name had also come up earlier during a debate about zoning changes that would allow business developments near the town's exits off Route 17, as well as in the context of the massive "Villages at Chestnut Ridge" development on Winterton Road, on properties he once owned and planned to develop differently.

We also knew that Roe, despite his manner of occasionally stating his opinions with extra strength, had been meeting with some of those who had drawn his name into Mamakating's recent zoning issues, and voiced opposition to his plans to develop lands for contractor's yards and a service station at one of the Route 17 exits in question. And he was also starting to voice his own opposition to not only the ways in which local zoning had been made messy, through its various PO and other odd districts, but also a majority of the current town board, a majority of them members of his own political party.

Putting first things first, Roe drove out to show me the Chestnut Ridge property, now being developed into nearly 400 town house units by his former partner Shalom Lamm. Roe's original idea had been high end housing centered around a golf club, designed to attract the same sort of buyers he's long worked to build houses for. And as a bonus, it would all include a sewage treatment plant designed to ease pressures on nearby Bloomingburg... and help the community out of its decades-long economic slide, which saw it grow as a bedroom community, but lose those local businesses that keep kids around after they graduate school.

"We couldn't do what we wanted because of wetlands regulations and other matters raised by the state DEC," he tells me matter-of-factly, with no anger about the state's environmental regulations. "I had brought in Lamm because he was the only person who could work with a project of this size. He was the bank. I haven't had anything to do with what's happened there since 2009, when he started moving the development in his own direction."

As we turn around to head across Bloominburg to Roe's latest development, a conglomeration of well-built homes near an old camp now being revived, he points out what Lamm built first... noting that his failure to make something beautiful may have been the root of his current troubles. Even if he had gotten all his permits in order through the local village board.

In the new Red Oaks Estates, Roe points out a finished house owned by a man who owns a diner on 17, another owned by a retired firefighter, another by a traveling businessman. It's a solid neighborhood, just around the corner from the contractor/developer's own house off Nashopa Road. One of his employees drives up and joshes him while inquiring about jobs needing to be finished yet. We finally end up by Exit 115, which was the start of much of the recent zoning troubles in town... where Roe wanted a gas station and convenience store, plus a nearby site for contractor's yards and the like, the better to clean such activities off of private properties around Mamakating.

As he puts it, he went to the town board with his suggestion for a change to zoning choices made in 2000, long before the recent downturn, and even the slight boom in real estate that occurred locally after 9/11 started downstaters moving upstate. Change the PO zones, by exits, to include some uses that made sense for those using the highway... and not townhouse and other high-density developments. Work to make the town work well again, he asked them.

At first things moved well in his direction. Then protests started to build over his plans, as well as what Lamm was building, and Roe's early ties to the new developer in town.

"People mixed up issues. Some started fearmongering and before you know it, people were standing up in meetings complaining about how Lamm was going to bring 'those people' into town," Roe says. "This is the 21st century, and the United States of America. What were people doing asking that we keep 'those people' out?"

We drive back into the center of Bloomingburg and Roe turns to me to speak mano-a-mano about what's going on in his home town, what he thinks about it, and what he plans to do next... beyond the 71-unit senior housing development he's now planning for that exit property he owns, all within current zoning strictures.

Next week: What Duane Roe really thinks.



Gutter Gutter










Gutter