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One of Dutchess County’s two major cities, Beacon, located along the Hudson River south of Poughkeepsie, o ers its 15,000 residents access to a Metro-North train into Manhattan, nearby hiking trails, and 71 acres of green space, including a revitalized waterfront.
Thanks to an urban renaissance over the last 15 years, Beacon also has a world-class art museum, and a Main Street packed with galleries, concert venues, cafés, and farm-to-table restaurants. These aspects are making Beacon a popular place for young professionals who are just starting their families.
ART MOVES FROM MANHATTAN
In 2000, 95 percent of all homes in Beacon were valued at less than $200,000. Shuttered factories— remnants of the city’s manufacturing past—remained, while storefronts sat empty on Main Street.
But the city began improving its code enforcement in the 1990s, and developer Ron Sauer began renovat- ing vacant Main Street buildings. The improving conditions led to the Dia Art Foundation’s unprecedented an- nouncement in 2002 that it planned to open a contemporary art museum in a 200,000-square-foot former Nabisco packing plant on the waterfront.
“Dia wouldn’t have come if we weren’t working with code enforcement and improving some of those buildings,” says Beacon Mayor Randy Casale. “It
Opened in 2003, Dia:Beacon, located on the Beacon waterfront, helped fuel an artistic renaissance that continues to thrive in this "city on the river."
made us a destination.”
Dia, which operates art sites in
Manhattan and across the globe, opened Dia:Beacon in 2003. The museum’s world-class art collection— including pieces by Richard Serra, Louise Bourgeois, and Sol LeWitt— has brought international attention to Beacon: 100,000 people visit the museum each year.
“I knew what happened to Chelsea when Dia moved there in the late 1980s. The whole art scene in Manhattan moved,” says John Gilvey, co-owner of Hudson Beach Glass, a glass studio that specializes in hand casting and sells glass kitchenware and sculptures to clients from Hong Kong to Central America. “We knew that something similar was going to happen here.”
Independent businesses like Hudson Beach Glass began lling those vacant Main Street buildings. Art galleries, boutiques, and restaurants followed, transforming Beacon’s main thoroughfare into a tourism engine. Dia soon brought in local restaurant Homespun Foods as its café operator, and the museum encouraged visitors to explore the rest of Beacon.
Beacon
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