The Retro Businesses Drawing From Hudson Valley’s Abandoned Buildings

When the owners of a solar-powered popcorn company in the Hudson Valley were looking to expand operations, they saw an opportunity in an empty roller rink. A former magazine editor who dreamed of opening an antiques store in the Catskills knew she’d found the perfect place when she came upon an 1870s firehouse. And about 20 miles away, a film producer turned liquor entrepreneur realized he could make and sell his products out of a retro drive-in movie theater.

As more creative, sustainability-minded urbanites move north of New York City, business owners are repurposing the deep stock of old buildings in the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Adaptive reuse is the technical term for this practice, which involves renovating a building — while preserving its historic character — to serve something other than its original purpose.

Probably the most notable reuse project is Dia Beacon, a contemporary art museum that opened in 2003 on the former site of a 300,000-square-foot box-printing plant built in 1929 by Nabisco. Nearby in Kingston is the Lace Mill, a live-work space for artists in the former 1903 home of the United States Lace Curtain Mills company. The trend has only accelerated in recent years.

“In the post-Covid world, we are seeing many unique approaches that are reinventing tired industrial spaces to attract a variety of businesses that appeal to a sophisticated clientele,” said Michael Oates, president of the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corporation.

Michael Dorf, the founder of City Winery, the network of 14 restaurant-wineries with live music in 11 cities, was intent on reusing an old property for a new location in the area.

“I have lived in the Hudson Valley part time since the 1990s, so I knew the wealth of wonderful but sadly abandoned buildings available here,” said Mr. Dorf, whose first club venture was called the Knitting Factory. He considered several locations, including an old jail in Otisville, before settling on a mill with a surrounding junkyard in Montgomery, built in 1825. “Strangely, it was an old knitting factory,” he said.

Renovations began on the City Winery project in 2019. Working with a budget of $10 million, Mr. Dorf’s team created an indoor performance and event space that seats 400, along with an outdoor amphitheater surrounded by a vineyard and vegetable garden, which provides produce for the on-site restaurant. The venue opened during the peak of the pandemic but according to Mr. Dorf has quickly become one of City Winery’s most successful locations.

He was just getting started. In February 2022, Mr. Dorf purchased a series of buildings in nearby Walden that were formerly owned by the Borden Company, which has roots in the area going back to the 1870s as the New York Condensed Milk Company. In the 1970s, Borden’s factory burned down and was all but abandoned, said Mr. Dorf. He intends to invest $25 million to create a 50-room boutique hotel, winery, restaurant and spa on the site, as well as co-working spaces, an art gallery and a distillery. (The name? The Milk Factory.)

“These are falling-down buildings and we are historically preserving them — turning them into something that’s beautiful, that will provide jobs for locals and bring joy to people,” Mr. Dorf said.

This spring, the project’s design, which includes rooftop solar panels, received approval from New York’s State Historic Preservation Office. If all goes according to plan, the Milk Factory will open in the fall of 2025.

Other projects, like that of Dwight Grimm and Leigh Van Swall, were born of a stroke of luck.

In 2014, Mr. Grimm was looking for a commercial kitchen near his home in Preston Hollow, N.Y., to produce his custom bitters, tonics and, in time, vermouth. “We were looking at another property, but the deal fell through,” said Mr. Grimm, a former producer of industrial films and children’s television. “When I was griping about it to my mechanic, he told me he was part-owner of a drive-in theater with a kitchen that might work.”

The Greenville Drive-In was built in 1959. It had changed hands four times before a collection of 11 local residents, including the mechanic, bought it in 1990 to stop it from being torn down. It stopped showing movies in 2011. Mr. Grimm and his wife, Ms. Van Swall, began leasing the theater in 2014 and reopened it the next year, adding a cocktail bar that serves Mr. Grimm’s creations, made with locally sourced herbs and homegrown hops.

“We got a liquor license, a reasonably priced digital projector and were off and running,” Mr. Grimm said, adding that the drive-in allows him to do “covert consumer research.” (A recent screening of “Casablanca” paired the film with a drink called “The Fez Fizz,” using Mr. Grimm’s Moroccan bitters.)

BjornQorn, the popcorn company operating out of a roller rink, is the brainchild of three Bard classmates — Jamie O’Shea, Stephanie Bauman and Bjorn Quenemoen — the last of whom was known in college for his pop-up popcorn parties, a tradition he continued as a young adult in Brooklyn. In 2012, the tradition became a business, using solar power to make massive amounts of popcorn in old barns.

When the owners of BjornQorn were looking to expand past their base of operations — a dairy farm in Kerhonkson, N.Y. — they noticed that the Skate Time roller rink, just a mile away in Accord, had been put up for sale.

“I had driven by the rink hundreds of times, been here for birthday parties with our kids and always been in awe of it, the sort of time capsule that it is,” Mr. Quenemoen said.

The popcorn entrepreneurs bought the building in November 2022, along with a warehouse and a space that had housed an indoor skate park, for $2 million. The site should be fully operational by 2024, Ms. Bauman said. In the meantime, the roller rink is open, with expanded food and beverage services, and events like roller derby matches and movie screenings.

“We feel very strongly about providing a real-life community gathering experience, especially for young people in rural areas like this,” Mr. Quenemoen said, adding that he was surprised at how many teenagers were hanging out at the rink. They like the “old-school vibe,” he said, “the music and the little accouterments like our redemption tokens and paper tickets.”

For Sarah Gray Miller, the former magazine editor who now runs an antique store in a former fire station, the pandemic provided the motivation to do something new. In 2020, she said, “I saw the writing on the wall with the magazine business, and this became my Covid pivot.”

Ms. Miller became acquainted with the 1871 building in Coxsackie, N.Y., years earlier, when she would visit friends who lived around the corner. She rented it and opened the shop, UnQuiet, in December 2021. The adjoining bar, which came next, was an afterthought.

“I would crack open a bottle of wine at around 4 p.m. and people would gather,” she said. Eventually, a sort of Saturday evening salon formed among her friends and acquaintances. “I was operating a not-so-successful antiques store,” she said, “and a very popular, though private, B.Y.O.B. speakeasy.”

Ms. Miller decided to outfit the building next door, the old town jail, with a bar that she bought for $250 on Facebook Marketplace. By February of this year, the second business was in full swing. She recently added outdoor seating and a tiny performance space.

The final touch was finding and restoring a sign. Ms. Miller ended up with one from an old bar in Hudson, N.Y., a striking piece of décor that gave her new watering hole its name: Ravish Liquors.

As with any neighborhood change, are there naysayers who object to these new uses for historic buildings, and the new arrivals who are so often behind them?

The trio behind BjornQorn said they had received high praise from most of the local community, with one exception.

“Before selling the property, a previous owner cleared out the popular indoor skateboard park, where our new production facility will go,” Ms. Bauman said. “I know that local boarders would rather have a place to practice rail flips than a popcorn factory, but it’s our popcorn that lets us keep the good times alive at Skate Time.”

Sal Cataldi is a writer, musician and former publicist living in Saugerties, N.Y.