The Kingston Green Trail is a community development alliance to help the institutions and businesses around Midtown’s Broadway Corridor to become leaders in green redevelopment. Extending from Uptown to the waterfront along Broadway, the Green Trail is a platform for collaboration to transform the center of this small city into a low-carbon, self-reliant, mixed-use community with high energy-efficiency and renewable energy systems, green roofs and expanded gardens, bicycle infrastructure and a revitalized streetscape – designed and built as much as possible by local businesses.

Like many small cities in the northeastern US, Kingston, NY is rich in historic buildings that are nearly unaffordable to operate; decaying water and energy infrastructure; an entrepreneurial economy with struggling but interesting small businesses; well-educated, creative professionals who are under-employed and want to be more involved. With a large population of volunteers just freed up by the Obama campaign, Kingston is beautifully positioned to combine these elements for the renewal of local economy and environment.

The essence of this initiative is not the hardware – it is the creative mobilization of a community. Initially convened by Sustainable Hudson Valley to support large funding proposals for energy improvements, the Trail has emerged as a focal project for nongovernmental initiatives with shared leadership that also includes Mid-Hudson Energy$mart Communities, Rural Ulster Preservation Company, the City of Kingston’s Parks and Recreation Department, the Kingston Land Trust, KingstonCitizens.org and the Center for Creative Education. Initial organizing efforts resulted in a bike map and trail planning initiative with city and county agencies, a sustainability collection for the Kingston Library, and a major funding proposal to finance district energy systems for the two hospitals and the high school. These experiments built relationships that raised our sights to focus on the core infrastructure and economy of Midtown Kingston.

In 2009, we intend to begin creating jobs through projects that make Broadway a fully bike-friendly corridor; that stabilize its small businesses by investing in their energy and communications infrastructure; that begin a transformation of the city’s streetscape by creating dozens of ornamental and food-producing gardens, pocket parks, green roofs, and public art installations; and create a platform for citywide communications through radio, public access cable tv and the Internet, working with the Seven21 Media Center, an anchor business on the trail.

The statewide celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival will serve as a springboard for imagining a sustainable, livable community for the next century, in partnership with experts and educators from the Netherlands through visits and teleconferences, organized with the Netherlands Institute for City Innovation Studies in The Hague. As the City of Kingston embarks on a comprehensive planning process, the Green Trail alliance will be a key partner, bringing in tested strategies for "restoring our community, one step at a time."