Part 4 of a 4 Part Series

In Part 1, Rise to Greatness, the aspects creating an extraordinary small town are discovered, from the townspeople to the allure and exclusivity enjoyed by affluent visitors. Part 2 explores the grim outlook of Ticonderoga Today, and additional challenges affronting the town. In Part 3, Birthplace of the Alliance reveals the resolute people behind the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance who are fervidly working to find a progressive solution to the town’s dilemma. The last installment of this series, What Sets Us Apart, dissects and explores the reasons and resources of why the town can be successful in its revitalization, providing hope and a blueprint for other small towns.

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THE TICONDEROGA STORY – PART 4

What Sets Us Apart

In Ticonderoga, we have a reasonable chance at making the cut and, many say, serving as a successful model for other parts of the North Country — principally because we understand these issues and, thereby, the goals that must be set.  We are not intimidated by our smallness in population.  A key to our success will be our ability to re-value and leverage our natural capital and our vacant real estate to create a vibrant tourist destination anchored by an entrepreneurial backbone and academic links aimed at attracting the higher paying jobs.

Also, our approach to revitalization appears to be different in a handful of profound ways:

(1) It includes a powerful citizen’s movement at its heart,
(2) supported, initially, by its principle corporate citizens,
(3) dependent, in the long run, on a kind of market discipline through the use of public/private partnerships, whereby private investors and operating partners are incented to drive the financial and operating components of the individual projects,
(4) where increased diversity and substantially expanded academic links to the community have become essential revitalization strategies and
(5)  where the “footprint” is broad enough and capable of being expanded further to assure real reform.

The dilemma of Ticonderoga shows us the flaws and holes existing in the fabric making up our society. With the continued economic state, this is becoming more and more of a common thread binding the human spirit together. Ticonderoga is the looking glass of our nation’s heart: its will to survive easily outweighs its empty coffers.

That’s how hope works. It was a fortress of hope for citizens during a grim time of war, and now with financial turmoil threatening its existence, the town of Ticonderoga calls upon the strength of character that helped secure our nation in its humble and tumultuous beginning. Embodying the fortitude portrayed in James Fennimore Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans, Ticonderoga, too, will fight to survive. Believing in something gives rise to the spirit lying dormant in humankind. So, pondering the story of Ticonderoga, does it take “new blood” for a town to come back from the brink of extinction? Or have those at the Alliance formulated an anecdote for the resuscitation of our small towns across the nation: spirit, fortitude, and a willful defiance not to fade away from future history?

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The alliance has produced video interviews with residents and alliance members alike so that you can hear about their experience and fascinating stories first hand. This is Debra Malaney, Supervisor of the town of Ticonderoga. Below is part one of a three part interview. Visit the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance website to watch the other part, the other interviews, and to see the incredible photographs and other inspiring features.

Interviews conducted and produced by Josh Clement. Contact Josh here.

State of the Re:Union would like to thank Alex Levitch for contacting us, and the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance for sharing their history and stories with our audience. This extraordinary group of citizens rallied together to revitalize and reinvent their town, illustrating just how powerful a determined community can be.

Tell us your thoughts on Ticonderoga and the TRA’s efforts in the comment box below.

Part 3 of a 4 Part Series by the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance

In Part 1 – Rise to Greatness, the factors, spirit and people that made this small town such a celebrated location by so many were explored. Part 2, looked at the rather bleak picture of Ticonderoga Today and the many challenges the town faces. Birth of the Alliance, is Part 3 and presents not only a nice sentiment of hope, but the actual work, the innovative solutions that are being instituted by passionate residents with a vision that have come together as part of the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance.

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In mid-2010, the sheer unacceptability and burden of the town’s social costs enabled the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance to come into being on the back of an unprecedented grass roots citizens’ Alliance from all walks and interests. The new Alliance quickly secured, in turn, a sweeping Town mandate to facilitate a complete economic makeover and playbook for a new broader regional prosperity.

The principle operating tenants of the new Alliance would prove largely contrarian. They called for (i) an integrated economic makeover in place of a series of “one-up”, disconnected projects, (ii) exceeding municipal boundaries into regional networks of varying distances and complexities, (iii) emphasizing universal deployment of project-specific funding/operating partners, whereby (iv) the Alliance would focus on offering partner and funding outreach, integrated communications, transactional and project management as well as overall coordination of the economic development objectives for Ticonderoga. This, in turn, would necessitate (v) deployment of a full-time, accomplished, professional management team and (vi) an emphasis on private investment (over public financing).

Timing Is Right

There is tremendous potential in creating this first-ever citizen Alliance. This movement is not happening in a vacuum. A powerful new trend of middle class flight from the cities and suburbs back to small towns throughout the country, aided by new technologies and rapid development of regional education “nets”, is settling in for good. Small towns everywhere are taking up the revitalization mantle. Stories of successful programs are recorded monthly. There is little need any more for inventiveness- only proven programs need apply.

Singular Vision

The Alliance intends to leverage its Power of Place and private investments to lead its revitalization efforts. Initial projects will reaffirm Ticonderoga’s role as an important gateway to American history as well as its strength as a year-round outdoor paradise of parks, waterfalls, river walk, and lake access– all through a singular vision of a New Prosperity. These projects will attract fresh capital, ideas, people to a vibrant year-round tourist destination, stimulate small business/value-add jobs, and be anchored by expanded residential housing, resort facilities, and key academic and regional links.

A New Compact

The Town is pledging predictability, transparency and sustainability; the town citizenry pledges broad consensus and urgency; and Ticonderoga’s principal corporate citizens pledge founders capital and constructive input.

Armed with significant reaffirmations of its partnerships with its principle corporate citizens, the Alliance is not looking for handouts. It intends to provide meaningful returns on corporate investments – apart and aside from the substantial public relations value to any one of these companies to be gained for helping to revitalize and rebuild an entire town like Ticonderoga!

Accomplishments

• We have aligned under one, new, powerful, symbiotic framework all the interests and requisite resources to support most any project from a $50 million four star resort/streetscape bond issuance to $500,000 Main Street private investor distressed real estate Roll-up fund.
• We’ve launched the first stage of the roll-up fund and are securing control of our first Main Street building with private investors for less than five cents on the replacement dollar, intended to anchor all the downtown revitalization.
• We’re in the early process of setting up a trial arts & Artisans program with the planned construction of an 18^th century replica sawmill and academic partners helping to anchor an Institute of Adirondack Woodworking and a separate institute of Adirondack Arts, which will look to attract juried artists and artisans with bargain real estate and open arms to come live, create and sell their wares in Ticonderoga.
• We’re also in the early process of identifying and reaching out to potential employers that would benefit from deploying out of Ticonderoga as a “regional Hub”.
• We’re also in the early process of exploring prospective partnerships with business and retail incubation & entrepreneurial mentoring services.
• Also on the immediate horizon are first-time planning within the Alliance between Town and Fort and Town and Community College to set up appropriate learning centers and integrated business opportunities relating to locational strengths.

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The alliance has produced video interviews with residents and alliance members alike so that you can hear about their experience and fascinating stories first hand. This is Bill Polihronakis, who grew up in Ticonderoga and was eventually brought back to live and take over the family logging business. Below is part one of a three part interview. Visit the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance website to watch the other part, the other interviews, and to see the incredible photographs and other inspiring features.

Interviews conducted and produced by Josh Clement. Contact Josh here.

Be sure to visit Monday, July 25th, for part 4, “What Sets Us Apart,” and don’t forget to visit their official website for other features, information and updates.

Part 2 of a 4 Part Series

State of the Re:Union is thrilled to present the next installment  of this series put together by the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance. If you didn’t catch part 1, you can now! Enjoy and be sure to let us know what you think of the work they’re doing.

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Today, Ticonderoga presents a different picture. The graphite mine and mill are long-closed, and the pencil company relocated to Florida. The paper mill, since bought and re-built by International Paper, has become a progressive and concerned employer that, in order to improve labor efficiencies in a competitive market, hires roughly half the employees it used to hire. The rich have moved on to other vacation destinations and Ticonderoga has been slow to adjust to the demands of the new, middle-class tourists. Last year, of some eight million visitors to the Park, only a hundred thousand passed through Ticonderoga.

These days, jobs are hard to come by. Downtown vacancy rates are pressing 40% and property values have plunged. The social costs, especially for the young and uneducated, are daunting. Those who do pursue higher education rarely return to the town, leaving behind low-wage under-employment and an increasing elderly population. Meanwhile, despite the school district’s high ranking, twenty percent of local high school students do not make it to graduation. More than one in four citizens receive some form of poverty assistance and one in seven families face the high social costs of these tough economic times, whether they be drugs, unwanted pregnancies or domestic violence.

From a roar to a whimper, Ticonderoga, like a number of small American towns, has tumbled into its own vicious and closed loop economy, whereby absent a fresh and continuing inflow of capital, people and ideas, the Town is condemned to ever diminishing servings of its stale economic pie.

The Real Conundrum

There was a time when prospective employers could be attracted by the promise of low-wage labor and tax concessions. Today, the rules have changed.

Companies compete for knowledge-based labor forces –only highly educated, high-pay workers need apply. To retain these “knowledge workers,” communities and companies need to provide a significant improvement in quality of life – an improvement that has proved just out of reach for small, under-resourced towns like Ticonderoga.

Only by taking an integrated look at transport, education, energy efficiency, wellness programs, technological capacity and affordable housing can Ticonderoga hope to attract the value-added and knowledge-based jobs that will help to reverse its downward economic spiral.

Ticonderoga faces simple questions – with complex answers – about how and where to start its revitalization process. First, how can the educational level of its citizenry be raised to attract the jobs that will support such an educated work force? Conversely, how can Ticonderoga attract the companies and jobs it needs with limited purchasing capacity and human educational capital? Second, how can Ticonderoga attract fresh people, capital and ideas to mitigate its current lack of cultural diversity? Today, the town is defined predominantly by two factions– those who hail from one of the six families whose forbears helped to settle the region, who today manage a good part of the Town’s inner workings and “back acreage” land, and the middle class families whose parents and grandparents settled here over the last fifty to seventy-five years, who grew up on Lake George and returned, in some capacity, to their hometown of Ticonderoga. Addressing these factions and facing them, not against each other, but against the town’s current social costs, has been the first step in the revitalization process.

Anatomy of a Town

Over the years, in Ticonderoga, both factions and their splinter groups have been locked in win-lose ideology. Taxes, development and the environment have been sore spots of conflict. The inextricable links between each of these issues have been hard to embrace in their totality. And yet, the anatomy of a small town is truly similar to that of our own. As the song goes, our hipbone really is connected to our thighbone and our thighbone to our shinbone. More profoundly, our internal organs are connected through vital streams just as we are connected to our family, friends, and neighbors. Just as surely, a strong downtown business district will positively impact the Four Corners’ retail district expansion, which will reinforce Ticonderoga’s regional hub status, which will enhance the number of visitors to the Fort as well as to the historic downtown Main Street. Indeed, almost everything impacts everything else.

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The alliance has produced video interviews with residents and alliance members alike so that you can hear about their experience and fascinating stories first hand. This is Beth Hill, Executive Director of the recently transplanted Fort Ticonderoga. Below is part one of a two part interview. Visit the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance website to watch the other part, the other interviews, and to see the incredible photographs and other inspiring features.

Interviews conducted and produced by Josh Clement. Contact Josh here.

Be sure to visit Monday, July 11th, for part 3, “Birth of the Alliance,” and don’t forget to visit their official website for other features, information and updates.

Part 1 of a 4 Part Series

Ticonderoga is a small town of 5,300 in upstate New York. It’s story isn’t a one-of-a-kind, that is, a town’s largest employer packs up shop and leaves a town, thus crumbling the local economy, stifling growth and setting the area into a cycle of hard times for years to come. But the resiliency and innovation of its residents is a story that never gets old.

A number of concerned residents decided to stay and fight for their town, to resist a mass exodus that could have rendered the town indefinitely stagnant . . . at best. They formed the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance. The alliance has applied innovation, passion and old-fashioned hard work to make Ticonderoga a prosperous place once again. This story was brought to our attention by the alliance’s Chairman, Alex Levitch. Alex’s passion was infectious and the town’s story magnetizing. We knew that we wanted to share it with you.

“Rise to Greatness” is part one of a four part series. Be sure to visit every week in June for the continuing story.

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The Ticonderoga Story – Part 1

Rise to Greatness

Ticonderoga, a postcard picturesque town of 5,300 souls in upstate New York, serves as the gateway to six million acres of the Adirondack State Park. Here, in the fabled North Country of James Fennimore Cooper and The Last of the Mohicans, is the birthplace of America’s best preserved pre-revolutionary fort. Here, between Lake George and Lake Champlain, is where North America’s political boundaries were defined.

The beauty and prosperity of Ticonderoga was not a secret; from the mid-nineteenth century and through the early twentieth century, America’s rich and famous were drawn to the region’s cooler summer climates and natural splendor. During these “golden years,” the town became a haven for artists and writers seeking exclusivity and serenity. The tourist boom encouraged and strengthened Ticonderoga’s fledgling industrial economy, which soon included a graphite mine and mill and a paper pulp mill, which employed more than half the town.

Over time, Ticonderoga became a household name for every student who used a “Number 2 Ticonderoga pencil” and studied the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars. In addition to its rich natural capital base, Ticonderoga began to boom in a scope disproportionate to its small size: its invested capital base soon included an airport, hospital, community college and historic Main Street.

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The alliance has produced video interviews with residents and alliance members alike so that you can hear about their experience and fascinating stories first hand. It made sense to start with Alex. Below is part one of a four part interview. Visit the Ticonderoga Revitalization Alliance website to watch the other three parts, the other interviews, amazing photographs and other features.

Interviews conducted and produced by Josh Clement. Contact Josh here.

Be sure to visit Monday, June 20th, for part 2, “Ticonderoga Today,” and don’t forget to visit their official website for other features, information and updates.