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Hi, Native NYer from Staten Island, moved to Fl in 79, ready to move back up north, had quite enough of the hurricane threats and the dreadful heat in the summers. MY question is , my husband and I found a nice home listed in Gloversville ,can anyone supply any info about the town, shopping, schools(colleges),employment options etc? Any help would be great...
Gloversville real estate is so cheap that you can't go wrong. It's a good place to live if you like cold weather, there is a lot to do in the surrounding area as well. There are a lot of run down areas but I never had a problem with crime there.
I live in Gloversville. I'm not from here. My parents moved here to retired from southeastern VA in 1972, because Dad (and me) are from Vermont and this was cheaper and they wanted to get back north.
It has a very low crime rate. It's run down in sections, but a lot better than in the 70s. It's near some great stuff -- Saratoga Race Track, where I hang out. If you love horse racing, ya gotta live near "the Spa," it's a really classy place where many of the great champion race horses come.
I'm just into horses basically, so that's why I stay -- the track and my horse life.
Otherwise it's a small enough city to be bordering on cozy. Don't knwo about the schools, no kids here, just animals.
Real estate is cheaper than cheap, but goes up with the nicer areas!!
You have concerts, theater, art and all that culture stuff in Albany, too.
Good skiing north -- Gore Mountain, and close enough to the Vermont ski areas.
I just like the Adirondacks. I would never be so foolish to move south again, because the south I grew up with in the 60s is gone now. I lived 15 years in NYC before moving here.
Broadalbin village is a very nice place to live, better than Gloversville. Homes are pricier though. It's an historic village, cozy. Would be a good choice.
I am looking for a house in gloversville area. Can you tell me where some nice neighborhoods are? Not too expensive. Older home with fenced yard, maybe Victorian.
Given its bones and its location near the cities in the Albany area and the Adirondack Mountains, I can see the city going in an upward trajectory. Keep in mind that Johnstown is an adjacent, smaller city right next to it.
From the article: "Walking by a vacant, towering brick church, some windows boarded, others broken, followed by a dilapidated former call center sitting on a mosaic of asphalt, weeds and trash protected by a chain link fence on a brisk Monday afternoon, Mayor Vincent DeSantis declared Gloversville is entering its renaissance.
“People are more excited about the future when they actually see the new Gloversville coming into being,” the mayor said. “They see the dreams becoming reality.”
Gloversville, named for the manufacturing industry that made the city the epicenter of glove-making and an economic giant of Fulton County in the early 20th century, has struggled since that sector began fading in the 1950s. When the Clean Air Act enacted new emissions and waste regulations for industrial sites in 1970, many of the tanneries left, deeming the cost to get up to code too high.
The exodus, in many ways, seemed like the final nail in Gloversville’s coffin. The loss of manufacturers caused unemployment rates to skyrocket. By the 1980s, Fulton County had the highest unemployment rate in New York, according to the county Center for Regional Growth. The city's population has been on a steady decline since it peaked at 23,634 in 1950 and is 15,068, census estimates from 2021 show. The city consistently ranked among those with the highest poverty rates in the state, with the percentage of families living below the poverty level at 21.5 percent.
And yet, there are signs that Gloversville is determined to rebound. The city and private companies invested $51.1 million in revitalization projects since 2012, and another $10 million from the fifth round of New York state’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative will be invested in 12 newly announced projects downtown. The years of work are coming together and the results will soon become visible to the public, DeSantis said.
“We finally are in a position to be able to actually implement it, All the projects are lined up to happen, and the grant money is there.”
A decade in the making
Kelly Ciancanelli, who owns Two of Cups Couture, an eco-conscious clothing store on Main Street, and produces and performs in burlesque shows, moved to Gloversville four years ago because she saw a diamond in the rough. She lived in Beacon, Dutchess County, for almost a decade before moving. Beacon had a similar downtrodden energy and economic struggles as Gloversville, she said, but she saw how Beacon invested in its downtown, particularly its arts and culture, and how that brought in more businesses and residents, boosted the city's economy and turned it around.
"I've seen it actually happen firsthand, so when I saw (Gloversville), I knew that same thing could happen here," she said. "To me, it was a perfect opportunity."
According to the city’s strategic investment plan, the first revitalization project in 2012 focused on rehabilitating residential housing in the city. New York state’s Homes and Community Renewal agency awarded Gloversville $400,000 for essential home repairs.
Four years later, addressing blight, eliminating substandard housing and improving neighborhoods were on the city’s front burner, DeSantis said. City code was changed to make enforcement of maintenance standards more efficient, and a vacancy ordinance was enacted. If an owner didn’t demolish or renovate an abandoned property, they would be subjected to a $5,000 yearly surcharge. The ordinance worked, the mayor said. The number of vacant buildings has dropped from 360 to 130. The city also created a neighborhood quality examiner to ensure properties were being maintained, work with building inspectors and issue tickets as necessary.
“An abandoned or a poorly maintained house robs value from every other owner in that neighborhood,” DeSantis said. “Even in the poor, poorest neighborhoods, there are some owners of houses that are doing the right thing. They're maintaining their houses and all of that. It's not fair to them.”
Enforcement wasn’t enough, though, and in 2021 the city took title to tax foreclosed properties. Previously the county, which serves as the tax foreclosure agent, would seize the property and auction it off, usually for $3,000 or $4,000, the mayor said.
“Often they were purchased by somebody from out of the area who had never seen Gloversville,” DeSantis said. “And they would either not invest in the property, if it was too much of a lift, and would just abandon it or the owner would rent it ... at a low price to get as much money as they could out of it and not reinvest in the property.”
So for $150,000, the city bought the properties, paid the back taxes to the county and set up a property-owner application process. The city would vet the applicants and choose an owner, who was then charged to fulfill whatever they promised to do with the property within 18 months.
While the city ended up losing $15,000 because some properties were sold to owners for less than what the city bought them for, the mayor counts the program as a success because of how many properties were restored and resold for a high value. He plans to use $300,000 of ARPA funding to do another round.
In addition to vacant buildings, the city faced another challenge because of its industrial roots.
“Glove-making was a very clean operation,” DeSantis said. “Tanning leather was not.”
Before the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Air Act in 1970, waste from the chemical-heavy processing of animal hides into leather was poured into Cayadutta Creek and seeped into the ground. Toxic fumes spewed into the air.
In 2019, the city got a $300,000 grant from the EPA to assess abandoned industrial sites citywide, some of which are now owned by the city. Gloversville recently got another $500,000 to continue and expand its assessments of brownfields, abandoned gas stations and former tanneries. Information gained from these projects allows the city to apply for more grants to clean up these sites and repurpose them, including Decca Records, a vinyl pressing plant that closed in 2005; the empty plant is in talks of being razed and replaced with a residential, recreational and commercial space, DeSantis said.
Other strategic revitalization projects in the last decade focused on creating affordable housing, improving sewage and wastewater infrastructures and building a family counseling center.
Enlivening downtown
The newly funded downtown projects aim to continue the momentum of the past and current revitalization efforts. With the city’s location south of the Adirondacks, DeSantis wants to make Gloversville a destination. The approved projects, which focus on housing, green spaces, attracting new businesses, walkability and bolstering the arts and culture scene, reflect that desire, Downtown Specialist Jennifer Donovan said.
“Having the arts build out what we already have here, our cultural assets and our historic culture, historic architecture, is wonderful,” Donovan said.
The biggest slice of the $10 million — just under $2 million — went to the Glove Theatre, an historic vaudeville house built in 1914, shuttered in the 1970s and saved from demolition by Gloversville residents in 1995. It’s seen as the anchor of downtown, Donovan said.
Because the revitalization projects’ selection process included a panel of city leaders and community members, plus opportunities through open forums, surveys and voting for residents to weigh in, is a sign to Mike Maricondi, the Glove’s general manager since July, that the community at large believes the theater can be an epicenter.
“It makes me excited that local and state governments believe that the arts has the power to bring together a community, to incite economic revolution and bring different communities together,” Maricondi said.
The money will address structural and safety issues in the theater, said James Hannahs, Glove Theatre’s board president. The theater, which has been hosting regular movie screenings, variety shows and theater performances since reemerging from pandemic closures in February, currently can only seat 100 due to its current sprinkler system. Even if that is updated, the space could still only hold 200 audience members because the theater only owns that number of chairs, less than half of the downstairs capacity. And the balcony, which could seat another 200, has been closed for safety concerns since the theater reopened in the ’90s.
The theater is also hoping to replace its antiquated — and hazardous — sandbag fly system, which relies on heavy bags of sand, rope and pulleys to raise and lower curtains, screens and set pieces. Once that is done, the theater can expand what types of theatrical shows it can produce to draw bigger audiences. It also needs a new HVAC system and repairs to its crumbling plaster walls. The list sounds ambitious, but Hannahs shares the mayor’s optimism that change is coming and coming soon. Completion of the theater’s renovations is currently estimated for the end of 2023.
“We have like an invigorated, realistic board of directors now that are so driven to show results to the community,” he said. “For 25 years, there's been different movements to revitalize the theater and I think that we are finally in a place to bring a lot of those dreams to fruition.”
Maricondi also sees opportunities to grow and support a diverse community through the Glove and the other downtown arts organizations. He notes while high rental costs of Proctors or outside venues' reluctance to book new artists or a discipline beyond their normal programming, the Glove has pledged itself to be accessible to emerging creatives and welcoming to new audiences.
Other projects include renovating the former Carriage House business across the street from the Glove into a bar, restaurant and housing to play off the theater’s audiences. The previously mentioned dilapidated call center will be transformed into a complex dedicated to artist housing, studio space and a gallery, and the lot next to the police station will be a greenspace with a splash pad.
Not everyone is on board with these downtown-focused projects. Comments concerning the Downtown Revitalization Initiative's announcement on the city’s Facebook page shows some are questioning the focus of the funds. Some feel issues of homelessness, addiction and mental health have not been adequately addressed by the city, and others say the concentration on a few blocks of downtown, where outlying residents might not frequent, feels misplaced.
The hope, voiced by the mayor, is the previous work in the neighborhoods paired with the initiative will bridge the gap between downtown and the city's residents. Funding will continue to go into the neighborhoods to support the work happening downtown. More affordable housing will be constructed in vacant lots and buildings, and new bike lanes and updated pedestrian walkways will improve walkability and make it easier for residents of all neighborhoods to access downtown.
“Everything had to pass to be done all together,” DeSantis said. “A great downtown is not worth anything if the neighborhoods are falling apart and vice versa.”
Measuring change
Gloversville's efforts to draw in new businesses have been successful, Ciancanelli said, noting several opened on the main drag in the short time she's lived there. With her store, performances and helping out at Mohawk Harvest Cooperative Market, she regularly interacts with the community and has felt the excitement and civic pride grow. The $10 million initiative was just the icing on the cake, she said.
DeSantis points to the achieved goals of other initiatives, including 100 new residential spaces, 50 construction projects and a 36 percent rise in the average sale value of a home, as signs of Gloversville’s resurgence. More people from outside of Gloversville are moving into the city, which he thinks is the result of people leaving big cities during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in tandem with the investments the city has already made. By 2030, he anticipates the Census will show the population increasing, which would be a first since 1950."
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