Newburgh Hillside redevelopment study wins state planning award

The honor does not itself rebuild Hillside, but it does sharpen the case that Newburgh’s redevelopment plan is moving from paper to practice. The City of Newburgh’s Hillside Brownfield Opportunity Area Nomination Study won the 2026 Heissenbuttel Award from the New York Planning Federation, and the recognition lands at a moment when the study has already helped create the Hillside BOA District and open the door to stronger redevelopment incentives.

That matters because Brownfield Opportunity Area status can boost the economics of cleanup and construction. Empire State Development says brownfield cleanup credits may be increased when a site is inside a BOA, giving developers a clearer financial reason to take on properties in a neighborhood long defined by vacancy, contamination concerns and stalled reinvestment. City officials say three large-scale development projects have already been accepted into the program, a sign that the study is already influencing investment decisions rather than waiting for a future planning cycle.

The award also gives Newburgh an outside validation of a strategy city planners have been building for years. The study, completed in 2025 by the City of Newburgh Planning and Development Department, grew out of more than a decade of planning and public engagement led with Environmental Design & Research, or EDR. The city formally moved the process forward with a May 12, 2025 public hearing and a May 27, 2025 City Council resolution to submit the Hillside nomination to the New York State Department of State for official BOA designation.

The stakes in Hillside have always been larger than a single neighborhood. City records say about 1,300 buildings were demolished, nine streets were buried and thousands of residents were displaced during urban renewal in the 1960s and 1970s, leaving much of the hillside vacant for decades. Older city materials described the study area as roughly 144 acres between the Hudson River and downtown commercial corridors, while a state project listing places the neighborhood at about 81 acres overlooking the river at the intersection of the Waterfront Gateway, Downtown Corridor and Broadway Corridor.

EDR says the BOA work is meant to restore environmental quality, promote home ownership, improve access to the river, add neighborhood amenities and expand job access. The city’s planning pages now list the final Hillside BOA 2025 Nomination Study and appendices as active resources, underscoring that the document is being treated as a live redevelopment framework. For Hillside, the award is less the finish line than a sign that the next phase of change is already underway.